For founders who may not know this, but paying to pitch is predatory and NOT the standard in the industry. You always have leverage with investors, it's not a favor or charity.
Not $10, not $100, not any sum in "donations".
Shame on you
@mannyfernandez
We have news💬
So excited to announce a $1.25m investment, led by
@alexisohanian
and
@sevensevensix
, with support from angels from community-led companies like Tesla and Glossier, for teams to build a cult-like following through earned growth.
Every company is a media company
A few predictions on why they should think like content creators and how the companies that get this right will thrive in this market:
Elections are stressful, but fundraising doesn't have to be, esp if you're an undernetworked founder 🙂
Excited to finally share the Ode to Cold Outreach resource guide, including a list of 160+ investors who invest without a warm intro.
RT & share!
@heyalexfriedman
we are just really passionate about solving a problem and changing how things are done.
if you're both good at this and dogged about finding a solution, this is the biggest gift
Staying small and shipping fast is a superpower.
- Instagram: 13 employees, $1b acq
- WhatsApp: 55 employees, $19b acq
- Plenty of Fish: 75 employees, $575m acq
- Craigslist: 50 employees, $1b/year revenue
If your growth is measured by headcount, you're doomed from the start.
Being a founder is trippy - you can have a big achievement (snagging a huge value-add angel 🍕) and be at your absolute lowest energy in weeks in a matter of an evening.
It's no secret that there is a large untapped founder pool.
I’m putting together a list of investors who are open to and/or actively investing in founders without a warm intro. I will share the final spreadsheet shortly.
Tag an investor & share widely.
No better feeling when you get DMs asking if we are expanding the team to roles not yet on our Careers page.
Yes!! The team is growing, and we are always looking for the types of people who will shoot a founder a thoughtful note and make the ask.
Super impressed with the
@tryramp
team.
Shared a shortlist of ux and product features with
@16SamBuck
a few weeks back and seeing all of them come through today.
You've got some happy customers with us, cc:
@eglyman
I love the teams that show up for each other and their company.
I can mention
@tryramp
@linear
@Replit
@capitalxyz
right now and my likes would all be a roll call of who works there.
More start-ups should talk about not only about major pivots, but the series of continuous mini-pivots in messaging, positioning and feature sets that got them to their current state.
1) Hi all:
We've built an AI generative content tool that helps you engage in your own voice.
Seeing that SBF was too slammed for transparency, we thought we'd help him out and scale his communication.
Ask questions or post a tweet you'd like
@SBF_FTX_BOT
to reply to.
Our team is growing in the new year, so I got our people stack all in order.
After research + some missteps, here's a round up that works brilliantly:
- accounting:
@PilotHQ
- payroll/HR/401k:
@JustworksHR
- finance/cc:
@tryramp
- banking:
@BankMercury
- bookkeeping: QBO
Thank you
@jason
for hosting a room where you don't have to spend your bootstrapped money to pitch to/get advice from an investor.
I can't believe I even have to say that.
Was on a call with a founder when he said, "I have a hard stop in 30, can't be late to my therapy."
Yes!! More founders should be open about and prioritize their mental health.
Word of mouth leads to 5x more sales than paid media.
Consumers are 90% more likely to trust and convert through word of mouth than ads.
Sounds obvious: get more people to talk about you, but how do you do it?
Enter
@getnotus
...
Want to see how much Notable Clout you have? 🏆
@getnotus
got you covered.
Check your rankings, share bragging rights, nominate for founder, startup, investor, fund, marketing, and shitposter leaderboards.
Adding more transparency here - founders are typically the least paid in salary for years.
We are going to be paid 52k-77k LESS than the our earliest team members.
The upside is always in the equity. Ownership, not salary, creates generational wealth.
We followed Stripe’s model to start. A 6 figure salary that’s live-able in SF and super generous equity based on when you join.
We paid everyone $20k MORE than what we paid ourselves.
That equity is now generational wealth.
I’m putting together a resource with ALL the bad actors who charge to pitch or “investor brokers” and the *right* ways to pitch/connect with investors.
I’ve gotten too many DMs of similar predatory and dangerous behavior preying on early stage founders.
DMs open.
Thinking of raising in 2023?
One of the main things you should focus on right now is building relationships.
Here are 4 ways to grow and leverage your network to close your round:
Building a startup is truly a labor of love.
If you don’t have a damn good reason for why you’re building what you’re building, you have zero chance of succeeding.
humbled, excited and thrilled to talk about our origin story, why Notus is the future of social-first, community-led growth, and what I'm reading now (
@andrewchen
's Cold Start Problem)
thanks
@TheOrgCom
team!
some friendly reminders for today:
- if you're not in fintech, don't have info, but want to share a hot take: don't.
- have empathy
- update your team, users, investors
- check in on founder friends
We're trying out something new.
We thought a lot about our cap table for Notus and decided to put a framework on what we look for in an investor — or a "cap table thesis".
It takes into account our team's driving values, what to expect from us/what we expect. Sharing a snippet:
Fundraising hack: grow your network of fellow founders, build genuine connections, be a resource and support them. A recommendation to a fund or an angel goes a long way when you're raising.
Doing the right thing hack: Once you close your round, pass it forward.
Awesome to see
@getnotus
as
@TechCrunch
's start-up of the week in
@nmasc_
's newsletter! 💬
As
@alexisohanian
said with the "internet unbundling media" and "influence fragmented", we are only getting started on helping teams understand and communicate with their audience.
If you're an underrepresented founder and would like to get thoughts on your strategy to get visibility in the press / news mentions / relationship building with the press, DM me.
Closing out the year with a brand, new
@getnotus
site! 🎉
Marketers, CMOs, heads of platform, comms folk, founders - this is your place for press strategy and campaigns. We can't wait to share the beta with you in Q1!
The
@getnotus
team is expanding! We are hiring exceptional folks for:
🏗 Full-stack engineer
🧠 Data engineer
🖌 Director of design
We are well funded, we are building fast, and we are creating a new category called community-led marketing. Join us.
Some great advice from
@imchristiepitts
of
@Backstage_Cap
"Q: One thing every founder should ask themselves before a meeting with a potential investor?
A: Why does this investor deserve to own a piece of my company?"
Founders: don't forget that you have equal power in the room!
we've hit the 1m mark, folks
what's even more cool: when we had a big spike when we first launched Leaderboards and it went viral in Dec, we had to take it offline for a few hours to handle the inbound
this time around - zero downtime
our team is incredible
Talk to your users early, and get creative about how you find them.
Before we wrote a single line of code, I offered to exchange 30 mins of my asking questions to anyone in our target demographic for 30 mins of free marketing/comms advice.
Booked 100 conversations in <3 days.
@ArminRosen
@sarahkunst
Besides trying to get your bike back, you should report the instance here:
and because you're press, alert
@uspresstracker
and report here for both your injuries and property:
My favorite thing about early-stage hiring is spotting those diamond in the rough folks who have all the makings of strong 0-1 builders and giving them the freedom to tinker.
Every founder should be on Twitter. Period, hard stop.
This is where your early supporters, clients, investors, future team, champions, teachers and mentors live.
This community is the fuel you need.
Being early stage is awesome.
You can move quick, break a bunch of rules, and experiment until you get it just right. When you're bigger, these are the days that turn to stories that become part of a company's mythology.
the
@mercury
team wrote the playbook on how to step up to an industry crisis:
- shipped a new product: $3m FDIC insured with Vault
- had stellar comms every day
- went where their customers were - Twitter
congrats
@immad
and team 👏
@rsg
We wrote a whole cap table thesis on what we seek from investors besides capital and used it as a framework to decide who to choose as partners now and earmark for future rounds.
It's clear when founders become investors: they get the journey because they've seen it first hand.
@shl
improving the "how can I be helpful?" through a framework and even going into the imposter syndrome in his doc.
Instead of asking "how can I be helpful?" I wrote this doc to send to founders.
A founder just told me "every investor should have one of these" – so here it is to copy!
Particularly excited to share this with our investor community in our newly-launched investor hub.
I've also put a lot of thought re: our investor values framework and the Notus "cap table thesis" that I'll be sharing.
Future of work, productivity/collab investors - DMs open.