Dear Reader,
Every week, as we share the newsletter, we are amazed at the pace of change in the early stage ecosystem. We live in a strange world: a continuing war, weakened supply chains with rising inflation, rate hikes, dour investor sentiment and yet record levels of dry powder available for funding! We could all do with some good reads! 😌
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Heads Up For Tails: Building a Brand in an Unbranded Industry
A marketing case study with good pointers on developing a brand in an organized market:
HUFT started creating content in response to the most common queries from pet parents: From ‘How to deal with fleas and ticks’ to ‘Can my dog eat peanuts?’ – the brand produces a wide range of non-sales focused content
“We do very few ads, but very high segmenting …we’re against lazy marketing and cookie pollution.”
Find 100 people who are passionate about the problem you’re trying to solve
A detailed read on basic questions with examples from companies like Vanta, Flexport, Rec Room, amongst others:
Don’t build a full product until you’re feeling real pull from the market.
Figure out who you can sell to most easily, and start there. Market analysis can come later.
If it feels like you’re pulling teeth to find the pain point, you haven’t found a problem worth solving. Inbound demand is a strong signal you have product-market fit.
Find clever ways to reach that audience. Be willing to do things that don’t scale in the early days, but look for non-linear ways to scale as you go.
Reality check
https://www.malpaniventures.com/blog-post/reality-check
We round off this week’s reads with some of our thoughts on navigating the funding winter. Inputs/ critique is welcome
Image of the week:
Tomaz Tunguz shared this graph to explain state of VC funding over the last decade. Fair to say we are in the 4th Quadrant vs the 1st in 2022!