$600M invest for Alex Wang

$1M a year for this boring website

Hey - It’s Guy & Farzan,

The summer was hot here in Sydne, but as winter gets close, we've had 2 weeks of constant rain. Hope wherever you are the weather is not as wet.

Today we have:

2 founder stories,
1 founder playbook,
and 1 founder linkedin post.

Estimated reading time: 9 mins

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Founder story (1 of 2)

See how Marie and Filip built a survey tool to $100K MRR.

Marie and Filip’s entrepreneurial journey:

💼 Marie Martens and Filip Minev, hailing from Belgium, embarked on their entrepreneurial journey by founding Tally, a form builder, after pivoting from their initial venture, Hotspot.

🚀 Tally's journey started in 2020 with an MVP, followed by strategic growth efforts such as Product Hunt launches, community building on platforms like Slack, and word-of-mouth marketing.

💰 Despite operating mainly on a freemium model, Tally saw revenue growth with its Tally Pro subscriptions. Challenges arose with scaling, leading the founders to prioritize hiring to manage increased user demand. Today they are at $100MRR.

Top 5 Takeaways from Marie and Filip's story:

👉 Embrace pivots as opportunities for growth.
👉 Engage with users and communities for feedback and growth.
👉 Utilise platforms like Product Hunt and social media for visibility.
👉 Scale operations with strategic hiring to meet demand.
👉 Stay committed to simplicity and innovation for long-term success.

Marie and Filip's journey shows what’s needed to navigate the entrepreneurial landscape and build a thriving business like Tally.

Founder story (2 of 2)

See how Matt built a boring website that makes $1m a year.

See how Matt got fired and started a business that makes over $1M per year with one website in a pretty boring niche.

 Founder resource

See how Alexander Wang has grown his business Scale AI with $600M investment.

Alexander Wang's entrepreneurial journey:

🎓 Born to Chinese immigrants and raised in Los Alamos, New Mexico, Alexander Wang's upbringing instilled in him a deep appreciation for pioneering technologies.

🚀 Despite dropping out of MIT in 2016, Wang's early experiences as a software engineer at Addepar and as a tech lead at Quora laid the groundwork for his entrepreneurial venture.

💡 Recognizing the critical need for high-quality data in AI development, Wang founded Scale AI, a company dedicated to providing meticulously labelled data and data infrastructure for AI projects.

💰 Backed by investors like Founders Fund and Y Combinator, Scale AI has grown into a billion-dollar company raising $600M, serving clients such as Toyota, Microsoft, and the US Department of Defense.

Top 5 Takeaways from Alexander Wang's Story:

👉 Be driven by a clear purpose and vision, rooted in personal experiences and societal needs.
👉 Identify and address critical bottlenecks in emerging industries to unlock growth opportunities.
👉 Build strategic partnerships and secure significant funding to fuel rapid expansion and innovation.
👉 Stay committed to ethical considerations and responsible use of technology, particularly in sensitive domains like defence.
👉 Inspire others by showcasing the transformative power of entrepreneurship and technology in addressing global challenges.

Wang's journey shows how a combination of vision, determination, and ethical leadership can drive the success of a tech startup while positively impacting industries and society as a whole.

Founder Linkedin post

All seems obvious but so important.

How Gavin built two successful SaaS businesses

Our team of two built two profitable SaaS businesses in 2 years with 7,430 users. Here are the principles that got us there: 1. Ship early, get feedback, iterate

Don't waste time building the perfect feature with all the bells and whistles. Ship something that delivers a small piece of value, learn, and repeat.

2. Keep your teams small

The smaller your team, the faster you move. As a tiny team building Swarm and StoryPrompt, we get to move fast, test new ideas, and innovate quickly.

3. Focus on customer needs

Always prioritise solving real problems for your target audience. Share your roadmap openly with customers so they know they're being heard.

4. Build a user community

Both my products have grown organically thanks to our user community hosted on Swarm. It enables our team to speak to users every day at scale!

5. See failure as an opportunity to learn

Don't be afraid to try something because you're worried it will fail. Failure is feedback. And feedback is the currency of growth. The faster you fail, the faster you learn.

www.linkedin.com/posts/gavinhammar_our-team-of-two-built-two-profitable-saas-activity-7191748009565544449-VEwb?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

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See you next Sunday.

Guy + Farzan
Founderoo

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