Things I’m thinking about right now

Vacation is going well! So far I have split my time between Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Tokyo, and have managed to eat way too much. Food is my love language and connects me to the places I travel.

You might be wondering though why I am still writing this newsletter while on break. Even though I enjoy the time off to rest and recover, I cannot turn off my brain. I see things, they trigger ideas, and then I scribble them down in my notes app. Then I am cursed to think about them as I sleep.

When I visit various startup ecosystems, I get to hear firsthand what works and does not work for the founders building startups in their cities. Each region has their own unique challenges, but there are also patterns that start to emerge. Once you have talked to enough startups, you can almost predict what they will say.

On the plus side, a lot of startups got the message about profitability versus pure growth. Startups still need to grow, but it is more important to do so in a way that is frugal, sustainable, and leads to revenue. This has helped startups to adapt to a new fundraising environment with valuations more in line with pre-2019 and deals taking longer to close.

This has also led to greater emphasis on affordable Go-To Market (GTM). The days of freely spending on paid media and building large SDR teams has fallen out of favor. Now founders are seeking growth in ways that are low-cost and repeatable while generating results.

The last thing that I am hearing a lot of are founders hunting for their “edge”. Startups are a slog for months, and in some cases years, where progress seems unachievable. This is the what I hear when Generative AI comes up in the conversation with startups that are not AI-first. Startups that launched prior to ChatGPT are now scrambling to stay ahead in an AI era.

Beyond the big themes though, there are also many common struggles that startups are facing. The knowledge Is out there to help founders navigate the uncertainty, but the information is either stale or not broadly accessible. Even this newsletter is only a tiny ripple serving the ocean of needs that startups have across the globe.

This is where you come in! Many of you reading are some of the most amazing and accomplished folks in the startup world. Collectively your heads are a Wikipedia plus Stack Overflow plus Reddit of insights, experiences, and practical knowledge around your particular domain. I had a few offer their knowledge here, for example Peter Bell writing about the startup CTO journey or Shannon Burch on building the customer call centers for startups.

Below are some topics that surfaced in my conversations with startup founders. While I would love to dive into each of them, I feel the better strategy would be to tap into your wisdom to see how you help startups with their questions. Here is the list below:

• How to leverage PR and earned media for awareness

• The process of building sales and marketing teams

• Building and scaling engineering teams

• Hiring and retaining talent with few resources

• Fostering positive relationship between product and engineering

• Managing startup financials and when to hire a CFO

• Pitfalls in launching products for regulated industries

• Building low-cost and scalable GTM engine

• Managing globally distributed teams

• Tapping into and managing outsourcing effectively

• Incorporating Generative AI into startup

• Scaling startups regionally and globally

• Fighting the emotional and mental strain of startups

Do any of these topics spark your interest? Are there other topics that you think would be interesting for your fellow startup founders? Please let me know and I can then help walk you through the process of publishing in this newsletter. Best way to reach me is [email protected] and reference this post.

That is it for me this week, I need to carve out more time for some conveyor belt sushi, pork tonkatsu, and bowls of unagi rice. Chat next week!

Mark