Startup Resources - 🛠 Follow that trend

Line Icons

Tired of all the other icons out there? Check this set of 2000+ line icons - 500 of them are free. 

Affordable and a nice style.

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Let's Enhance - image upscale and enhancement

I just tried out this tool to upscale a small image (of me) and it worked really well. Can only do 4x on the free tier but the quality was exceptional compared to increasing it with my usual graphics software (Pixelmator).

If you need to blow up images and retain quality, take a look at this. Can do a few for free to see what it's like. Then pay as you need or get a monthly subscription.

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Heeed - Get actionable feedback on your landing page

[I messed up last week and put the wrong link in for Heeed. Sorry Kieran. So, including it again...]

If you're looking for a quick crowd sourced feedback of your landing page, check out this new community. 

Post your page and get some pointers. The maker, Kieran Parker, recently gave me some great tips on my landing page at Podboxer.

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Causal - A clearer way to work with numbers

Modeling data in a spreadsheet can be time consuming and incredibly boring (said by a reformed Excel geek). It's especially no fun if you don't use spreadsheets very often.

If that's you, I think Causal might be worth taking a look at. Even for veteran Excel and Sheets users. 

For example, it's very fast to set up a financial forecast with charts. And then easily change inputs to look at different scenarios.

The immediate output is visually very good and it's shareable. 

There are a handful of templates to play with, including a SaaS model, ecommerce model and Startup runway. 

You can also connect to various different data sources - Zapier, Shopify, Google Analytics, Sheets, etc.

(Sorry, this might not be for you - it's my financial analyst background coming out)

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🏆 Sponsor

Validating an idea? Here's 12 podcasts to help you get it right

You've got a great idea for a business but how do you validate it to give yourself the best chance of success?

Easy - you learn from experts like Hiten Shah, Rob Fitzpatrick, Bram Kanstein, Sahil Lavingia and more in these awesome podcasts.

→ Get this

🤓 Articles

How to market your SaaS features for maximum impact and conversions

On your landing page, don't list out the features of your product (or service - this article is not only relevant for SaaS).

People don't care about features alone. They care about the benefits. They care about the time saving or the money made or all the new leads etc etc

Put yourself in your customer's shoes and talk about how your product is going to help them.

Great article about features and benefits.

→ Read this

Do Things That Don't Scale

"A crowdsourced collection of unscalable startup hacks and stories"

Really cool list of some of the manual ways well known businesses got up and running. Easy to forget these guys didn't always have perfect scaleable systems and huge budgets for marketing spend.

→ Read this

7 Retail Brands That Have Mastered Facebook Ads – and How You Can Copy Them

Big article that breaks down the way retail brands are using Facebook and advice on how you can use their techniques for yourself.

I'd recommend taking a look at this even if you're not selling ecommerce or doing ads. It's good to understand how you can use images and text to get someone to take action. Useful in any setting.

→ Read this

📢 Classifieds

🎧 Podcast

How to Make Millions by Writing Online with Sam Parr of The Hustle

Sam Parr joins Courtland for a catch up on what's happening with The Hustle during the pandemic. And they talk about his latest newsletter project, Trends, which is on track to hit 8 figures.

Plenty of practical advice in this one - growth, media business models, how to launch a profitable newsletter and improving copywriting skills.

If newsletters are your thing, you have to listen to this.

→ Listen to this

📰 Newsletter

Trends.vc

I am loving this newsletter from Dru Riley 🚀

Each week he takes a growing market, does a ton of research and presents it in a bullet format - what the problem is, the solution, the players, predictions, opportunities etc.

All backed up with links to extra resources if you want go even deeper.

Why do I love it?

Dru's picked some great trends in the first 14 issues and he's condensed hours of research into something that's easy to skim through. Check out the archive (at the foot of the page).

Why subscribe?

Inspiration for new ideas, either to start, or to pivot (eg if you host a podcast, the issue about paid podcast memberships could spark a new business model for you)

And learn about different ways people and businesses make money.

→ Get this

😢 The awkward end bit