CoFounder Weekly provides a weekly dose of cartoons, crosswords, and behind-the-scenes look at startup life. This week’s newsletter has 5 sections: Weekly Cartoon, Tweeter’s Digest, Crossword, Articles, and a Weekend Thought. Whoa, that’s a lot of sections!
This week’s cartoon was made in collaboration with Ueli Johner, a Swiss based Graphic Designer and Cartoonist. You can find his awesome work here.
✨✨ Tweeter’s Digest✨✨
Fortnite makes $2 million per day with its multi-player last man standing shoot-em-up game, and game developer Epic Games raised $1.25 billion at a $15 billion valuation this week. Creating a new successful game is much harder than sustaining the success of an existing game (h/t Nir Efrat), so I wonder if they will re-invest heavily in the game or create new ones…
Crossword
OK, so last week’s crossword puzzle had some obscure clues.
This week’s crossword theme is…Startup Metrics
Can you name all 10 metrics in the puzzle?
Play here: CoFounder Crosswords
Articles (The “serious but kinda interesting” stuff)
How Manhattan Became a Rich Ghost Town. Three causes: (1) rent increases is too high relative to sales increases (2) online shopping (3) many landlords don’t want to offer short-term leases to pop-up stores if they think a richer, longer-term deal is forthcoming from a national brand with money to burn, like a bank branch or retail chain. The author claims New York’s empty storefronts are a harbinger for the future of cities. But I’ve been noticing more and more markets like Canal Street Market and Turnstyle Underground Market emerge — these markets provide low overhead for vendors, community, and are a brand in and of themselves to drive foot traffic. Perhaps that’s the in-store retail future we’re heading towards?
Cool story how investor Blake Robbins connected with a founder via Twitter direct message, and later funded his company. Direct Messaging is a super power — whether it’s on Twitter or Instagram. See someone doing something interesting? Reach out! In fact, I met the illustrator of this week’s cartoon via DM on Instagram. Hi Ueli! He lives in Switzerland.
To raise or not to raise? That is the question. More and more conversation popping up on the topic of entrepreneurs bootstrapping vs. raising VC. One article I came across this week is about a founder who finally decided to raise VC. His conclusion : “Bootstrapping may be right at times and not at others. I’m working on a startup with VC backing but that doesn’t mean I think self-funding is inferior. The upsides of taking VC make more sense to me in my circumstances now than bootstrapping would…Bootstrappers have created a religion out of building something from scratch and self-funding the entire thing. But what if that ideology leads to burnout? Or bankruptcy? Or not being able to go the distance?” But sometimes VC can kill your company. In fact, here are 3 ways over raising money can kill your startup: (1) team never learns to build a sustainable business (2) wasting money on office space, ads, etc. (3) fewer exit options (because investors get paid back first).
Weekend Thought
Sundays—Read the newspaper, cross items of the to do list, drink tea, draw, plan for the week ahead.
As I get to know myself better, I’m starting to recognize the value a healthy Sunday routine adds to everything I do.
It’s been nice to weave this newsletter into that routine.
What’s your Sunday routine look like?