How Bolt added billions to its valuation

Hiten's Pick

How Bolt Added Billions to Its Valuation

Bolt Founder & CEO Ryan Breslow shared that in the past 90 days, his company has closed more deals than ever before, adding billions to the company's valuation. The recent success isn't an accident—the Bolt team completely changed how they negotiate deals. Here are the ten tactics they use. This is mandatory reading for all startups.

Business

How the BAYC Took Over the NFT World in a Matter of Months

The Bored Ape Yacht Club launched with a collection of 10,000 randomly generated ape avatars at the end of April and sold at .08 ETH apiece. They are now selling for over 40 ETH—a sign that a lot can change in four months in the NFT world. I enjoyed this read about how BAYC has evolved and what is coming next for the collection.

How Things Have Changed in SaaS Over the Past Decade

Ravi Parikh co-founded product analytics company Heap in 2013, which grew to over 200 people and an eight-figure ARR before he left last year. This year, he co-founded Airplane, a developer platform for quickly creating internal tools. These are his observations of how building a SaaS startup has changed over time. A few of the ones that stood out to me: SaaS growth rates are faster, but getting initial traction is harder.

Product

How To Pick a North Star Metric

If you're having trouble picking a north star metric for your company, Shreyas Doshi suggests you start with the brain chemicals your product deals with and consider the associated metrics. This is a fascinating way to think about product success. Which one does your company's product target the most?

5 Mistakes To Avoid Before a Product Launch

A product release is an important milestone for any startup. It's rarely a seamless process, but there are things you can do to make it go more smoothly. A few that I've found particularly useful: define the right KPIs before you launch and prioritize your features. Check out this complete list of mistakes you should avoid.

Marketing & Sales

The Four Forces of Bad Content

One of the challenges with content marketing is that it often feels like just that—marketing. It's rare to read an article and not feel like someone is trying to sell you something. Nonetheless, it's often a necessary part of a company's marketing strategy. Here are some thoughts on how you can do it better.

How To Build a Faster-Moving Marketing Organization

Speed may be the most critical and overlooked characteristic of a winning marketing team. Unlike product teams, marketing organizations don't often optimize for speed—but it's just as essential for them to move quickly, break things, and learn. There is plenty of trial and error before finding what works, so it's best to test and iterate quickly. These six strategies will help you speed up your marketing team.

Growth

How To Hack Your Way to a Big Business Idea

One of the biggest myths in tech is that billion-dollar ideas form in a perfect lightbulb flash in a founder's brain. But serial founders will tell you that entrepreneurship is a more nuanced and iterative process. It takes months—sometimes even years—to get clear on your company's vision and establish product-market fit. Try working through these steps if you want to get clarity faster.

A Prioritization Framework for Product-Led Growth Companies

Based on interviews with over 50 people from product-led businesses, the ProductLed team created a five-stage framework to help PLG companies grow. It all starts with activation—when a user first experiences an "aha" moment—and continues through to scale. This framework is worth bookmarking.

Management

Leaders Whose Time Has Passed

When running a startup, you will inevitably face a situation where the business has grown past one of your leaders who helped you get through a critical stage. There are three types—The Bruiser, The Essential Early Angry Person, and The 0.5-to-1 Leader. Here's how you can effectively take action with each one.

Say Goodbye to Your Manager

The U.S. workforce is addicted to the concept of management. Corporate America exists around the idea that "if you work hard enough, one day you might become a manager, someone who makes rather than takes orders." Of course, this isn't the only management style, but it's certainly a dominant one. Interestingly, it's tough to execute "hall monitor" management remotely, forcing companies to rethink their corporate structures. The future of work is about to look very different.

Insight of the Week

Finding the Inspiration To Build Something New

One of my favorite tweet threads of the week came from Wes Kao. She notes that to build something new, you have to find new sources of inspiration. She helped Seth Godin build his altMBA program and pulled lessons from successful groups—everything from military structures to Harvard. There is a lot of wisdom to glean from her tweet thread.

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How Bolt added billions to its valuation