Saba Says | Startups, Growth & Marketing: Recent Episodes
Saba Karim
Lessons for founders on creating, pitching, launching, growing and funding startups.
The podcast has multiple themes: – Marketing Tidbits – Startup Founder Lessons – Pitching Advice – Twitter Tricks – All About Clubhouse – Clubhouse Recordings
Tweet me twitter.com/sabakarimm or reach out via sabakarim.com/contact
Please pardon the audio quality as it was recorded live on Twitter Spaces.
This is a conversation between myself, Saba Karim, and Adam Soccolich (twitter.com/BestLiveAudio) on growth and marketing. At first, we riff on what marketing channels we like the best, how to reach out to people - and then bring up founders from the audience to tell us about their current growth plans as we offer them ideas on how to get their next customers.
On this episode:
- Three things to avoid when reaching out for help
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And how to craft the perfect email:
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Connection
- Identification
- Admiration
- Question
- Introduction
- Reiteration
- Appreciation:
Explaining what you do now is relatively easy. Most people also know what their grand vision. Listen to this to get better at connecting the dots.
Ali Tamaseb recently wrote Super Founders, a book thatuses a data-driven approach to understand what really differentiates billion-dollar startups from the rest—revealing that nearly everything we thought was true about them is false.
Ali spent thousands of hours manually amassing what may be the largest dataset ever collected on startups, comparing billion-dollar startups with those that failed to become one—30,000 data points on nearly every factor: number of competitors, market size, the founder’s age, his or her university’s ranking, quality of investors, fundraising time, and many, many more.
A discussion on ideation, validation and passion – with Andrew Hutton, CEO and Co-founder of Day One, and Heather Hartnett, CEO and Founding Partner of Human Ventures.
Naval gets asked questions from the audience and covers an array of topics like: Happiness and life, Curiosity and education, Life's most important decisions, Bitcoin, Ethereum, DeFi, blockchain, decentralized systems, NFT's, Building communities, social media, and media, Investing in Clubhouse, Work, leisure and entertainment, Simulations, Pineapples on pizza, and much more.
Read the full recap here: https://www.sabakarim.com/blog/2021/4/27/recap-of-naval-ravikant-on-clubhouse
clearpitch42.com INTRO [__________], is my Xth startup. I have [_____] co-founders and/or [_____] people on the team. The HQ is in [__________], and we were founded [_____] months ago.
OVERVIEW We’re focused on [____________________] (target audience), that helps/solves [____________________] (problem), by offering a [____________________] (solution).
CLOSING To date, we’ve had [____________________] (traction) ie. revenue > funds raised > users > PoC’s > LOI’s > signups > surveys
My ask is [____________________].
*SITUATIONAL If you have time left or if you think it’s very relevant, two common additions are: We are different/better than [__________] because of [__________] (competition)
The time is now because [__________] (market). Note: If you’re in the early-stages of building and don’t have any traction, replace with:
My past experience/expertise is in [__________] which is why we’ll win. (relation)
CORE
Lean Canvas - Business Plan – leanstack.com/leancanvas. Pitch-Deck - Template Guide – sabakarim.com/pitchdeck. Crunchbase - Company Insights Platform – crunchbase.com. FounderSuite – Investor CRM – foundersuite.com. Paperstreet - Investor Updates – paperstreet.vc.
EXTRAS
Investor pipeline workshop – toolkit.techstars.com/build-your-investor-pipeline. Venture Deals – venturedeals.com. SAFE Notes – upcounsel.com/safe-notes. FAST Agreements – fi.co/fast. Carta – carta.com.
Free your mind from worries. You’ve all heard the saying. Time block to do things. Surround yourself with mentors. Say thank you. If you’re not having fun, stop.
- Exit strategy
- Trillion dollar market
- Company valuation
- We don’t have any competition
- We know everything
- The first company that buys into our platform will dominate their industry
- We are going to be the next “Facebook”
- This is revolutionary
- We plan to be the Theranos of X industry
- Not telling, because the best founders know what to leave out.
Don't just promote. Also:
- educate
- inspire
- connect
- provide insight
- entertain
- show you're human
- throwback
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engage
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one more type of post that made me go viral over the weekend.
You can't just create an event, tweet it out and expect people to come. You've gotta go through the paces and make as many touch-points as you can.
When someone gives you a hand, you have to show gratitude. Every. Single. Time. Whether it’s some advice, an introduction to someone else, or giving the best gesture they can, of using your creation (ie. your product), you’ve got to appreciate it. As a startup, you’re effectively saying I want you to trust me, someone you may not have ever met, with solving your problem. And so when they do it, you owe it to them for giving it a shot.
In my opinion, the number one growth marketing book of all time. Listen to the quick review and then go ahead and order online.
The best marketing is a good product - don’t overthink, over analyze and try to over optimize your marketing. Sometimes you just need to launch when the timing feels right and the iron is hot.
Marketing is a three dimensional function. Certainly more than just running ads, handing out flyers or doing cold outbound emails.
On this episode I am going to cover one of the core areas of market research - which is customer interviews. Because, before you can do marketing execution, you need to know who the customer is, and then understand how they speak about the problem.
A founder called me the other day and asked me "how can I best spend $500 to get myself customers?". In providing him my solutions, I realized a lot of the things you can do actually won't even cost you anything. So, here they are - alongside some things to avoid.
For your startup messaging, your user or buyer is the #HERO in the narrative – not you.
What I mean by this is that when you’re launching a product, service, startup, business, anything, really.
You have to ensure the narrative is about the end-audience.
Don't just reply "ME", take your time to show enthusiasm, interest, availability, your expertise and make it easier for them to reach out to you.
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You have to do research to find out the WHO
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Plan and strategize to figure out best HOW
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Then execute to motivate the YES
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Check the data, figure out WHAT happened
- Why are you building this?
- Who is your target audience?
- Have you spoken to some people in your target audience? Do they say they need this? How many of them?
- When do you launch? What else will it do?
- Who are your competitors? Why are you better?
- Who’s working on this with you? What else have they built?
Good mailing lists are like face-to-face conversations. Don't send your users or leads crap they don't want.
- Start with an interesting hook/fact
- Have a nice design
- Have a different deck for different audiences
- Make me laugh
- Make it less than 15 slides
- Make it easy to access
What is the problem you are solving? Talk about the team Solution/demo Vision Traction Projections Business Model Market Opportunity More on the team Go to market strategy / Marketing The ask
Know your customer, experiment with various marketing channels, learn to vapor test, don't make your website vague, tell a story - don't just sell, and have a clear ask
Your business is made up of numbers. You have to know them back to front, otherwise you're setting yourself up for failure.
What to do when you're asked a question, didn't understand the question, don't know the answer, or are asked "what questions do you have for us?"