Founder Fridays No. 77
Founder Fridays No. 77
Prepare for the Upturn -- Rugged Flexibility -- Framestorming
Happy Friday.
Before we jump into the briefing, I’m working on a new project with my friend (and fellow writer) Banks Benitez.
We’re making quality newsletter effortless. Quality newsletters are a powerful way to build influence, trust and ultimately drive revenue. But they are hard to do well and consistently. If you’ve tried, you understand.
So, we’re piloting a new service to design, write, and produce outstanding newsletters that grow your audience, influence and revenue. We’re your outsourced newsletter team.
We’re looking to work with a few companies for our pilot program. If you or your organization is interested in standing out in the inbox on a consistent basis, I'd love to connect. Click here to be a part of our pilot and I’ll follow up.
We’re specifically interested in working with companies that have a newsletter, but struggle to maintain the level of consistency and quality needed to grow their audience and build their brand with authentic content.
Prepare for the Upturn
Prepare for the upturn, get a step ahead and adopt the play-to-dominate mindset. That advantage of being a few months early can compound over weeks and months into a permanent advantage. 1) Get Capitalized. Raise capital before an upturn when it is easier and you can get better terms, so you are ahead of competitors when the market improves. Being well-capitalized early allows you to dominate when positive conditions return. 2) Find the Underpriced Channels. Look for underpriced marketing channels in the downturn to get lower customer acquisition cost (CAC) and make the most of reduced competition. 3) Hire Decathletes. Hire versatile "decathlete" employees who can excel across multiple roles rather than specialists, as artificial intelligence (AI) enables individuals to expand their capabilities into new areas with little training. Seek out supertalent, who are disillusioned at dried-out, overfunded companies to build a lean, multi-skilled team that can replace entire departments. NFX (7 minutes)
Rugged Flexibility
Rugged flexibility acknowledges that skillfully working with transformation requires strength and agency (ruggedness). You’ll also let go of resistance, rigidity and over-controlling (flexibility). After disruption, there is no going back. We must accept this and carry forward with useful lessons while staying true to core values. Entrepreneurship contains cycles of change and disruption. If you embrace rugged flexibility, you could emerge stronger each time. With each cycle of order, disorder and reorder, you gain confidence to navigate uncertainty. Rugged flexibility teaches us to flexibly apply our ruggedness — our skills and resources — to times of transformation, becoming wiser and more ready for the next challenge. It develops the mindset to skillfully work with change rather than resist it. Every (7 minutes)
Framestorming
The T-Mobile team struggled because they focused on the wrong problems: trying to copy competitors. Only when they were forced to re-frame their problem were they able to find new solutions that led to breakthrough success. Entrepreneur Tina Seelig suggests "framestorming" — questioning assumptions and reframing the problem before brainstorming solutions. This process helped T-Mobile redefine their focus and find better paths to success. Always critically examine your framing of problems, as the right framing leads to better solutions. Frontera Brands (11 minutes)
Founder FAQ: How many shares should my option pool have?
A typical option pool size at incorporation ranges between 10% and 20%. Based on our experience setting up option pools over the last 15 years, 99% of startups fall within this range. Also within this range, the size of the pool should be based on your hiring plan. You should have a rough sense of: (1) how many hires you’ll make, and (2) how much equity you plan to offer each hire between incorporation and your first round of equity financing. The size of the pool may affect the size of your employee equity awards. Often, an equity offer is communicated to a prospective hire as a percentage (though we don’t recommend this). There are a number of ways to calculate percentages in a startup, such as authorized, outstanding or fully diluted. If you are issuing shares based on the fully diluted calculation, you may end up giving overly generous equity awards. Westaway (5 minutes)
Startup Funding Guides
I’ve put together a series of guides to equip founders to excel at fundraising. These guides break down the deal term by term and give you negotiation tips so that you can speak to investors with confidence.
Convertible Note: Guide / Video
An Innovative Law Firm?
Being listed among Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies is an honor for our law firm, yet we believe innovation matters if it actually produces better outcomes for startups. Here’s how we’ve innovated to better serve startups:
Clear Pricing. Traditional billable hours can lead to misaligned objectives and unexpected fees. We've replaced this with straightforward, flat-rate pricing.
General Counsel. Most entrepreneurs want a trusted legal partner, but they hate surprise legal bills. At Westaway, we take care of your startup’s legal needs for a fixed, monthly fee so you can control your costs and focus on scaling your business.
Automation and AI. We've streamlined our operations through automation and AI (where appropriate), ensuring efficient, high-caliber results.
If you’re an innovative startup looking for an innovative law firm, let’s talk.
Post of the Week
