Patreon's $1.5B valuation

Caroline's $400K selling cheese

Hey - It’s Guy & Farzan,

The sun has come out today in Sydney. Hope you’re getting some sun wherever you are.

Today we have:
2 founder stories,
1 founder playbook,
and 1 founder LinkedIn post.

Estimated reading time: 8 mins

TESTIMONIAL DONUT (Ad.)
Collect, manage and share all your testimonials & Google reviews in one place. All 100% free. So easy your gran can use it! Have a look at the new landing page and signup.

Founder story (1 of 2)

See how Benjamin solved the problem of collecting your customer's research and built Dovetail.

Benjamin entrepreneurial journey:

💼 Benjamin Humphrey and Bradley Ayers, co-founders of Dovetail, solved the problem of collecting and analyzing customer research data. Their company operates out of Sydney and San Francisco and started in 2017.

🚀 Dovetail began with an MVP inspired by Benjamin's experience at Atlassian. Initially, they built an email and SMS interceptive surveying tool. They pivoted to create a platform for holding and analyzing research data, leading to the current version of Dovetail.

💰 Dovetail grew without raising funds for the first two and a half years, thanks to the founders' savings. Their video transcription feature was a significant breakthrough, propelling the company to new heights.

Top 5 takeaways from Benjamin’s story:

👉 Identify gaps in the market through personal experience and industry insight.
👉 Bootstrap if possible to maintain control and direction.
👉 Pivot based on user feedback and needs.
👉 Invest in features that add significant value, like their video transcription.
👉 Maintain a strong company culture by being selective in hiring.

Benjamin journey demonstrates the importance of innovation, resilience, and strategic pivots in building a successful business like Dovetail.

Founder story (2 of 2)

See how Caroline does $400K annual revenue selling cheese.

Caroline Hesse, 32, is the founder and CEO of C. Hesse Cheese, a wholesale cheese distribution company based in New York City. Her company supplies cheese to restaurants, cheese shops, and catering companies and also sells directly to consumers. In 2023, her business generated $400,000 in revenue.

 Founder playbook

See how Jack created Patreon and grew it to a valuation of $1.5 billion.

Jack entrepreneurial journey:

🎓 Born and raised in the United States, Jack Conte pursued music after graduating college in 2007.

🚀 As a musician, Jack struggled with traditional venues and turned to YouTube, where he began to gain traction by sharing his creative process. His collaboration with his girlfriend, Natalie, led to the formation of the YouTube channel Pomplamoose.

💡 Recognizing the need for better support for creators, Jack Conte co-founded Patreon with Sam Yam in 2013. Patreon was designed to provide a sustainable income for creators through direct support from their fans, filling the gap left by ad revenue from platforms like YouTube.

💰 Backed by investors like Freestyle Capital, Patreon raised over $2 million in its first funding round in 2014. The platform has grown significantly, raising additional funds and achieving a valuation of $4 billion.

Top 5 takeaways from Jack'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 supporting the creative community.
👉 Inspire others by showcasing the transformative power of entrepreneurship and technology in addressing global challenges.

Jack journey shows how a combination of vision, determination, and ethical leadership can drive the success of a tech startup.

Founder Linkedin post

Love these founder learnings.

My 9 biggest learnings building and growing Fletch from 0 to $1M+:

1️⃣ A strong co-founder relationship lets you go 10x faster.

Having a daily sparring partner to figure things out is a must. Fletch would not be nearly as successful without Anthony Pierri 🎸 as my business partner. Because of the positive pressure and support we provide one another daily, we've covered five years of learning in one year.

2️⃣ Do ONLY one thing.

I used to think that the hard part of entrepreneurship was finding “the right idea”. But I now see that the real challenge is picking a single idea AND STICKING WITH IT.

3️⃣ Building an audience is the ultimate leverage.

Instead of starting with a product, start by building a bridge to the market. When you have direct access to your market, building a good product or service becomes 100x easier. And when it comes time to monetize, you’ll be playing on easy mode because of all the trust and credibility you’ve created.

4️⃣ Give 10x more than you take.

Too many founders look at the value equation with customers as a 50/50 trade, and they struggle to build trust and credibility (and, more importantly, they struggle to make money). When you give way more than you take, you’ll make it easy for customers to buy your product.

5️⃣ Create and share content every day.

This learning is not just about getting the attention of your prospects. It’s about sharpening your thinking and the rapid feedback loop. The trick is to focus on the daily process. Put in the time, hit publish, and the quality will come.

6️⃣ Personal health leads to business health.

When I do the little things in my daily routine to take care of myself (working out, eating right, journalling, etc.), the quality of my work goes through the roof. When these things start to slip, even the simple things in the business get hard.

7️⃣ Delegate AFTER you’ve figured out how to do it.

You can’t expect outside experts to go from 0 to 1 in any part of your business — even if they are experts in a specific topic. You have to give them the specific playbook you know works — and let them optimize it.

8️⃣ Quick actions > perfect decision making.

Whenever Anthony or I come up with an idea for something new for the business, we’ll talk about it for 15-30 minutes and give each other permission to try it. If it works, we’ll try it a few more times. If it keeps working, THEN we’ll formally bring it into the business. If we stopped to analyze to try and get to the perfect idea each time we’d never actually do anything.

9️⃣ Love the boring work

The media portrays entrepreneurship as a glamorous lifestyle where founders do exciting things every day. This is a lie. 90% of building a business is doing the boring day-to-day work: creating content for marketing, taking sales calls, and servicing customers. Ignore all the shiny tools and tactics—just get the basics right and be consistent.

www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7196496854828630016?updateEntityUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afs_updateV2%3A%28urn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7196496854828630016%2CFEED_DETAIL%2CEMPTY%2CDEFAULT%2Cfalse%29

Quick reminder - If you like our newsletter, please do “add to address book” or reply. These are “positive signals” that help our newsletter land in your inbox. If you hate it, please unsubscribe (the unsubscribe link is in the footer).

See you in 7 days.

Guy + Farzan
Founderoo

Reply

or to participate.