🔑 When you validate, a16z will allocate
GM Founders,
Welcome to Kernal: where we cheer for founders on day 1 when others only slide into your DMs after your home run. ⚾️
For match-ups this week: we have Snap vs recession size ad budgets, Liverpool vs Real Madrid, and Adam Neumann's new startup vs the world. Time will tell if he can manifest another unicorn Oscars award. In other news: tech ain't hiring, Mr. Dorsey left Twitter's board and our friends at a16z spun up a $4.5B crypto fund. Let's chat about how you can score a piece of it. 🍰
Today's Breakdown:
- ⚒️ Validating startup ideas "for dummies"
- 🎉 Overdue congrats on some founders kicking ass
- 📰 Startup trends you'll wanna tweet home about
Drop the green juice junior, we've got a hell of a newsletter.🥤
🍎 ABCs of Validating Your Startup Idea
Validating your startup is like eating veggies when you're a kid. Nobody wants to do it, but we all know it's good for you.
Since it can be hard to remember how to validate a startup idea, we broke down the ABCs. Sing 'em with us:
V - Voting: focus less on vanity likes, and more on if people would use your startup idea. 5 votes: great, 50: build an MVP. 500: quit your 9-5 and pitch a16z.
A - Asking: 'if you don't ask, you don't get'. Ideas are similar. Get real feedback from niche users. Let Kernal be your first signal to dig deeper. It all starts with outreach.
L - Learning: the startup world rewards those that learn the quickest. Your goal should be to kill or double down on your idea as soon as possible.
I - Iterating: forget perfectionism, fall in love with the process of iterating on feedback. With your outreach list: show them, build it, take feedback, and repeat.
D - Diligence: do your research. Approach people with good track records and make every minute worth their time. Build your trufans at every step.
A - Analyzing: pull key themes from your research. Then take a night off and see where the data is taking you.
T - Testing: words are cheap, but user testing is gold. Flag top people that you think would actually test your product. Sweeten the deal with something.
E - Earnings: monetization is king. Is this an idea you can earn an income off? Go find out. Research competitors, ask mentors and interview customers.
So there you go. The ABCs, 1-2-3's of validating your startup idea. 🚀
Need a spot to keep all your notes? A friend told us about this platform that helps you validate your startup in public. Here's the link if you wanna check it out...
🎉 Founder Congrats This Week Goes To...
- 💰 Boom, Boom: Viya on launching her Kickstarter for the Anti-flash skirt with a phone-sized startup idea she posted a while back. She's already 90% funded.
- 🚀 Launch City: Harsha for launching his June cohort for METANA.
- 📱 App Alert: Carmen Johanson posted her PayTrail startup idea and she's already got an app launched and ready for feedback. Comment here if you can check it out and share your input.
- 📝 James Clear'd it: Ankit for sharing his progress update on Sparks. The big news? They went live and are 1500 users strong. They're also raising if you'd like to connect with them.
- 🛠 Filter Fix: Jeff for adding a DEI filtering capability to his startup idea, MyPerfectJob. He's also looking for email intros to product influencers if you know any.
- 🤑 Money Talk: Tanveer is building an AI Cover Letter tool. He's asking what you'd pay to trial it out.
Want an opportunity to invest early in the founders like this? Click below.
✨ Featured Startup Ideas ✨
It's our favourite time of the week... jumping in the Kernal-den. Up-vote and comment on the ideas that scratch your itch. 🥁
Got a startup idea to share? Submit it below and email us at community@kern.al to get it featured to our 8,000 members next week.
Startup News You'll Wanna Tweet About:
- 😴 The sleeping industry is no joke. The entire sleep economy is valued at $488 billion and it's only going up
- 🇲🇽 Mexico's first unicorn was a used car marketplace that doubled down on data. Read their story
- 👀 Wondering what happens when someone copies your startup? This TechCrunch deep dive is for you
- 📺 Killer 30min video from Eric Jorgenson on how to create personal leverage
- 🧠 Timely blog on how to design token economics for your startup
- 😬 A16z spills the beans on how to steer your startup in a down market
- 📝 Convertkit spun up a 2022 Creator Economy report. If you're building in the space, check it out.
👀 Celeb Sighting
Beyonce be droppin' startup ideas that got her seed investors crazy in love.
P.S. DM us on Twitter if you want a Kernal laptop sticker.
Cheerio,
💚 The Kernal Fam