Pushing Boulders Uphill

🔗 Houck’s Picks

My favorite finds of the week.

Fundraising

• Forum Ventures is investing in 20+ startups this summer with $100k and a hands-on accelerator to help you go to market, gain traction, and fundraise. (Link)*

• Nayrhit Bhattacharya on the “4-1-2-3” fundraising strategy (Link)

• Anshuman Sinha on what he asks founders instead of TAM (Link)

• Hesham Zreik on the things that make him bored as an investor (Link)

Growth

• Shaan Arora on shiny object syndrome (Link)

• Natia Kurdadze’s lazy SEO guide for founders (Link)

• Chris Tottman on what founders should know before scaling (Link)

ICYMI

• Austin Rief on Keith Yandell’s “how to work with me” guide (Link)

• Andrew Gazdecki on how important storytelling is as a founder (Link)

• Greg Isenberg shares 5 AI startup ideas (Link)

💡 Opportunity: Chrome Extensions

Over 65% of people use Google Chrome (or at least a Chromium browser) and I’d argue it’s considerably higher amongst younger cohorts.

But most Chrome Extensions suck (send me your recs if you disagree).

So if you’re looking for a new project and unsure where to start, consider just making an existing (bad) Chrome Extension 10x better:

In most cases a Chrome Extension won’t lead to a venture-scale business (though there are exceptions) but they’re quick to build and a good way to shake off the cobwebs while earning some revenue.

🧠 Framework: First Round Capital’s 4 P’s

Vanta, Retool, and Clay — three unicorns whose combined wisdom gives us this week’s framework.

If you took marketing in college you’ve probably heard of the 4 P’s:

• Product → what you sell

• Price → how much it costs

• Place → where you sell it

• Promotion → how you communicate with potential customers

Those form the basis of any coherent marketing strategy. But what about a coherent strategy on who the people are that you’re selling to?

Who’s going to see your product and have their first thought be “this was made for me”?

First Round Capital proposes a separate set of 4 P’s for this based on learnings from Vanta, Retool, Clay and more unicorn founders:

📈 Trend: Founders Are Putting Off Hiring

Last week I highlighted how we’re in a lull for software engineering job openings right now (though, contrary to what you may read elsewhere, I believe this is temporary — though the jobs may come back with a different name than “software engineer”).

And this week I’m flagging how AI is impacting even early stage hiring.

Check out this chart from Carta about how the number of days between when a founder incorporates their startup and makes their first hire has increased by 20-30% over the last ~5 years:

Notice specifically how this trend has accelerated considerably starting in 2023 (ChatGPT launched November 30th, 2022).

Founders are doing more with less for longer.

💬 Quote: Pushing Boulders Uphill

The worst feeling I’ve experienced in my career was when my first startup fell apart.

I had poured everything into it for over 2 years and that had resulted in millions in revenue, a recognizable and trustworthy brand, and a path to enduring success.

But it didn’t work out and we ended up folding it into our venture fund.

It was devastating and I had no plan for what to do next.

In those moments I thought about Sisyphus — a mythological Greek king who was punished for his hubris in the underworld by having to roll a boulder uphill only to have it roll back down to the bottom every time he got near the top.

Interestingly, the story doesn’t say what would have happened if Sisyphus had simply abandoned pushing the boulder at all.

But I can take a guess.

He was trapped in the underworld, which in Greek mythology is basically the worst place you can be.

So his choice was between being stuck in this awful place or trying to push the boulder once again.

As founders we face a similar choice when we fail (and we fail often).

Either we resolve ourselves to a life of missionless 9-5 work without sufficiently interesting upside, or we push the boulder back up the hill.

The difference, of course, is that sometimes we make it to the top.