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Collapse Your Talent Stack

And get access to a new creator marketplace idea I've been working on

Today at a glance:

  • Opportunity → Stripe for Athletes

  • Framework → Pirate Framework

  • Tool → SaaS Discount Marketplace

  • Trend → Creator Marketplaces

  • Quote → Collapse your talent stack

By the way…

 Opportunity: Stripe for Athletes

This is framed as Stripe for athletes but the rest of the tweet makes it clear the idea is bigger than payment processing. It sounds more like Copilot (or what Stir originally wanted to be) for athletes.

Ashton Eaton is a 2x Olympic gold medalist who has likely experienced this problem firsthand so he’d critically be able to win the trust of other athletes and kickstart usage of the tool.

🧠 Framework: AARRR Pirate Framework

No matter how simple you make it, your users are taking a journey through finding and using your product.

Investor Dave McClure developed the AARRR Framework (aka the pirate framework) to outline the questions you should be answering at each stage in that journey.

What I like about this framework is that each step feeds into the next and that it’s another straightforward way to use NPS.

🛠 Tool: Giraffe

You know how founder communities and accelerators typically offer discounts on SaaS tools to all members? Well, Giraffe offers that to everyone.

They’re a SaaS discount marketplace that offers deals on everything from AWS and Notion to more niche tools.

To join you pay an annual subscription, and each deal on the site has eligibility criteria.

📈 Trend: Creator Marketplace

Brands are increasingly realizing that traditional marketing channels are becoming less effective. Consumers want to buy from the creators they trust.

I’ve been working on one myself, it’s called Megaphone. It’s a platform that matches startups with the most reputable creators on Twitter and LinkedIn to engage and amplify their content.

Imagine the biggest creators you follow adding their massive social proof to all of your launches, and even just the various content that you as the founder (or your brand) creates.

I’ve already signed up creators with over 1.5 million aggregate followers in various niches. Take a look and drop your email to learn more.

💬 Quote: Collapse your talent stack

Ok, bear with me here because I know the screenshot looks like a giant wall of text.

Scott’s main point here is that startups should look to hire team members who can naturally act in multiple roles. Your designer is your product manager. He calls this “collapsing the stack” in the same way you would if a SaaS tool was able to manage multiple parts of your tech stack.

The best employees looking to work at a startup won’t blink at this. In fact, it’ll probably excite them and is a selling point for you to use, the extra ownership is likely something they feel is missing at their current job.

🔗 Houck’s Picks

  • Hacker News comments on the launch of now-unicorn startups (Link)

  • Valuations have started to increase after multiple down quarters (Link)

  • The 5 levels of product-market-fit (Link)

  • Zuckerberg’s potential master plan for Threads (Link)

  • The future of entrepreneurship may be multipreneurship (Link)

And here are some extra picks this week just for premium subscribers:

  • Lessons learned from founder-led sales to reach $1M in revenue (Link)

  • Conditional commitments from investors are not commitments (Link)

  • Why Paul Graham says startups have “a unique type of luck” (Link)

  • Why the “eureka” moment doesn’t ever need to happen (Link)

  • Having an “angel champion” can make or break your fundraise (Link)

How Can I Help?

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