👟 Walk Before You Fly

Joel Hansen

Jan 20, 2023 • 6 min read

Howdy Fam,

Welcome back to the Kernal newsletter: the who, what, where, when, why of the startup metaverse. Jump in, the water's warm. BYOBusiness though.

Latest news: Davos 2023 is here. Recession vibes are near. LVMH passed €400B this year. Microsoft and Amazon collectively cut 38,000 jobs. Boston Dynamics dropped another viral video of a robot backflipping. Trump's eying a Twitter revival. Thiel's Founders Fund cashed out $1.8B. Prince Harry's new book Spare sold 1.4m copies on day 1. ChatGPT is beating humans at job applications. TIME wrote an article that has a 99% chance of pissing off OpenAI's c-suite. Enough tech chatter. Let's get to the main plater 👇

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👟 Quick steps to scale your startup idea
📈 Kernal posts catching fire
🧪 AI tools we're testing
⚾️ Katchy Kernal tweets

👟 Quick Steps to Scale your Startup Idea

When we said quick steps, I bet ya'll didn't think we'd bring back a meme from your favourite dance flik? If we guessed right, you're in for a treat. If we guessed wrong, do yourself a favour and start loading Step Up on Prime Video. *We may or may not get affiliate commission from Channing Tatum for you clicking that link.

For the fans, you know Tatum (Tyler) and Jenna Dewan (Nora) start off with some slow feet. They're moody, got bad attitudes and working through their own struggles. But as they get more in tune with themselves, they find their flow.

Well, surprise surprise. The startup world ain't that different.

We all start DM'ing CEOs for coffee and before we know it, students be DM'ing you! It's the circle of life. And we all have to play our part. To help out founders that want to scale their startup idea, we put together some quick steps you can leverage to get rolling with your rhythm.

👟 Step 1: Post your idea in public

You can't expect the world if nobody knows your goal. Posting your startup idea in public is the easiest move in the book. Ari Nitikman is a 2x Team Canada athlete that just shared his startup idea on Kernal.

He's already got 13 up-votes and you already know he's hyperlinking this idea URL to share it around via email, Twitter DMs and startup groups to land more exposure. He's smart. He gets the game. Do you?

It makes it that much easier for people to understand your elevator pitch when you have a 1-pager that can be sent around to anyone in the world. Get yours on a 1 pager if you haven't already. We may be a tad bias, but we suggest Kernal.

👟 Step 2: Prove you've done the work

Before you can hit $10K in monthly reoccurring revenue (MRR), you gotta do the leg work:

Call 100 customer prospects
Research every competitor in the book
See if the market for your idea is growing or slowing on google trends
Interview other top players in the space to see if they think your idea has legs

Using the progress update section of Kernal can be a game changer for this. Instead of "hoping you've done the work". Investors and customers can see you in the trenches. Ari below has already shown us he's got a building ready to lock down if the right team comes together on this. That would get me excited as an angel investor vs complaining on your couch and hoping somebody emails you back to meet for coffee to "get to know them".

👟 Step 3: Partner with the right investors

Spoiler alert: When Channing Tatum first meets Jenna Dewan, they're not as smooth as they are in the gif above. They're rocky. They're clumsy. Not in flow. But by the end of the film, they're waltzin' all over the camera. Why?

They got to know each other
They were aligned in skills/values
They were passionate about the same goals

Whether you're building a post-production marketplace for content creators or a viral daily emoji puzzle get ALIGNED WITH YOUR INVESTORS.

Few things feel greater than when you get the right investors on board. After you've fuelled up on capital, get the right staff on the bus, tackle the customer demographic and start firing up the community FOMO for others to get on board.

Ready to step up your startup game in 2023? I know, I know, lame CTA, but hopefully you smiled and rolled your eyes. Just smash that green button below and get your concept on Kernal already.

Share a Startup Idea

*P.S. Wanna host a Kernal Meetup in your city? Drop our head of community a line (it's his birthday today btw) at blake@kern.al 🎈

✨ Startup Ideas ✨

the section we stay up all night for

Wanna build or invest in a startup idea?

Click below to up-vote and comment on your favourites.

Stop "shoulding", start sharing. Smash that green button below.

Share a Startup Idea

🧪 AI Tools We're Testing Thanks to Ben's Bites

Bias Buster by Neeva - Improving news experience by quick retrieval of POVs from broad & fresh sources.(link)
Vowel AI - Generative AI-powered meeting summaries. (link)
Skim It - Get an AI summary of any article delivered to your inbox. (link)
All Search AI - Google Books on steroids. Search through the contents of 1000s of books! (link)
TweetMe - The AI tweet writer that writes like you. (link)
Do Not Sign - DoNotPay’s ChatGPT extension that reads terms and conditions, and flags anything that is non-standard. (link)