The ongoing market correction and cratering of several leading crypto tokens are wiping out wealth so quickly you can almost hear it.
Companies in other sectors are busy hiring, but startups like Robinhood, Better.com, and Peloton are laying off thousands as FAANG companies slow their hiring and look for places to save money.
For many techies, this is the first time they have experienced real uncertainty. Investors are prosperous, and founders will weather this storm just fine, but in times of crisis, ordinary workers are the first to feel pain.
So if your face doesn’t show up on the team slide in your startup’s pitch deck, now is a good time to cancel your upcoming vacation. And maybe one of your subscription boxes.
Full blogline+ items available to members only. Use discount code TCPLUSROUNDUP to get 20% off a one or two-year subscription.
In this environment, every entrepreneur should be fluent in their key metrics. If you can’t remember exactly how much runway you have left when you read this sentence, I’m a little concerned about you.
For her latest TC+ column, angel investor Marjorie Radlo-Zandi addresses a related question on the mind of every founder: What’s my current valuation?
For many startups, finding that figure requires more art than science, as pre-income companies are still collecting data and refining their products.
“Many traditional valuation methods, such as discounted cash flow, are not as useful for valuing early-stage startups,” she writes. ““This means that investors have to measure other factors that are not easy to measure.”
There is no antidote to uncertainty, but it can be mitigated: dive into your data, activate your network and look for ways to support your colleagues.
Thank you so much for reading blogline+.
Walter ThompsonSenior Editor, blogline+@yourprotagonist
Pitch Deck Teardown: Dutch’s $20M Series A Deck
As CEO and founder of the virtual veterinary care platform Dutch, Joe Spector initially planned to raise a $15 million Series A. Still, his pitch deck so skillfully blended the images of lovable pets with market research and traction stats that he eventually rounded $20 million closed.
With flair, Dutch’s deck tells a compelling story of how the company used its seed capital to launch a service, build a brand identity, build a team, and expand from 12 to 32 states within three months.
If you’re working on a pitch deck and need some inspiration, start here: all 17 slides are available to TC+ members.
When and how do you hire your startup’s first growth marketer?
Emotion and intuition often drive many hires in startup startups. Still, when a company reaches product-to-market fit and finds its target audience, it’s a signal that “hiring a growth marketer will allow your efforts to scale much faster than without.” one,” said Jonathan Martinez, who has helped scale companies like Chime, Uber, and Postmates.
In a TC+ post, Martinez explains how to identify the right hire for growth, what traits to look for, and how to set clear expectations and milestones once they’re on board.
“Priority tasks should include setting up a growth technology stack, creating a test roadmap to find the most efficient growth levers, and robust creative and copy testing in the first 90 days.”
Dear Sophie: What are the visa options for international founders?
Dear Sophie,
I started a startup in Pakistan a few years ago with a few co-founders. One of the co-founders and I want to move to the United States to access the market.
What are our visa options? Thanks in advance for your help!
— Targeted in Pakistan
To drive growth early, adopt a marketing approach that has yet to be done
Understanding your customer’s needs is paramount to any marketing strategy, but it can be difficult to test your hypotheses when your budget is limited.
However, by adopting a jobs-to-be-done framework, early-stage startups can define, categorize, capture, and organize all of their clients’ needs, writes Michael Popchuk, co-founder and CEO of Balance Apps.
Using real-world examples, Popchuk explains how startups can leverage leverage the JTBD framework to improve their SEO strategy, marketing, and product development.
“Imagining and using the jobs users want to get to inform your strategy will help boost SEO, improve conversion on generic pages, and increase your product’s virality.”
Battery startups are working to disrupt more than just cars and trucks
Electric vehicles are the primary market for battery startups today, but some enterprising companies are entering new areas with batteries that can do more than a typical lithium-ion cell.
Natron Energy, whose batteries use Prussian blue in conjunction with a sodium-based electrolyte, can charge much faster and withstand discharge cycles more than “5x to 10x what lithium-ion batteries are capable of,” reports Tim De Chant.
This capability gives these batteries unique usage scenarios, such as data center power backups. In addition, “because the batteries can be recharged quickly time and again without the risk of significant degradation, data center managers can burden them with reducing power demand when prices rise.”
