Tbh, titles are still important 🙊 (Startup Watching #251)

By Andrew Askins • Issue #251 • View online

Happy Friday Watchers!

Revue (the software I use to send the newsletter you’re reading right now) just released an overhaul of their analytics suite.

It includes a new measurement - engagement.

They measure engagement based on how often readers have opened your email over the last 10 emails.

I’ve been toying with whether to switch off of Revue for a while, but this is really exciting. To me, this is one of the best things they’ve ever done to help me understand and improve my newsletter.

I’ve included a screenshot of the Startup Watching numbers below in case your curious. The number of subscribers with no engagement hurts my soul a little bit, but I love seeing that we have 1733 engaged readers.

Thanks for opening and engaging!

Cheers from Charleston

Andrew

FEATURED

How to start a blog that changes your life

There are a lot of blog posts about starting blogs (#meta), but I love this piece from Nat Eliason for a couple reasons.

It’s no bullshit. He advises against growth hacks, and recommends you start small with realistic expectations.
It’s totally focused on a personal blog. This is all about blogging for fulfillment and one day, maybe, a little bit of cash. But it’s not about being a full-time blogger, or blogging to support a business.

I still don’t publish as consistently as I would like on my personal site, but this has me excited to get back to it.

www.nateliason.com • Share

PRODUCT

Is HEY email worth it?

Another great case study from the Growth.design guys of HEY’s onboarding. I signed up for HEY relatively early on, and then never went back after setting it up. I think the problems they identify here are part of the reason why.

growth.design • Share

Newsletter audience engagement

I just found out Revue has their own newsletter, which makes a ton of sense. It’s a great way to dogfood their product. The latest issue was a neat look at announcing a product feature (the engagement insights I talked about in the intro) and they share their own numbers! Cool!

www.getrevue.co • Share

WORK

Questions to ask a potential employer in interviews

Great list of questions from Julia Evans to ask in your next job interview. The first few are engineering focused, but most are around business, management, and culture. As someone interviewing candidates right now, this gave me some ideas for questions to ask. I also put a lot of emphasis in an interview on the quality of questions a candidate asks me.

jvns.ca • Share

This is a great list of what NOT to do. Brb, gotta remove “We don’t work with assholes” from our website. I SO agree about titles. As long as other companies care about them, they matter for your employees’ long term career success.

Jennifer Kim

@jenistyping

People Ops/Org practices that sound good in theory but terrible in practice:

- no titles
- no managers
- unlimited PTO

what else?

12:52 AM - 16 Jul 2020

BIZNESS

How to write an effective follow-up

Going to be referring back to this piece tomorrow when I follow up with a sales lead I talked to last week. This is a great quick read.

medium.com • Share

The HubSpot customer code

I agree with so much of this presentation.

Do the right thing even when it’s hard.
Treat me like a person, not a persona.
Earn my attention, don’t steal it.

But I don’t love making companies customer first. It makes it too easy to justify overworking your team or putting them in a shitty situation. I’m not sure team first is the solution either, really you have to balance the two constantly.

www.hubspot.com • Share

FUN

Meet Julian Bass, the VFX star who won over Hollywood

This is a super fun story about a self taught special effects creator who went viral on twitter. Watch the clips from Tiktok of his edits, they’re incredible. He jokingly asked Twitter to hook him up with Disney, and then a few hours later got a response from executive chairman Bob Iger!

www.hollywoodreporter.com • Share

P.S.

We’re hiring again at Krit! We’re looking for a creative junior designer to join the team. I’m really excited because this is our first junior role and the first addition to our design team beyond my partner Austin. IMO Austin is one of the most talented UI designers in the Southeast, and this is an awesome opportunity to learn from him and grow with us.

This might also be our most viral job post yet.

Andrew

@AndrewAskins

Psssst 👋 we’re looking for a creative, user-focused junior designer to join our growing team at Krit!!

💸 Salary is $65,000 per year

🌴Remote team with a 🔍 transparent and 💜 supportive culture

Please RT or share with a friend

https://t.co/q3MPKWzLbi

4:49 PM - 13 Jul 2020

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By Andrew Askins

Curated knowledge, inspiration and background stories from the startup world. Delivered to your inbox every Thursday or Friday 📬 | Find me @andrewaskins.

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Tbh, titles are still important 🙊 (Startup Watching #251)

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