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Jim Huffman

A blog about Growth Marketing, Startup Struggles and the occasional 90s NBA reference.

10/28/2021 Newsletter: “Startup Ideas” by Paul Graham 💡

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How to Come Up with Startup Ideas

“The very best startup ideas tend to have three things in common: they’re something the founders themselves want, that they themselves can build, and that few others realize are worth doing. Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Google, and Facebook all began this by way.” – Paul Graham

In this episode, we breakdown an Iconic Read, “How to Get Startup Ideas” by Paul Graham, the Founder of Y-Combinator. Here are the 8 ways Paul Graham finds startup ideas.

  1. Solve Problems
  2. Well (Focus on Deep Wells / Ideas)
  3. Self (Live in the Future)
  4. Noticing Things Missing
  5. School
  6. Competition is a Good Thing
  7. Filters (The unsexy filter and the schlep filter)
  8. Idea Recipes

Get the full episode right here.

LISTEN TO EPISODE

DID YOU MISS LAST WEEK’S EMAIL? Here are the top articles.

People enjoyed the Launchpad Business concept and 20% of you wanted to know how to start building leverage.

Here are the articles that caught my attention this week:

🌱 Growth Tactics: Explore vs Exploit You Ideas​

There are two modes of growth experimentation:

  1. Explore – Exploring is about testing wide to find your points of leverage in your growth model so that you can focus your limited resources and exploit.
  2. Exploit – Once you find our points of leverage, you move into exploit mode by testing deep and narrow.

Knowing which mode you are in is key. What are you focused on right now?

​💼​ Marketing Law #2: The Law of the Category​

I am re-reading The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing and I am currently obsessed with Law #2: Create a Category

Tim Ferris did this with lifestyle design.

Spanx did this with Shapewear.

Here is what it says:

The Law of the Category says that if you cannot be first in your category, setup a new category. This is really just another way of explaining a concept called “differentiation”.

The point of creating a category is to make sure you and your customers understand what your key differentiation is. What makes you different? To whom does that difference matter? In the minds of those people, you are number one.

📝 How to Grow and Market a D2C Brand (A 22 Step Process)​

After working with 100+ brands at my growth agency, I have seen some D2C brands raise $80M and others go on Shark Tank.

So, what have I learned from them?

I broke down the learnings into a 22 step blog posts on our site. From which business model to pursue to what tech stack to use, here are my thoughts.

Bonus: Here is one of the 22 things to do if you want to guarantee success: Know the value you add to your specific persona using the brand value elements pyramid.

📅 How This Person Made $130k on an eBook & Course in 20 Days​

Steph Smith gets things done. She’s launched 10 projects in the last two years, including an eBook that brought in over $130K.

This post covers her latest success and she broke down how she makes it all happen. She’s deep, real, and ready to take responsibility for the trajectory of her own life. Hoping you find this write-up inspiring and eye-opening.”It’s funny — I was really resistant to seeing myself as a content creator, even though it was clearly a big part of what I was doing and where I was finding success. Identity is so powerful. I identified more with being a product manager or growth marketer.”

📖 The Playbook for Hiring the Right Marketer at the Right Time for Your Startup​

For founders who are unsure if it’s time to hire a marketer in the first place, start here with this classic guide from Arielle Jackson. But if you’re committed to the headcount and looking to narrow in on the right profile, design the best interview loop, and train yourself on what to look for in your conversations with candidates, this is the follow-on read for you.

Hope this helps all the founders that are looking for a rockstar head of growth.

Want to Stare at Me on Zoom Tomorrow?

Tomorrow, I’m teaching a live workshop at the 2021 GrowthHackers Conference.

It’s around building a growth agency from scratch.

See exactly what we did at GrowthHit to become a multi-million dollar agency.

Want more content like this? Join my email list or listen to my podcast, If I Was Starting Today. ​