Copy these three steps to go from idea to $1M+ 🚀

As part of Thursday’s deep dive of Stan (link to the deep dive), I came across this video from one of the co-founders, John.

It’s a super practical video breaking down how to start your own business.

Here’s my summary of the video:

Idea: How to come up with a great startup idea 💡

Step 1: Define a problem that you truly care about and that is large and painful enough for your potential customers to pay for.

Step 2: Land your first few customers with the “dual track method”. I.e., figuring out your BIG idea while also landing your first customers.

• Do this by reaching out to people facing the problem you’re trying to solve. Ask them tons of questions, including what problems would they pay to have solved.

• Then build a solution for those problems, and you have a pool of customers ready to pay for your product.

Create: How to turn an idea into a product people pay for 💵 

Step 1: Service-ify your idea by offering it as a once-off manual service before building it out.

Step 2: Test your idea through selling prototypes or pre-orders.

Step 3: Just build it. No matter how scrappy it is.

• First-time founders often over-do the number of features at launch.

• Ship just your core differentiating feature. This is your MVP (Minimum Viable Product).

Step 4: Find the initial users who love your product and build on why they love it.

• Iterate your idea from there to deeply serve your users’ problems.

Scale: How to go from first customers to $1M+ in revenue 📈

Step 1: Find your scalable distribution channel.

• Test different marketing and sales channels to find what works for your brand - e.g., PayPal scaled using referral bonuses and Shein scaled using influencers.

• They key question to ask yourself here is: “Where are my customers disproportionately hanging out?”

• Then go after them wherever that answer is.

Videos or articles to help your startup go from Zero to One 📽️

• YC discuss whether to bootstrap or raise venture capital (link)

• Marc Andreessen on breakthrough ideas and entrepreneurship (link)

• 23 tested tips for recurring and subscription businesses (link)

• Techstars’ tactics to build traction for early-stage startups (link)

Founder Opportunities 🛎️

• StrictlyVC LA Cocktail Party 29 Feb: Exclusive insider content from within the VC scene. StrictlyVC offers an intimate setting where leading entrepreneurs and VCs can meet and network. Previous events included interviews with Sam Altman (Open AI) and Marc Andreessen (Andreessen Horowitz). Link to purchase your ticket.

• Y Combinator (YC) S24: Taking place from Jul-Sep 2024 in San Francisco, the world’s preeminent startup accelerator, YC, is now accepting applications to their Summer 2024 batch. Some of their past investments include Stripe, Twitch, Airbnb, Reddit, and Zapier. The deadline to apply is 22 Apr. Link to apply.

• Visa Accelerator Program - Africa: African fintech founder (or with commitment to expand to Africa), from Seed to Series A, with at least an MVP are eligible to apply to one of Africa’s leading accelerators. Connecting Africa's brightest minds with experienced mentors, cutting-edge technology, and unparalleled investment opportunities. The deadline to apply is 29 Feb. Link to apply.

• Google for Startups Accelerator: Brazil AI: A three-month (Apr-Jul 2024) accelerator program for high-potential AI First startups based in Brazil helps Growth-stage startups innovate and scale up by sharing Google’s knowledge of building successful companies. Google offers this opportunity EQUITY FREE. The deadline to apply is 03 Mar. Link to apply.

• Norrsken Accelerator 2024: Norrsken is now accepting applications for early stage founders with a vision for a better future to join their 2024 cohort, taking place in Stockholm, Sweden from Jul-Sep 2024. Norrsken prioritises investing in companies with the potential to grow into impact unicorns, positively impacting 1 billion lives across the globe. Link to apply.

Tools of the week 🔨

• Persuva: Specialised AI to create high-converting ads.

• Notion: Run your life and business with Notion. Built to make collaborating and organizing easier and more flexible, so you can ship faster (Nothing new here, but considering how much I use Notion, it would be wrong to not include it in my first Tools of the week).

• Figma to Replit: Plugin to turn static designs into responsive React components.

• ThinkSmarterWithAI: Collection of GPTs to make better decisions.

• Postpace: Enables video teams to streamline creation and enhance collaboration and feedback.

Cool startup jobs I found this week 🕵️

• Terra is hiring a Growth Engineer

• Salient is hiring Founding Engineer

• FlutterFlow is hiring a Software Engineer for their core platform

• Figma is hiring a Product Manager, Community

• Stripe is hiring someone for Demand Generation, EMEA

Who raised money last week 💰

Abridge - $150M - Series C

Abridge, a startup building AI-powered clinical documentation tools, has raised $150 million in a Series C round as more investors seek exposure to specific generative AI applications. The funding round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Redpoint Ventures, and valued Abridge at ~$850M. A big jump from its $200M valuation just four months ago.

Qloo 2 - $25M - Series C

Qloo, New York-based startup, raised $25M to predict your favorite movies, TV shows, and other entertainment tastes. Qloo uses AI to understand nuanced taste and culture patterns, what the founder calls “taste knowledge”. Founded in 2012 by Alex Elias and Jay Alger, Qloo seeks to uncover consumer behaviors and trends across entertainment, fashion, travel, sports, food and other segments.

Empowerly - $15M - Series B

Empowerly, an edtech startup focused on college counselling and career guidance services has raised $15M, led by Conductive Ventures. This new capital is intended to grow the startups services, building its first mobile app and other AI powered products.

Planity - $48M - Series C

Planity, a French startup, has taken advantage of France’s love affair with hair salons to launch a SaaS product serving the French beauty industry. With more than 40,000 small businesses relying on Planity for appointment booking and more. Recently raising $48M, led by InfraVia Capital Partners.

Frontier Medicines - $80M - Series C

Frontier Medicines, a startup researching therapies against previously undruggable disease-causing proteins, has raised $80M to continue its groundbreaking scientific approaches in chemoproteomics, covalent drug discovery, and machine learning to develop medicines - starting with anti-cancer therapies.