How to get your first 1,000 users 🤝 (Startup Watching #244)

A friend recently sent me the classic blog post, “Peacetime/Wartime CEO” by Ben Horowitz. In it, Horowitz outlines a dichotomy between CEOs who thrive in times of peace, by fostering creativity, and those who thrive in times of crisis, by moving fast.

But it just didn’t sit right with me. He advocates for ruling like a dictator in times of “war.” But that just isn’t as effective. This post sums up why that view is dated, and the kind of leaders we really need right now.

Awesome compilation of the strategies used by the top consumer apps (although it’s a stretch to call Buffer and Slack consumer) to get initial traction. He also includes the specific stories for each company. Interestingly he was able to group them all into just 7 strategies, and most of the companies only used one.

Excellent compilation of super practical copywriting tips from the folks (folk?) over at Marketing Examples. If you aren’t following them, you totally should be.

Podia was already a remote team before Covid happened, but they had to cancel their in-person retreat. They replaced it with a remote retreat and Len Markidan shared how they did it. My friend Nigel recently tried this as well and got a lot out of it.

The most fun ideas:

A lot of conventional wisdom around content marketing says that you should focus your effort on bottom of the funnel content. That is, write for the people most likely to buy from you.

Here, Rand Fishkin argues that doing that will make your audience feel like you’re selling constantly. Instead you should write most of your content for potential amplifiers (or influencers). I think the truth is, you need to do both. Which is hard.

I enjoyed this interview with Sam Parr of the Hustle even if his advice on how to grow your audience is basically just to “Write well.” Luckily, he does go into more detail later on.

This episode got me listening the Hustle’s podcast. In it, Sam and Shaan Puri (an exec at Twitch) basically just riff for an hour on news and business ideas. They’re both blunt as hell and very entertaining to listen to, even

If you want to understand consumer trends, I highly recommend following Blake Robbins. He’s an investor with Ludlow Capital, and is one of the few startup people I see actively studying YouTube and eSports.

Here he breaks down the main ways creators make money. It seems like there is a ton of opportunity for improvements here.