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Founders Feast 004: lean startup feedback loop & 170 build tools added
Exploring lean startup principles, founders growth learnings, and wisdom on entrepreneurial environments.
Julian Paul
January 28, 2024
Servus & happy Sunday. ☼
Read time this week → 4.6 minutes.
Excited to be back at writing this newsletter, despite it being a hectic week traveling to Vienna <> Frankfurt for work and now into the Alps for a week of skiing vacation – hope your 2024 is as enjoyable and eventful as mine.
I just finished reading the Lean Startup and got super inspired to apply a lot of its frameworks. One quote I particularly liked is: “a startup’s job … (1) rigorously measure where it is right now by confronting the hard truths, and (2) devise experiments to learn how to move the real numbers closer to the ideal reflected in the business plan.” It’s easy to get comfortable when building a startup. Especially when reaching some level of product validation.
But now to this week’s newsletter – let’s get it!
Starter → a mental model
Feedback loop: build → measure → learn ↓
Originally founded by Eric Ries in 2011, the Lean Startup methodology stands more true today than ever. The feedback loop at its core is a helpful scientific method that helps founders determine how to conduct experiments and find out where a startup should go. The goal is to minimise the total time spent moving through the full feedback loop by planning in reverse and tracking resulting learning milestones.
In order to find clarity around where you want to end up, it helps to keep in mind how a startup forms over its lifetime on three pillars:
1. Vision is your true north star.
2. Strategy is how you get there.
3. Product is the result.
Every action you take should be an experiment to achieve validated learning to uncover a sustainable business model around a set vision. So keep your vision, but frequently optimise everything else. And remember:
“Every setback is an opportunity to lean where you want to go.”
“If you cannot fail, you cannot learn.”
Here’s to Eric Ries!
Ponder this → are you making your product better? How do you know?
I only ever read summaries of The Lean Startup, but never took it seriously enough to pick up the physical book for some reason — a huge mistake in hindsight. Now, it is the one book I think every founder should read. So even if you start the article, please also grab a copy of the book. ↓
This week we reached two milestones: I added another 170 tools to the database, cleaned up the foundersmenu.beehiiv.com publication visually, and added a fresh welcome email for new user subscriptions. This time, it’s all about the Build category, which is probably the most useful to all founders. It has everything from simple website builders like Framer, Webflow, and Carrd. But also complex app designers like Adalo, Bravo, or Glide. These are all incredibly useful for most of the Concept → MVP stage (validating the product), but even more useful for the MVP → Business stage (growing the functionality of a validated product). I think you’ll like all of the additions…
As of today, the curation stands at 308/1173 (26%) of Tools only. FREE member signups are open for one or two more weeks – grab yours now. ↓
What’s next? Curate up to 100 resources and continue roadmap work. ↓
Desert → past week’s startup highlights
Jan-Oliver Seidenfuss wrote about his personal story on why you should not chase YCombinator, after trying to get into their program twice over 2 years, which led him to not only waste time but almost drop a product that was showing significant PMF potential.
Manuel Bleve wrote about the incredible growth story behind customer.io, by conducting an insightful interview with Colin Nederkoorn. His take on SaaS and the evolution towards fundstrapping (the combination of bootstrapping and fundraising - a reality most businesses end up living in anyway) is original & realistic.
Dennis Mueller finally launched the public version of Amie.so. With the added email functionality, the calendar todo app is becoming more capable by the minute. Their launch on Producthunt also got them #1 product of the day and maybe even the week?!
Tibo released Typeframes Automations, which checks your Twitter, Linkedin, or Blog and creates a video if it finds new content. In the age of video-preferential algorithms, this is a game-changer, as you can easily remix written content into motion.
Balaji released a piece of writing on how Prompts are Tiny Programs, which goes into detail about the concept of prompts actually being tiny programs using hidden APIs. It goes a long way to explain the bizarre magic associated with specific phrases.
Sides → TBD – more soon!
This section is still in the works. For those of you following me on Twitter: x.com/itsjulianpaul might have a good idea of what this might be.
I can’t wait to fully release what I’ve been working on.
Closing thoughts
I’ve been thinking a lot about my environment and what it impact it has on my ability to achieve success. It’s Nav.al who also said that you should consciously design where you live, who you’re with, and what you do – these three things will determine your level of fulfillment in your life. Especially if you are doing one of the hardest things in life: building a business from scratch.
My goal in life: visit all 195 countries in the world before I die.
But after going to 100+ cities in the last 8 years, 1 place has BLOWN all the others out of the water.
Here’s why this city is perfect for high-value founders who want to build their empires:
— MATT GRAY (@matt_gray_)
Jan 18, 2024
Now I am not saying go to Dubai, but just ponder over where you currently are and where on planet earth all variables would align for you to reach peak momentum. So as Matt quotes some old hockey wisdom:
“Go where the puck’s going to be, not where it’s already been.”
DM & reply-to-email is open.
See you around. ☻
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