thebats

Whether u require a little capital (eg most software) or alot (eg Space X), capital constraints & efficiency are a cornerstone of great cultures - building your fitness not your entitlement. And bonus - u get to own more. The free $$ era ruined many otherwise good businesses.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a $54 billion behemoth. It's bigger than Marriott, Netflix, and Twitter...combined. Yet 99% of us don't actually understand the business. THREAD: The story of AWS & lessons we can learn from it

I've built 15+ SaaS & acquired 25000+ customers To do that, I've studied 100+ SaaS startups to understand how they get customers. Here are 8 best marketing channels & how you can use them 👇

🏦📉 SVB Crash Explained📉🏦 Silicon Valley Bank—#16 largest US bank with $212B — just crashed 60% in 1 day & fell 22% post-close. Stock halted now. @BillAckman is calling a US gov bailout. @peterthiel is calling a bank run. JPM, BAC, WFC all dropped 6%. What's next? Is this (a) Lehman moment or (b) overblown? Are depositors screwed or just equity investors? And what do the terms "AFS", "HTM", "NII", & "FDIC Insurance" actually mean? 👇THREAD ON SVB 🧵/

I found a $19 billion startup that began by accident. Here's the story of WhatsApp (and how 1 Apple update changed everything)👇

Spoke with @RiskReversal a few weeks ago on the state of investing... We talked about how most of the money made off the invention of refrigeration wasn't by the makers, but cos like Coca-Cola that used them... if AI/LLMs are the refrigeration, who will be the next Coca-Cola? 👇🏾

1/ How to succeed with founder led sales: Last week, @garrytan was nice enough to invite me to his home to speak with the current YC batch. The most common topic was founders figuring out how to close the first set of customers in time for demo day.

One of the most common mistakes I see from subscription apps? Making the free product ~too~ good. Many founders say they'll change the paywall to optimize conversion later on, but that’s hard to do. Here’s why ⬇️

An unsuccessful video game turned into a $26 BILLION startup. In 8 months, it was worth $1B & became the fastest-growing B2B SaaS startup in history. A success story you might not believe👇

Want the technique Beyonce uses to overcome imposter syndrome? The biggest stars in the world use it to get on stage. The most expensive Executive Coaches teach it too. Here’s how it works (and how you can use it for yourself):

Did you know this 85yo gentleman built a $300B empire and pledged 66% of it to charity? He owns Jaguar and Range Rover and is a leader in India's airline, Steel, Fashion, Car, and Technology industries. The greatest philanthropist you've never heard of - Ratan Tata

ChatGPT is all the rave. But what does GPT actually mean? Here’s a quick breakdown so you don’t get left behind:

Game theory on the Bing announcement… Microsoft is trying to lower Google’s search margins which will make it harder for Google to continue running Cloud and other competitive businesses at a loss. Google processes ~8.5 billion searches per day. The noise around Bing/AI will force Google to release an AI chat feature within search. The current inference costs for LLMs are significantly higher than search - likely 10x or more. In addition, the monetization model for AI chat is unclear, but it's likely different than the ad-based model Google has mastered. Google's search business is highly profitable and funds other loss-making business lines. Historically, they have operated cloud at a loss (-$480mm in Q4 FY22) to compete more aggressively. Lowering search margins applies pressure to every other Alphabet business…many of which are competitive with Microsoft.

How to set company revenue targets, quotas, and compensation for sales people: It’s Monday at 9a on Nov 1, 2021. Brex’s sales team logs in to join the monthly recap meeting. Much of the team was working over the weekend (the prior month ended on a Sunday) to push us over our company revenue target. We start the presentation with a cameo from Tony Hawk congratulating the team on another record month. We’ve extended a 14 month winning streak, 75% of the team is over quota, the top performer is at 400% to goal, and 8 promotions are announced - several of them IC's moving to leadership. The chat window is lighting up with congratulations and celebration from a team that refuses to lose and works their asses off to make sure they never do. We’ve created the sales version of the locker room of my hometown Kansas City Chiefs, who are on their 3rd Super Bowl in 4 years this coming Sunday. We were winners. We took a ton of pride in our win-loss record. It drove the type of behavior where people were busting their ass on a weekend to make sure we didn’t miss. A big part of creating this environment is the philosophy around revenue targets, quotas, and compensation. Here are some principles to follow to create this type of environment at your company: 1. Set a revenue target as soon as you have a dedicated sales person. 2. Set your first monthly revenue target with 90% confidence you will hit it. You want to set the tone early that hitting targets is the expectation and missing is not acceptable. Over time, as target setting becomes more of a science than an art, move your confidence to 70% to make sure targets are aggressive enough.  3. Initially set a new company target on a monthly basis (ie set the March target on March 1). Over time you can set targets in three month increments (ie set April, May, and June targets on April 1), and eventually set a fiscal year of monthly targets (ie set monthly targets for all of 2024 in late 2023).   4. Pay new hire sales people at full on-target-earnings (ote = base salary + variable) for the first 60-90 days. 5. If your sales cycle is <60 days, you should have monthly company revenue targets and quotas, not quarterly. This should be almost everyone except those selling to the true enterprise.  6. Set quotas with the expectation that 70% of the team is over quota. In the early days expect lots of variance here (ie one month 100% of the team is over, the next 50% is over).  7. For SDR’s, split salary 70/30 base/variable. For AE’s, split salary 50/50.  8. Your average payout across all reps should be 110% of variable (~105% ote).  9. Do not give an inflated ote with low attainment. You will lose trust, have low morale, high churn, etc 10. Constantly reinforce and celebrate the success of the team. Everyone should know the monthly target, how we’re pacing to that target, the % of the team over quota, who finished #1 (and be able to do the math on how much their commission was), who is being promoted, etc.

I love watching early pitch videos of iconic startups. $60B+ value created below. But at the start, there was only a raw deck and big dreams. Here are 7 behind-the-scenes gems ⬇️

You're not using the Notes app on your iPhone to its full potential. 8 features you might not know about:

Reading won't be obsolete till writing is, and writing won't be obsolete till thinking is.

Here is an unknown (until today) story that Warren Buffett told me when I was 21. It has to do with the first ever lawsuit he was involved in. It is not previously reported anywhere, online or offline, and inspired me to change the direction of DoNotPay:

Whose boat is this?

This secretive $100B Chinese retailer sells to the whole world, except China. It dethroned Amazon with 177M downloads, quickly dominated the US market, and is worth more than Zara and H&M combined. How it eclipsed American brands with these 4 crazy business strategies: 🧵