ICYMI ⏮️

Last week I deep-dived Canva, the design giant that took on Abode and Microsoft by taking the complexity out of design.

14 years, 135M users, and a $40B valuation later Canva has become the most used design tool in the world.

Read it to see how Canva solved a big, painful problem by simplifying everything and creating value for its users. Plus 4 steps you can take to replicate Canva’s success.

Around the Community 🕺

I found this awesome newsletter and business, The VC Insider. The founder Nicolò is democratizing VC, giving you access to top-tier, vetted investments, such as SpaceX. Subscribe below to get these awesome deals into your inbox (including their current open deal for NexGen Cloud):

Four key components of an irresistible offer

One of my favorite people to learn from, G from Lemlist, breaks down how to create an irresistible offer as part of his B2B business series on YouTube. Here is my summary:

Don’t confuse a product/service and a price for an offer 🧰

Most people think they have offers - but they don’t.

They have a product or service with a price.

Some examples of offers include:

• Gym clothes with a lookbook on how to wear them, plus three training videos.

• 1-hour coaching session with 24-hour support and a WhatsApp group of all the members.

How to make your offer irresistible 🤑

4 key components:

1 - Specific Problem:

Problem needs to be big enough. 3 main categories for human needs: health, wealth, and status (including belonging). You should create an offer that appeals to one of these 3 needs.

Be obsessed with people in your industry - you need to know exactly what their most painful problems are if you are creating a solution to solve them.

2 - Secret Sauce:

You need to compete on more than just features and price - doesn’t build loyalty.

Your offer needs to be truly unique. People need to feel as if they can’t get your offer anywhere else. Your secret sauce should increase the perceived value of your offer.

This is often done through awesome branding (Apple), community (Strava), relationship building (your favorite coffee shop), and giving your customers tons of value (Lemlist).

3 - Pricing:

Understand your buyer first. It’s not always the case that being cheaper leads to more sales. Price is often related to perceived value.

4 - Reversible Risk:

This is an amplifier for the three above. This achieves two things, increases trust and reduces hesitation.

You want customers to feel they can try your product without the fear of losing money - e.g., free trials.

To reduce hesitation you need to make the way out as straightforward as possible - e.g., no questions asked money-back guarantee.

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

• Chenell from Growth in Reverse released a Growth Levers Library she’s compiled from over 55 deep dives into Creators - it’s awesome! (link)

• Host of the Business Buying podcast shares his biggest learnings (link)

• Simple AI prompt to use in your marketing (link)

• Why you should NOT sign an NDA with investors (link)

Founder Opportunities 🛎️

• Launch Accelerator: 7 startups are selected per cohort to go through a 15-week program. The ideal stage is for Pre Series A (although there are exceptions). The program has had over 30 cohorts and applications are currently open (link)

• Founder University: Turn your idea into a reality with this 12-week pre-accelerator program aimed at building your MVP and getting traction. The program offers direct investment opportunity to the top products and teams - with 50+ in the first 6 cohorts (link)

• Founders Inc: Investing the first check (up to $150k) into founders building emerging tech. The program is aimed at helping you transition from builder to founder (link)

• YC’s Startup School: Get the essential advice as a founder. This is a free program taught by YC Partners and industry leaders (such as Mark Zuckerberg) (link)

Tools of the week 🔨

• Taplio: The all-in-one tool for LinkedIn (I use it everyday!).

• TweetHunter: Grow a high-quality Twitter audience (same owner as Taplio - both bought by Lemlist).

• FireCut: Speed up your video editing with AI.

• Tona: Automate your competitor monitoring.

• Romo AI: The ultimate AI Assistant - all your AI tools in one place.

• Senja: Collect, manage, and share twice as many video and text testimonials

Cool startup jobs I found this week 🕵️

• OpenAI is hiring a Digital Success Manager

• Stripe is hiring a Program Manager - GTM Productivity

• Instacart is hiring a Marketing Manager, Product Marketing

• SeriesAI is hiring a Game Artist Lead

• Deel is hiring a Manager, Customer Success