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The Founder Roundup
Restless with high standards
Restless with high standards
Being somewhat restless while having high standards is a dangerous combination.
If you're restless, you will always seek out new opportunities. You dig into problems, meet new people, and question the status quo.
High standards function as a gatekeeper. You can't chase every opportunity that crosses your path. Some opportunities aren't worth pursuing. High standards prevent you from jumping in blindly.
Serendipity happens when you increase your exposure to opportunities while maintaining a high degree of selectivity.
Welcome back to the last Founder Roundup of September! Fall is rapidly approaching and it will soon be chilly here in Chicago. A big welcome to our new subscribers!
Reminder: We're giving away a $50 gift card to the subscriber that refers the most friends by the end of the month. Adam Folsom of Beeso.io startup studio is currently in the lead with 4 referrals. You have until 11:59PM CST on Friday, September 30th, to dethrone him.
We had the pleasure of featuring two great founders last week. Check out their profiles below.
Weekly Wisdom
Build-Learn-Iterate. Trust the process. To deliver a successful product you need a successful process. That process needs to be reinforced with every product, tested at every launch, tweaked based on all learnings, and trusted with every new iteration.
Startup School
A big passion project of mine is to provide more resources to help startup employees understand their equity. Over the next few weeks, I will be dropping various articles on stock options, RSAs, RSUs, taxation, vesting, and other complicated topics.
I spent several months putting together a handbook on all things startup equity. I've made it available for free to the Startup Founder Daily community. Grab a copy here.
Is a business plan + prototype enough to land an investment?
We had Ryan (Sully) Solomon of WorkWeek on for Episode 3 of Backseat Startup.
A Reddit user asked whether a functioning prototype and business plan was enough to secure a $200k investment. Sully and I break down this question and give our thoughts.
Give the show a watch on YouTube and subscribe on Apple or Spotify here.
Founder Roundup
Pratham Doshi and Kyle Kingsberry of Metaphy Labs
Pratham Doshi (left) and Kyle Kingsberry (right), Co-Founders of Metaphy Labs
Meet the founders powering your web3 project. As a Computer Engineer with an obsession for problem-solving, Pratham has always been drawn to product management. He previously launched Worthi, a company that compensates users for sharing their data, which was later acquired by Datacy.
Through Worthi, he met Kyle Kingsberry. Kyle is an engineering student who’s been programming ever since elementary school. He has been in love with technology for as long as he can remember.
The Co-Founders' shared passion for entrepreneurship and compassion for founders led them to build a product studio focused on improving accessibility to web3. Metaphy Labs surrounds their clients' ideas with first-class engineers and product managers, delivering high-quality products quickly.
Metaphy Labs serves as an ‘Idea Smoke Test’ for companies, reviewing ideas to uncover pain points, feasibility, and profitability. Whatever you’re building in Web3, Pratham and Kyle want to brainstorm with you.
Head over to their website to learn more.
Janine Salame of Travel Creators
Meet the Founder reimagining the future of travel. As a South African born to Lebanese immigrants, travel has always been ingrained in Janine's entrepreneurial path. She has spent the last 20 years in the Travel Industry, working in global multinational businesses.
With her Co-Founder, Chanti Loraine-Grews, she set about reimagining the future of travel. Before COVID, travel was a bureaucratic, antiquated and fragmented industry, struggling to inspire the next generation of travelers.
Travel Creators is here to shake that up. Travel Creators is a travel marketplace empowering and enabling creators to monetize and inspire the next generation of travelers.
Rather than the "cookie cutter" trip suggestions of the past, their creators showcase an authentic and curated travel experience. In 11 short months, they have already quoted over $5 million in travel. They have also accumulated over 1500 users completely organically – zero customer acquisition costs.
Head over to their website to learn more.
When starting a newsletter, there are plenty of choices. But there’s only one publishing tool built to help you grow your publications as quickly and sustainably as possible.
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There's a reason why The Founder Roundup is growing over 60% month over month.
Community Corner
Looking for work? If you're startup-curious, but haven't taken the plunge yet, we'd love to help you find your next role. Provide us with some basic information here.
Who are we and what do we do? Read about our mission and check out our marketing portfolio here.
Calling all book nerds. We think every founder should read these 17 books.
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