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Founder Weekly

Welcome to issue 597 of Founder Weekly. We have a packed issue this week. Enjoy it!

General

Does Your Startup Need To Be In San Francisco?
Should you and your startup live in San Francisco? Y Combinator Partners, Michael Seibel and Dalton Caldwell, debate their different opinions on whether startups are more likely to succeed in the Golden City or elsewhere. Where do they find common ground? Watch to find out.

Bootstrapping to €600k MRR and getting killed by Shopify. The story of Checkout X.
The article narrates the journey of Checkout X, a startup that achieved significant monthly recurring revenue (MRR) growth to $600k but ultimately faced a setback due to Shopify's actions, leading to its demise. It highlights the challenges and lessons learned in the process of building a successful business in the e-commerce space.

The Next Trillion Dollar Marketplace Will Put SKUs on Services
Why service marketplaces aren’t scaling and how they might get unstuck.

7 Lessons Growing a SaaS to $50K MRR
The video post shares seven valuable lessons learned from growing a bootstrapped Software as a Service (SaaS) company to $50,000 in Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR). It provides practical advice and insights for entrepreneurs looking to scale their SaaS businesses without external funding.

In command
Being “in control” is impossible, perhaps not even desirable. Being “in command” is ideal: honest, introspective, agile, aware, and proactive.

How to Build a Successful Consumer Subscription Business
And why it’s so hard.

Large language models, explained with a minimum of math and jargon
Want to really understand how large language models work? Here’s a gentle primer.

Marketing, Sales and PR

AI for Sales: A New Era for Selling
Learn about the use of artificial intelligence in sales, how and why sales teams are adopting AI, and the outcomes they are seeing.

A Breakdown of LinkedIn’s AI Assisted Growth Loop
In March, LinkedIn launched an AI assisted growth loop. Fareed Mosavat and I recorded a convo where we broke it down step by step. We were shocked when we looked up the stats. From March to June it went from generating 0 to 1M uniques per month according to Ahrefs and is on one of the steepest growth curves we’ve ever seen for a content loop.

4 Tips to Monetize APIs With Usage-Based Pricing
Implementing usage-based pricing when your product is an API is crucial to get right. Moesif's CEO Derric Gilling shares how to monetize APIs appropriately via value, invoicing times, and billing methodology.

The Six Ps of lean product—and how to implement them effectively
Kim Caldbeck, operating advisor at Bessemer, distills her favorite business playbook when leading global marketing teams, including the five basic steps she’d repeat again after 5x-ing revenue at Coursera.

AI for AEs: 5 ChatGPT Prompts to Supercharge Your Sales
This step-by-step guide on ChatGPT for account executives includes prompts you can copy right now to crush quota and save time.

Money and Finance

The seed stage is holding steady amid VC’s ups and downs
In terms of median valuation and round size, the seed stage has shown far less volatility than any other stage of the startup fundraising lifecycle.

What the New Relic Sale Means for SaaS
This acquisition is significant because it shows the continued momentum in the technology buyout space and could spur more strategic M&A activity in the future.

Tips, Tools and Services

How to Scale Yourself Down — Not Up — as a Leader
After a four-decade career of toggling back and forth between big and small, Lightspark SVP of Engineering James Everingham shares his playbook for scaling down your leadership as you go from an org of hundreds or thousands to a handful of direct reports.

How to Pivot the Right Way
We all love a good startup pivot, right? I know the word is overused, but the concept is important.

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