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✨ How to Increase Your Startup Luck

Joel Hansen

• 5 min read
✨ How to Increase Your Startup Luck

Happy Friday Friends,

Inflation's flying, Musk pulled a U-turn on Twitter and the Easter Bunny is sliding into your backyard DMs this weekend. Welcome to the Kernal newsletter. Your "call a friend" for the world of startup jeopardy. In other news: Uber's eyeing planes, Epic Games raised $2B and 70 speakers from TED just wrapped up. Take a seat while we bring you up to speed. Easter's here, so we're keeping today tight. 👇

Today's Menu:

  • The secret to winning: working out loud and why you should do more of it.
  • Behind on emails? Skim the latest startup headlines.
  • CC'ing Johnny: startup ideas you'll wanna tell your intern about.

Pause the Instagram scroll and let's dive in. 👀

🤚 Community Asks of the Week:

💰
Orkhan Hajiyev has been hard at work with his e-commerce startup idea. He's already raised 50% of his $400K pre-seed round. It's like a Shopify store, but with a one-time small fee and free lifetime updates for members. Share a comment on his concept by clicking here.
⚒️
Jason Wilcox has been putting in work on his Medical Cost Transparency app. He claims idea validation is well underway but would love some more feedback on his concept. Got expertise in the medical domain? Take 30 seconds to browse his idea and share feedback.
🏦
Edwin Miano shared a new update on Neo-bank for African Startups, SMEs & Freelancers. Their website is now out in the world. The next step is doing final touches to make it possible for their users to receive their Banking statements. Check out their idea to leave an up-vote or comment.

🔥 Hot tip: Get first dibs on community asks by joining our Kernal discord. Got a founder update we should add? Email us.

Join Discord

💎 How Working Out Loud Increasing Your Luck

Our friends at Trends.vc did something cool. They published a report on building in public. Something we love to get behind at Kernal. It turned our gears so much we wanted to re-share some of the gems. So cozy up and open your notion. 🎶

Dru Riley calls building in public: "working with the garage door open". Instead of hiding the antique car, show it off to the world. Bring it out for a Sunday drive. Holler at your neighbour if you need a new mechanic. When you work in public, it's easier to get help from others. Building your startup's the same.

Working out loud increases your odds of winning. Here's 3 ways how:

  • 💎  Validate ideas: when you share wins and losses, people get to know you. Social capital builds a rapport pipeline you can use for feedback. Instead of paying McKinsey, you can just ask your audience "would you use this?". Instead of waiting for months of research, you can post a poll and get answers in minutes. Working out loud gives you an internal advisory group to vet ideas.
  • 💎 Meet stakeholders: if you're a car enthusiast, you're at the car show. If you're a bitcoin junkie, you're in Miami. Building in public builds is no different. Find your niche and go build luck surface area by being in the same digital playground as your friends. You'll meet stakeholders via content before sitting down with them for coffee. Stop waiting for replies to cold emails and start building in public. If it's good enough, they'll ask you for coffee.
  • 💎  Cut back on recruiter fees: headhunters are pricey. Posting on Twitter is free. Build your social capital now so that when you have a role down the road, people are drawn to apply. It's what James Clear would call a habit stacking process. When you build in public consistently, over time you have a media arm for your company. When you need applicants for roles, it can be done at the click of a newsletter instead of a retainer to recruiters.

Building in private is playing checkers. Building in public is playing chess. Change games if you haven't already. ♟

Ready to start working out loud? Share your big idea on Kernal.

Share Startup Idea

🚀 Startup Ideas of the Week

Up-vote or comment on startup idea
Up-vote or comment on startup idea
Up-vote or comment on startup idea
Up-vote or comment on startup idea
Up-vote or comment on startup idea

Got an idea of your own? Stop wishing and start building:

Share Startup Idea

📰 Founder Favourites

  • Twitter Drama Continues: Elon waits to hear back from the board on his latest buyout attempt to take over Twitter.
  • "Venti NFT Please": Starbucks joins the NFT craze as Howard Schultz claims to have a project out of the gate by end of the year.
  • Emails are king: remember, most e-comm sites only see 2-5% conversion, so if you’re not collecting visitors’ email addresses, you’re leaving chips on the table.
  • From intern to partner at A16Z: 23-year-old Carra Wu is making waves. She left Harvard after time at Apple and Microsoft before becoming A16Z's youngest check writer. Read her story.
  • $32B for Epic: It's a good week for staff equity holders of Epic Games. Commonly known as the creator of Fortnite, they just raised $2B at a $32B valuation.
  • VC Movers & Shakers: Forbes makes the list, we share the link. Go meet rising stars of the VC world.
  • Bounty Up: Axie Infinity announced a new bug bounty that rewards hackers ~$1M to prevent future rug pulls.

🐦 Tweet of the Week

To everyone that just got a raise, maybe go ask for another.

Now forget about the cost of living and go have a mini-egg easter-filled weekend. Cya next week founders.

💚  Kernal fam

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