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Founder Weekly

Welcome to issue 558 of Founder Weekly. Let's get straight to the links this week.

General

The AI Business Defensibility Problem
How possible is it really to build a business in the new AI space?

Why a Failed Startup Might Be Good for Your Career After All
Go ahead and launch that venture. Even if it fails, the experience you gain will likely earn you a job that's more senior than those of your peers, says research by Paul Gompers.

Art Made by AI: The New Tech Powering The Creator Economy
AI innovation is making it simple for anyone to be a creative. Read how art made by AI is enabling the creator economy.

Marketing, Sales and PR

How to Measure “Hard-to-Measure” Marketing Channels
I’ve ranted endlessly about how marketing leaders refuse to invest in hard-to-measure marketing channels like PR, media, native social, events, many types of content, and word-of-mouth. But, never stepped up and made clear how to use metrics, imperfect though they may be, to turn impossible-to-measure into difficult, but possible. Sadly, I’ve never seen a high-quality offering to reliably point-to, either. So, let’s talk about measuring the hard-to-measure.

How the largest open source companies got their first 1k community members
A deep dive into how Hashicorp, Confluent, Databricks, and CockroachDB grew their communities in the early days.

How Similarweb Grew To $190M Revenue Run Rate And Beyond
Companies looking to create valuable user journeys guided by product-led growth can look to Similarweb's success with reverse trials.

You Can’t Fix a CAC Payback Period
An Operator vs. Investor Perspective on SaaS Metrics.

Money and Finance

Everything You Need to Know About Market Sizing
I consistently see founders get market size wrong in the early stage decks. At the same time, VCs often pass if they feel that the market is too small. Here is everything you ever needed to know about market sizing.

Should You Raise Money in the Next 12 Months? A Bull/Bear Valuation Calculator
Find out how much your company will be worth in the next 12 months with our free startup valuation calculator!

Startups, Don’t Pin Your Hopes on VC Dry Powder
The startup world is currently debating when venture capital investing will return to its pre-2022 heights. The bullish case is that VCs have lots of “dry powder” — capital that’s already been committed. That money will get invested one way or another, the thinking goes. But that’s not the whole story. In fact, VCs may slow their pace of investing and may focus on helping the companies they’ve already backed, making fundraising harder for newer startups. For that reason, startups should reconsider their fundraising strategy and some should consider aiming for profitability sooner than they’d planned.

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