❗️ China Reigns Supreme in the Global E-Commerce Landscape

🤖 China dominates the global e-commerce market, with online retail sales reaching a staggering $2.2 trillion in 2023, according to eCommerceDB. The U.S. and U.K. trailed far behind at $981 billion and $157 billion, respectively.

🤖 Recognizing its domestic success, China is now expanding internationally, with major e-commerce firms launching global platforms. Temu by PDD Holding recorded impressive $17 billion in sales in 2022, while Alibaba’s AliExpress and U.S.-based Wish aim to give consumers worldwide access to Chinese goods.

🐦 For startup founders in the e-commerce space, China’s dominance and aggressive global expansion present both challenges and opportunities.
While competing with established Chinese giants like Alibaba and PDD may seem daunting, the growing appetite for international online shopping could open up new markets. Founders must closely analyze consumer trends, localize their offerings, and find innovative ways to differentiate themselves in this highly competitive landscape. With the right strategies, there is potential for startups to carve out their niche in the booming global e-commerce market.

💬 Source #CapitalStats

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💡 The Secret to Startup Success: Launch Early, Launch Often

I’ve learned some crucial lessons about launching startups that will transform how you approach it. The key?

— Launch early and often, even before your product is perfect.

➡️ Launching early, even with an MVP, helps validate if you’re truly solving a problem people will pay for. The worst case? No one cares initially—so tweak and relaunch!

➡️ Craft a killer one-sentence pitch describing what you do, who it’s for, and the problem solved. Ditch jargon—clarity enables word-of-mouth growth.

➡️ Don’t just launch publicly. Continuously launch through:
— Online communities (HackerNews, your networks)
— Waitlists (see how Robinhood got 50,000 sign-ups!)
— Pre-order campaigns (for physical products)
— Friends/family (but don’t linger here too long)

Each channel provides valuable user feedback to guide product refinement.

⚠️ Going to the press is overrated for early startups. It rarely drives sustainable growth or product-market fit. Instead, build your own engaged community.

➡️ The most successful startups like Airbnb launch repeatedly until finding product-market fit. Don’t view your product’s launch as a one-time event! An initial lacklustre response means regroup and relaunch.

📌 Launch ASAP, listen to users, tweak, and relaunch relentlessly until you make a few users really happy. That’s the startup momentum you need!

#StartupAdvice

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⚡️ Inflation Resurgence Overshadows U.S. Economic Slowdown in Q1 2024

🤖 The United States economy slowed more than expected in Q1 2024, growing at an annualized rate of 1.6%, the slowest pace since Q2 2022. However, the concerning issue was the reacceleration of inflation, dashing hopes of imminent rate cuts. The PCE price index, the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge, increased 3.4% annually in Q1, nearly double the previous quarter’s rate.

🤖 The core PCE index rose to 3.7%, well above the Fed’s 2% target. The higher-than-expected inflation complicates the Fed’s efforts to control rising prices and raises questions about potential further rate hikes to tame persistent price pressures.

💬 Source #CapitalStats

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🚀 ‘Wallet-as-a-Service’ Startup Ansa Raises $14M Series A Round

🤖 San Francisco-based Ansa, which helps merchants develop branded virtual wallets, has raised a $14-million Series A led by Renegade Partners. Notably, female investors contributed 95.6% to the round, including Renegade’s Renata Quintini, Bain Capital’s Christina Melas-Kyriazi, and others.

🤖 Founded in 2022, Ansa provides a white-labeled wallet infrastructure to help businesses process small payments and avoid high credit card fees. The startup targets coffee shops, QSRs, marketplaces, and retailers, allowing them to create wallets with loyalty programs within weeks using Ansa’s API platform.

🤖 In Q1 2024, Ansa doubled its customer base year-over-year. The funding will fuel product development and hiring as Ansa expands its “wallet-as-a-service” solution. Renegade’s Quintini praised Ansa’s seamless integration with payment providers, enabling a Starbucks-like customer experience for merchants.

For startup founders in the fintech and payments space, Ansa’s success in raising a female-led round and its innovative “wallet-as-a-service” solution could inspire new approaches to addressing pain points and driving customer loyalty in the ever-evolving world of digital payments.

💬 Source

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🔥 Gaming Startups Back in the Spotlight As Funding Rebounds

🤖 After a prolonged funding drought, gaming startups are witnessing a resurgence in investor interest. In Q1 2024, $265 million poured into early-stage gaming rounds globally, a 65% increase from the previous quarter and a nearly fourfold jump from Q3 2023’s multi-year low. This upswing is fueled by optimism around small studios’ ability to create hit games, aided by user-friendly developer tools that prioritize creativity over technical prowess.

🐦 For startup founders in the gaming space, this renewed investor enthusiasm presents promising opportunities. However, securing funding remains competitive, as current levels are still far below the 2021 peak. Founders must showcase their games’ potential to captivate audiences and leverage industry tailwinds, such as the rise of independent developers and the appetite for well-known consumer brands in the public markets.

💬 Source #CapitalStats

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💡 Mastering Metrics for Consumer Ventures

In the quest for growth, consumer startups often prioritize headline user growth, as monetization may come later. A good growth rate is 15% month-over-month, allowing you to quintuple your user base annually. 10% monthly growth is acceptable, while 5% or lower is unlikely to reach breakout success.

📌Organic vs. paid growth
Organic growth is key, driven by virality (users introducing the product to others) and network effects (the product improving as more users join). Leverage sharable moments and incorporate multiplayer experiences to foster these organic loops. Paid referral schemes can blend in, but watch for cannibalization and fraud.

📌Tracking paid growth
Implement robust tracking to understand user acquisition channels and costs. Crucially, record each user’s source and monitor their long-term performance and profitability. Optimize for active, monetized, retaining users, not just signups.

📌The best consumer startups
Aim for an organic-to-paid growth ratio of at least 80:20, or even 100% organic. A 50:50 split is acceptable, but anything below that for an extended period raises concerns about over-reliance on ad platforms.

📌Unit economics
Measure revenue generated and variable costs incurred per customer. Understand profitability on a granular level and optimize accordingly. Scaling negative unit economics is dangerous.

📌Retention and magic moments
Define an appropriate usage period to measure retention. Identify “magic moments”—user behaviors that predict long-term retention—and engineer your product to maximize these moments early on.

📌Net promoter score (NPS)
Monitor your NPS, a measure of customer willingness to recommend your product. Aim for at least +50, as high scores correlate with word-of-mouth referrals.

Remember, these are benchmarks, and your industry may differ. Adapt these metrics to your business, always striving for sustainable growth and profitability. Happy scaling!

#StartupAdvice

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❗️ U.S. Doubles Down on Domestic Chip Manufacturing With Massive CHIPS Act Grants

🤖 The U.S. government is making a massive push to boost domestic semiconductor production through the CHIPS Act. Tech giants like Intel ($8.5B), TSMC ($6.6B), Samsung ($6.4B), and Micron ($6.1B) are receiving billions in grants to construct new chip fabrication plants across states such as Arizona, Ohio, and New York. These grants are part of the CHIP Act’s $280-billion funding to reduce reliance on foreign chip makers.

🐦 For startup founders in the semiconductor and electronics space, these investments signal potential opportunities in an increasingly self-sufficient U.S. chip ecosystem. Keeping a close eye on emerging domestic supply chains and partnerships could uncover profitable prospects.

💬 Source #CapitalStats

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🔍 Dissecting the Art of a Compelling Pitch Deck

In the ever-evolving startup landscape, a well-crafted pitch deck can make or break your chances of securing funding and propelling your venture to new heights. Join me as we delve into the intricacies of a pitch deck teardown, exploring the strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for improvement.

➡️ Our subject today is a $200,000 pre-seed deck from NOQX, a Stockholm-based startup aimed at enhancing goal-setting, collaboration, and employee experiences for companies with 50 to 500 employees. While the deck boasts a bold design and visual appeal, it falls short in several crucial areas.

✔️ Problem statement: Less is more
NOQX dedicates three slides to outlining the problem, a move that comes across as defensive and repetitive. A single, punchy slide highlighting the staggering failure rate of companies in achieving their goals would have been far more impactful. Streamlining the problem into a compelling headline, supported by bullet points that resonate with investors’ concerns about opportunity and scalability, is the key to capturing their undivided attention.

✔️ Solution and product: Clarity is king
The deck’s solution and product slides lack clarity and differentiation. A clear articulation of how NOQX solves the identified problem, coupled with a concise explanation of its unique value proposition and distinct advantages, is crucial. Instead of vague statements like “our awesome platform,” dive into the specific features and functionality that set your product apart from the competition.

✔️ Traction: Show, don’t tell
NOQX’s attempt to showcase traction misses the mark. For early-stage startups without revenue, the traction slide should demonstrate the steps taken to de-risk the company, such as achieved milestones and accelerating growth metrics. Transparency is key; investors can see through attempts to embellish or misrepresent.

✔️ Team slide: Sell your unfair advantage
The team slide is a make-or-break moment for early-stage startups. NOQX’s slide falls short in providing context and relevance for the founders’ experiences. Investors want to understand why this team is the gold-plated unicorn with unfair advantages and talents that make them the perfect fit for building this company.

✔️ Specificity and substance
Throughout the deck, NOQX’s vagueness and lack of specificity raise concerns. Investors want to know the nitty-gritty details: your target customers, competitive landscape, business model, customer acquisition strategies, and more. A pitch deck that lacks substance risks leaving investors with more questions than answers, potentially jeopardizing your chances of securing funding.

➡️ In conclusion, while NOQX’s deck boasts visual appeal, its lack of clarity, differentiation, and substance hinders its ability to effectively communicate the startup’s value proposition and convince investors. By addressing these areas of concern and focusing on concise, compelling storytelling, founders can elevate their pitch deck to a powerful tool for securing investment and propelling their ventures forward.

Remember, a pitch deck is not a one-size-fits-all solution; it should be tailored to your specific audience and evolve as your startup matures. Embrace constructive feedback, refine your messaging, and keep iterating until your deck becomes a masterpiece that captivates investors and sets your startup on the path to success.

💬 Download Pitch Deck

#PitchDecoded

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📎 Lessons From Bilt Rewards: How Ankur Jain Became a Billionaire by Disrupting Rental Rewards

➡️ Ankur Jain has achieved billionaire status at just 34 years old by creating Bilt Rewards, a fintech startup that allows renters to earn points and rewards simply by paying rent.

➡️ Despite being a young company launched in 2021, Bilt has already signed up over 4 million rental units across the U.S. and partnered with major airlines, hotels, gyms, and more. Its recent $3.1-billion valuation after raising $200 million minted Jain, who owns 36% of Bilt, as a fresh new billionaire worth $1.2 billion.

❗️ Key lessons for startup founders:

🔗 Spot big, underserved markets. Jain recognized the massive rental housing market lacked any rewards program, unlike the travel industry. Tapping into this large unmet need has allowed Bilt to grow rapidly.

🔗Create a multi-sided marketplace. Bilt’s model benefits renters who earn rewards, property owners who keep tenants sticky, and merchants who get new customers to spend. Aligning incentives across different constituencies is powerful.

🔗Leverage your network and experience. Jain’s entrepreneurial upbringing, past startup roles, and connections, such as the NFL’s Roger Goodell, helped provide vital support and credibility in Bilt’s early days.

🔗Relentlessly innovate the model. Bilt continues iterating with new rewards programs and is already eyeing expansion into the mortgage market, showing the importance of continually evolving the offering.

🔗Raise money from strategic investors. Investors like American Express veteran Ken Chenault bring key domain expertise that can guide Bilt, in addition to their capital.

The rise of Bilt and Jain’s new billionaire status at a relatively young age demonstrates how lucrative opportunities still exist for startups that can creatively disrupt large, stagnant industries through tech-enabled business model innovations.

💬 Source #VentureStories

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🔵 Disney’s Acquisition Spree: Lessons for Startup Founders

➡️ In its relentless pursuit of growth, Disney has embarked on a series of massive acquisitions, the largest being the $71.3-billion purchase of 21st Century Fox in 2019 and the recent $8.6-billion buyout of Comcast’s Hulu stake. While the numbers are staggering, Disney’s strategic acquisitions of iconic brands such as Pixar, Marvel, and Lucasfilm have expanded its intellectual property portfolio and fueled its dominance.

➡️ For startup founders, Disney’s acquisitions offer valuable insights. Identifying and acquiring complementary assets or technologies can accelerate growth and market dominance. However, successful integration and value extraction from acquisitions require careful planning and execution, underscoring the importance of a well-defined acquisition strategy for startups eyeing inorganic growth.

💬 Source #CapitalStats

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❗️ Founders Lose Their Startups After Newchip Accelerator’s Bankruptcy

🤖 The bankruptcy of Austin-based accelerator Newchip has left many founders in distress as the court ordered the auction of warrants (rights to purchase equity) that Newchip held in over 1,000 startups from its program. Founders like Lacey Hunter of TechAid and Garrett Temple of Novogiene were forced to shut down their companies when the warrants made raising future funding difficult.

🤖 Despite paying hefty fees of up to $20,000, many founders claim they received little value from Newchip before its collapse. The court aims to sell the warrants to settle Newchip’s $4.8-million debt, against the wishes of the founders, who argue the sales undermine their startups’ valuations. The first tranche of 28 warrants sold for just $58,000, with over 1,400 more warrants to be auctioned soon. As founders grapple with shattered dreams, the case highlights the risks of joining accelerators blindly.

🐦 This serves as a cautionary tale about the potential downsides of giving up equity stakes or warrants, especially to accelerators promising grand connections and funding. Do thorough due diligence, read the fine print carefully, and prioritize retaining control over your startup’s cap table. An accelerator’s bankruptcy can have devastating ripple effects on the companies they claimed to support.

💬 Source

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💡 The Importance of Finding the Right Co-Founder

📌Having the right co-founder can make all the difference in the rewarding yet challenging journey of starting a company. A co-founder increases productivity by dividing responsibilities and leveraging complementary skills.

📌More importantly, a co-founder provides crucial moral support during the inevitable ups and downs. The best partnerships have a balancing effect, where one lifts the other when they’re feeling down, and vice versa. This emotional support is invaluable and difficult to replicate with employees.

➡️ When evaluating potential co-founders, the most important factors are how they handle stress and their ability to support you through tough times. Startups are incredibly stressful, and you need someone who will stick around and help you persevere.

➡️ Align on goals and values, too. Conflicting ambitions will inevitably lead to friction. Discuss motivations openly.

➡️ Once you’ve identified a potential co-founder, allocate dedicated time to work on a prototype or MVP together. This trial period allows you to assess compatibility before fully committing.

➡️ If you decide to proceed, agree on an equitable equity split and determine who will serve as the CEO — the external face representing unified leadership to investors.

Having the right co-founder can significantly increase your chances of navigating the arduous but rewarding startup journey successfully.

Follow this advice, find someone you trust and can rely on, and give yourself the best opportunity to build an iconic company together.

#StartupAdvice

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📎 The Unlikely Rise of Chime: America’s Biggest Digital Bank

➡️ Chris Britt had an ambitious vision: to build a branchless digital bank serving lower- and middle-income Americans through mobile banking and no-fee accounts. In 2012, he co-founded Chime, aiming to woo customers by letting them access their paycheck two days early if they set up direct deposit.

➡️ The early years were a grind, with Chime burning through cash and struggling to raise funds as VCs doubted the business model’s profitability. But Britt persisted, introducing features like no overdraft fees, free ATM access and automatic savings transfers that resonated with younger, paycheck-to-paycheck consumers.

➡️ Word-of-mouth growth exploded in 2018, and by 2021, Chime had hit a $25-billion valuation after raising $750 million. Today, with 7 million users and $1.5 billion in annualized revenue, the fintech unicorn is America’s biggest digital-only bank, disrupting incumbents with its low-cost, mobile-first approach.

💫 The unlikely ascent of Chime and its founders Chris Britt and Ryan King offers several inspiring lessons for startup founders:

🔗 Have conviction in your vision, even when investors are skeptical. Britt persevered for years when VCs doubted Chime’s ability to build a profitable branchless banking model for lower-income customers.

🔗 Solve an authentic consumer pain point. Chime’s early struggles showed the importance of homing in on a core value proposition that truly resonates, like no-fee mobile banking.

🔗 Differentiate through innovative offerings. Popular features like early paycheck access and no overdraft fees allowed Chime to stand out from traditional banks.

🔗 Leverage word-of-mouth growth. By delivering an excellent experience, Chime sparked a vital growth loop of customer referrals that boosted acquisition efficiently.

🔗 Adapt to evolving market dynamics. Chime shows the nimbleness to expand into areas like lending while guarding against risks like fraud and regulation.

💬 Source #vs

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💡 Should You Bootstrap or Raise Venture Capital?

💫 One of the biggest decisions when starting a new business is whether to bootstrap with little outside funding or seek investment from venture capitalists. There’s no universally correct answer—it depends entirely on your specific goals and situation.

➡️ The vast majority of businesses will never achieve the exponential growth required for VCs to get a sufficient return. VCs typically seek companies with potential for 100x or even 1,000x returns. For most, bootstrapping and growing organically at a sustainable pace is the more realistic path.

➡️ Don’t be fooled into thinking raising VC is the sure path to wealth. Statistically, it’s extremely difficult to build a VC-backed company to an exit large enough to make founders rich. It’s akin to saying you’ll just go pro and make the NBA.

➡️ There are many routes to building wealth as an entrepreneur besides VC, like founders who bootstrapped software businesses generating millions annually while maintaining a great lifestyle, or those who struck it rich through real estate, investing, law, medicine, etc.

📌 The key reasons to pursue VC are:
1. You cannot reach profitability without raising millions up front (rare for software).
2. You can clearly show investors how you’ll build a company capable of an IPO or billion-dollar exit providing a massive return.

❗️ Don’t get caught up in debates about the morality of taking VC versus bootstrapping. And be wary of those stirring up controversy to drive engagement. VC is simply a financial transaction: Investors provide capital in exchange for a share of wildly successful outcomes.

💫 The path you choose should align with your vision and goals—not what’s portrayed as universally superior. Seeking VC for the wrong reasons is as ill-advised as stubbornly avoiding it against your interests.

Don't let persuasive voices or shiny anecdotes sway you from a pragmatic choice for your circumstances. Whichever route you take, execution is the ultimate key.

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to bootstrap or raise VC. Be brutally honest about which path gives you the best chance to achieve your entrepreneurial goals. Stay focused on execution—that’s the real key to startup success, no matter which funding route you choose.

#StartupAdvice

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🔵 Apple Defies Low Expectations With Services Strength

➡️ Despite a 10.5% decline in iPhone sales to $46 billion, Apple’s Q2 2024 results exceeded pessimistic forecasts. Total revenue dipped 4% to $90.8 billion, but the services segment shined, growing 14% to a record $23.9 billion, now over 25% of sales. With 2.2 billion active devices and 1 billion paid subnoscriptions, services are a cash cow. Apple also announced a massive $110-billion buyback, driving shares up 7%.

➡️ For startup founders, Apple’s resilience underscores the value of diversifying revenue streams beyond flagship products. Building recurring services revenue can provide a cushion during sales slumps and open new growth avenues, exemplifying the importance of continually evolving business models.

💬 Source #CapitalStats

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🔵 The Seed Funding Landscape: Challenges and Opportunities Ahead

➡️ Seed funding peaked in Q1 2022 but has slowed since then. Despite this, seed funding has weathered the downturn better than other stages. However, there’s a growing pipeline of seed-funded startups competing for Series A rounds. Additionally, the time between seed and Series A rounds has increased from 14 months in 2014 to 25 months in 2023. With more seed funds launching and larger funds, startups are staying longer at the seed stage.

For startup founders, the road ahead is challenging, but the talent pool is expected to grow in 2024, potentially leading to increased company formation.

#CapitalStats

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💡 Why It’s So Hard to Copy Your Heroes

💫 We often hear successful entrepreneurs give advice that sounds perfectly reasonable on its surface. But if you dig deeper, you may find their words don’t actually align with the path they took to achieve their own success. It’s the classic “do as I say, not as I did” paradox.

Let’s look at a few examples of prominent figures whose advice contradicts their origin stories:

— The Bootstrapper: This entrepreneur advocates for learning about startups—raise little money, keep burning low, grow organically. Yet their first venture was backed by millions in VC funding that allowed them to move fast and spend aggressively on growth.
— The Visionary: They preach about only pursuing world-changing, future-defining ideas. But their initial claim to fame was a fairly conventional consumer app before pivoting to grander ambitions once they amassed resources.
— The Contrarian: This investor advocates skipping college, as it’s valueless for entrepreneurship; however, they attended elite universities and worked at major corporations before finding startup success later in life.

🔗 Why does this disconnect happen? In most cases, it comes from good intentions. Successful entrepreneurs share what they wish they could have told their younger selves with the wisdom they now possess. Understandably, they can become a bit myopic about their own journeys that built the foundations for their biggest achievements.

📌 The key is maintaining context around advice. Understand the full backstory of who is offering it and the specifics of their experience. What may be prudent guidance for you could actually represent their own journey taking a different fork in the road.

Feel free to use successful entrepreneurs as inspirations, but don’t blindly pattern your journey after an idealized version of their own. Extract the genuine wisdom that resonates with you, then carve your own path armed with that knowledge tailored to your specific context and goals.

#StartupAdvice

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💫 Automating Hourly Workforce Management: Legion Raises $50M

🤖 Legion, a workforce management startup, has raised $50 million led by Riverwood Capital. Founded by Sanish Mondkar, Legion aims to efficiently manage hourly and gig worker scheduling for businesses like Cinemark and Dollar General.

🤖 Its AI platform automates scheduling by factoring in-demand forecasts, labor rules, and employee preferences shared via Legion’s mobile app. The company has seen 55% revenue growth amidst the HR tech funding crunch.

🤖 However, Legion’s practices like retaining extensive employee personal data for seven years and charging fees for early earned wage access have raised privacy and ethical concerns around treating low-income workers fairly.

🐦 As it expands to Europe with the new funds, Legion must balance employer needs with responsible treatment of hourly staff to truly bridge gaps between companies and workers.

For startup founders building workforce management solutions, Legion’s traction shows the potential but also underscores the need to prioritize ethics and transparency when handling employee data and finances.

💬 Source

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🔵 Amazon Retains Cloud Dominance, but Microsoft Gains Ground

➡️ Amazon Web Services (AWS) continues to dominate the cloud infrastructure market with a 31% share in Q1 2024. However, Microsoft’s Azure is steadily closing the gap, reaching an all-time high of 25% market share. Together with Google (11%), the “Big Three” now control two-thirds of the rapidly growing $76-billion quarterly cloud market.

➡️ While AWS remains the leader, Microsoft’s progress highlights the intense competition in this lucrative space. For startup founders in the cloud ecosystem, this battle presents both opportunities and challenges. Aligning with the right provider and carving out a niche could be crucial, but the market’s growth also allows for disruptive innovations.

Keeping a close eye on the evolving cloud landscape and identifying emerging trends could unlock new avenues for innovative startups to thrive.

💬 Source #CapitalStats

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🔵 Reddit’s Post-IPO Growth: Lessons for User-Generated Content Startups

➡️ Reddit saw impressive growth in its first quarter as a public company. Revenues jumped to $243 million, up significantly year-over-year like other newly public social media firms. However, it posted a $575-million net loss, common for IPOs due to expenses like share-based compensation.

➡️ Reddit’s active user base also expanded notably, though precise comparisons are tricky since platforms define “active users” differently. The strong revenue trajectory aligns with predecessors like Meta and Twitter. But whether Reddit can reach profitability while retaining its distinctive community-driven culture remains an open question.

For startup founders, Reddit’s initial public financials highlight the opportunities and challenges of scaling a successful user-generated content platform into a sustainable business.

💬 Source #CapitalStats

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💡 The Secret to Startup Success: Caring About Your Users

💫 As a founder, one of the biggest challenges is truly understanding the problems you’re trying to solve and how to build a solution your customers will love. The fastest way to gain these insights? Genuinely caring about your early users.

📌 Too often, founders fall into the overconfident trap of thinking they have it all figured out from day one. But that approach is doomed to fail. The smart move is to start with the humility to realize you don’t actually know that much yet.

➡️ The companies that figure this out are the ones that deeply empathize with their customers from the beginning. Look at Airbnb — even when barely staying afloat, it took the time to help hosts improve listing photos, at their own expense. Why? Because they cared about providing value, knowing it would pay dividends.

— That’s exactly what happened when one grateful host offered to share a decade’s worth of invaluable insights about being a great host. All because the founders showed they genuinely cared about him as a person.

➡️ Another great example is Brex. Instead of impersonal surveys or consultants after their pivot, they simply talked to founders around them, asking about payment needs and understanding pain points in granular detail. That empathy allowed solving fringe cases big companies always ignore.

➡️ Twitch’s story is similar. For years, the founders had a tenuous relationship with users streaming copyrighted content. But when they finally cared—by getting on calls, learning streamers’ stories—everything changed. The company put itself in a position to meet needs such as increasing bitrates and shape the platform around helping streamers make a living.

❗️ In each case, the catalyst was connecting with real users on a human level—not hiring layers of PMs or data scientists, but getting on the ground and caring about the people. That engagement doesn’t require millions in funding. In fact, having too much money often creates detachment. What it does require is swallowing your ego, admitting you have more to learn, and viewing customers as more than numbers.

So, if you’re an early founder spinning your wheels, take a step back. Stop hypothesizing and go spend quality time with users instead. Care about them as people first. You may be amazed at the insights—and growth—that unlocks.

#StartupAdvice

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