🌽 Surviving the Startup Maze
Happy Friday Friends,
Welcome back to the Kernal newsletter: your friendly volunteer at the October corn maze telling you "left" or "right" to navigate your startup idea.
Latest news: Messi dipped his cleats in VC, Serena dropped some investing gems and you stillllll don't have a Halloween custome ready for the 31st. McDonald's & Krispy Kreme are collabing, 99% chance the head of sales for iPhone 14+ will be fired and the new cedar-scented candle on my desk deserves a 6/5 google review. AI funding's heating up, that conspiracy guy got fined and our boss if OOO mountain biking today (aka we get to leave early) 🤫
Time to microwave your cold coffee, pause the tik tok and dive into the goods.
Today's Menu:
- 🌽 Surviving the Startup Corn Maze
- ☕️ Startup ideas that go perfect w/ your morning coffee
- 🎉 some memes, news and treats for those that scroll to the end
P.S. Kernalers have been on fireeeee this week:
- 🔥 one of you is pitching on Shark Tank tonight (Plufl),
- 🔥 one of you got featured in TechCrunch yesterday (Sparks)
- 🔥 one of you launched an AI website startup idea (Durable) and has seen 10K users in 24 hours
- 🔥 one of you sold $1m+ of burnt hair perfume in the last 24 hours (okay, not a Kernaler, but prime dad joke opportunity)
🎁 Celebrating a birthday this week? Send them the gift of startup ideas.
🌽 Surviving the Startup Corn Maze
Building your startup should be nobody's agenda but your own. But what we've found in video calls and tweets lately is the opposite. There's constant pressure from:
- Society
- VC Funds
- Friends and Family
to build a startup that's "gonna succeed". When the truth is, the biggest hack to success is building in a lane that you deeply love and want to solve a problem more than anybody else on the planet.
So today's StarTUP SparkNotes are:
- Define success on your own terms: make a 1 pager. Notion or Google Docs will do. Jot down what success for your startup and founder journey looks like. Be open to trusting mentors but don't sway every time you see a new viral tweet.
- VC-backed or not, be proud you're an entrepreneur: being an entrepreneur the hardest job in the world whether you raise VC funding or not. Start believing that. 99% of the time it's the startup model that dictates if you should take funding not the founder. Find peace in that.
- Play the long game. You have 50 years to build something: take your time. There's no rush. Instead of all or nothing with your startup, remember most founders are "career entrepreneurs". You don't have 1 run at this, you have 10 x 5-year chapters to find, source and scale opportunities. If this one doesn't work, the next one will.
TL;DR: Being a founder is hard. Be proud of yourself. And email us community@kern.al if we can help in anyway.
P.S. Did you spot waldo in our Kernal maze photo above? 😏
🌱 Startup Ideas of the Week 🌱
Grab the goggles, we're jumping into the Shark Tank 🤿
Durable AI builds you a mobile-friendly website in less than a minute. Images, copy, fonts, colours, and a lead generation form included. It's the fastest way to launch your new business.
A virtual queue for weekend pickup basketball games, because who wants to wait 5 games to play.
Deal Notes: Jordan pushed a live MVP here and looking for recommendations on where else to share. Know a place besides Reddit? Help him out.
The anti-subscription box for the minimalists
Deal Notes: Vik is here to clean out the clutter with a monthly nudge. Sign up for the MVP here.
Zero to (point) One — a pod that explores the beginnings of (very) early-stage creators and entrepreneurs
Deal Notes: Zach could be interviewing you next! Subscribe here.
Moonpig, but you're the artist
Deal Notes: Idea from Adam Thornhill | "The Podcast Guy" Saves you 10+ hours a week on the best business Podcasts of the Week.
Climate change is real. Let's use AI to show what the world would look like in the future using Stable Diffusion
Deal Notes: Tanveer is show what's real. Check out examples on Twitter here
Think you've got a better idea? Join the Paralect Kernal Community and submit your idea to get 2 free weeks of validation support. More opportunities for development from their venture studio team are on the page!
📰 Kernal News to Know:
Ringing the bell, cuz we got some news to shout.
- 📺 Live on Shark Tank: Kernal Startup Idea, Plufl, is live on SharkTank today (Oct 21 8/7 pm c ABC). If you're around cheer on your fellow Kernalers.
Noah Silverman
- 📩 Cold emailing mentors for advice? Try checking out our Resources Tab. We respond to every email you send in 24 hours or less (unless we're trick or treating)
- 🎾 Think Serena's good at Tennis? Wait till you hear her investing advice. Read up on it here.
- 🤯 30sec AI Website Builder: James Clift announced Durable and in the last 24 hours it's spun up 10,000+ websites MVPs. Test it here.
- 🍾 Missed our blog post on the Early Days of Sparks? Grab it here. We saw their potential before TechCrunch featured them ;)
- 🔔 Notifications On: Toss Chad Sexton a follow as he starts his journey of posting 1 startup idea/week for the next year. Think he can do it? Vote below to help us brainstorm what we should gift him if he completes the task.
Vote What Chad Should Win for Posting 1 Kernal Idea per Week
Memes of the Week
Reply and tell us which one was your fav
Know a startup bestie that should be on Kernal? Send them an invite.
Have a 10/10 weekend friends.
💚 Kernal Fam
How did you like today's newsletter?
🔥 11/10 · 😕 Meh · 😴 Boring Sauce