Steve Jobs was an avid reader.

However, he didn't read the type of business books you might expect.

Of the 30 books Steve Jobs publicly recommended throughout his life only 3 are business books.

Here are the 30 books Steve Jobs recommended 🧵 The Innovator's Dilemma
Be Here Now
Moby Dick
Cutting through Spiritual Materialism
Autobiography of a Yogi
Diet for a Small Planet
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind
The Essene Gospel of Peace
Mucusless Diet Healing System
The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment (one of my favs)

2 years ago I started as an intern at The Hustle.

Today was my last day working there because we just raised a $2.4m seed round to start a company.

This is my story of what it was like to do Growth for your favorite business and tech newsletter.
👇 Two years ago, I moved to the Bay Area.

I wanted to learn how to start a company.

I decided I would take the right position, even if it was an internship.

The next day I was reading The Hustle and saw they were hiring a growth intern in SF.

It felt like a sign.

Okay, this has to be the strangest side hustle I've ever heard of.

I was offered $10,000 to start a dentist side hustle this weekend 🧵 It all started when I was watching a webinar with @bentossell ,@shl and @agazdecki.

Sahil shared an insight that being remote gives us more freedom to explore our other passions.

Sahil predicts that in the future we will see part-time lawyers, doctors, and even dentists.

9 must have chrome plugins for marketers.
🧵 Uncover how much traffic websites are getting.

chrome.google.com/webstore/detai…

Want to write a book one day?

We had never written a book.

We had no budget.

We didn't know what we were doing.

But we did it.

Here's a story about how to go from knowing nothing about publishing to getting on Amazon's best sellers list. When in University, I met @LonnyGrafman who is a badass engineer and professor.

He just finished writing a book on rainwater catchment systems and was looking for help.

On average, founders own 15% of their company by the time they IPO.

Some own 75%, others 0%...

What do startup founders who fundraise efficiently do differently?

Here are insights the Founders Collective gleaned after analyzing 71 companies on the public market.
👇 Founders % of shares at IPO:

Wix 9%
Etsy 0%
Twitter 17%
Pandora 2%
Shopify 17%
HubSpot 14%
Atlassian 75%
Facebook 36%

Here is what makes that interesting...

Startups are a zoo.

Which startup animal are you?
🦓🦄🐪🦏🐴🦟🦌
🧵👇 🦌 The Gazelle

$100m valuation and revenue of $15m to $50m.

Gazelle's are quick to scale revenue.

Even $1m+ and 20% YoY revenue growth will grant you gazelle status.

Some consider the Gazelle to be Africa's Unicorn status.

Your Mom gave you one rule... don't get in a strangers car.

But you did, and now Uber is a $95B business.

If you gave them $5k after seeing this original pitch deck, you would now be worth $24m+👇 1/ Question the status quo

Before Uber, no one questioned taking a cab.

It's just what you did.

Standing on the side of the road with your arm out was normal.

Now it seems a bit... silly?

Find industries where we're still standing on the side of the road.

Step aside Miami.

Don't sleep on Africas startup scene.
🧵 In 2020, Tunisia implemented a "Startup Act".

If you start a company there you get:
- State salary for up to three founders during 1st year of operations
- One-year leave period to start a company with right to return to your old job
- And generous tax-breaks

Ummm, yes please.

Please stop motivating me.

Here's why you shouldn't want to be motivated either.

This is the motivational industry in a nutshell...
🧵 I log onto YouTube and get suggested a video called "10 minutes of motivation that will change your life"

Sweet, I want to change my life... let's watch.

You can launch your own Airbnb for $500.

Or Tinder for $450... and Uber for $2,000

"App clones" are popping up everywhere.

Here's why the "app clone" market is insane:
🧵 Imagine you have an idea that is Uber for X or Airbnb for Y.

Now you want to build it, but aren't technical.

You can:
A) Pay a freelancer or dev shop $15,000+
B) Find a technical co-founder
C) Spend 2+ learning how to code
D) Use an app clone

What's the most important marketing metric?

CTR? CPA? CPM?

No. It's viral coefficients.

Your viral coefficient determines if your product will go viral or not.

Here's how to calculate yours and optimize it
🧵 Take your...

(Average invites sent per user X your conversion rate) = your viral coefficient

Example:
(5 invites x 30% conversion rate) = 1.5 new users

Your final number represents how many people one member brings in.

If the number is over 1, then your product will go viral.

The story that convinced me that Steve Jobs is a brilliant designer
🧵 In early 2000, Apple was bullish on burning CDs.

Mike Evangelist was in charge with coming up with a DVD-burning program for high-end Macs.

Mike spent three weeks preparing with his team to present their solution to Steve.

The story of the controversial 1 click checkout and how it gave Amazon a billion dollar advantage.

👇 THREAD In 1998, eCommerce was still fringe.

Consumers weren't convinced and there was a lot of friction when buying online.

Jeff Bezos knew in order to succeed, Amazon had to change this.

Have you been procrastinating?

Candidly, finding motivation while working from home has been tough.

I found this equation for motivation from @alexvermeer and it has helped me get the most important things done everyday.

Here's the formula to increase your motivation.
🧵👇 So, the formula is pretty simple.

Motivation = (high expectancy X high reward) / (distractions X delay)

You want to increase your expectancy and value while decreasing your impulsiveness and delay.

Here's how.

With a 1.5% acceptance rate, @ycombinator is the world's most revered startup accelerator for a reason.

How can you stand out from 10,000+ applications?

Here's what YC is looking for when you apply: 🧵👇 The Application

1. Be matter of fact
- No 'marketing-speak'
- Be narrow in your descriptions

2. Use data
- Numbers > superlatives

3. Show that you can become a huge business
- They are looking for 100x opportunities

Your #1 priority is for them to understand what you're doing

Have you ever thought about running ads on Twitter?

I've spent thousands of dollars on Twitter ads.

Twitter can be a breakthrough platform if you're looking for a new way to acquire customers.

Here are 12 best practices for running Twitter ads
👇🧵 #1 Campaign structure

Start with two campaigns.

One for cold targeting and one for retargeting.

"Innovation is saying no to a thousand things.” - Steve Jobs

Here are 7 products ideas @Apple should and should not do 🧵 Smart Mirrors = No

If you've ever seen a movie based in the future, smart mirrors seem like an obvious innovation right?

But this isn't Apple's space to innovate because it isn't empowering creators.

Plus, this next innovation would make smart mirrors useless.

15 years ago this startup had 9 employees working for free.

Today it's the 2nd most visited site in the world.

There are a few strategies that seperate remarkable companies from the rest.

Here are 9 insights from @YouTube's pitch deck that led to their $1.65B acquisition👇 Tip #1: Make your vision actionable

I love a grand vision, but if it can't be measured it can't be achieved.

They want to be:
✅ The primary outlet of user-generated video
✅ Allow anyone to upload, share and browse this content

Create a compelling and measurable vision.

90% of decision making comes from emotion NOT logic.

So, why aren't more people integrating emotional design into their marketing and products?

Here's how you can use Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions to create remarkable experiences:
👇 Plutchik's Wheel of Emotion is a framework used by psychologists.

Think of it like you're climbing a staircase.

You need to be in a state of serenity before you reach a higher emotion of joy.

What's super interesting about that is it follows the exact path of AIDA.

Did you know that good branding can increase revenue by 23%?

If you're building a...
✔️ Personal brand
✔️ Fortune 500 company
✔️ Startup

You need to define your brand.

Which one of these 12 brand archetypes are you?
👇🧵 ☠️ The Outlaw

✔️ Wants personal freedom
✔️ Disrupts the status quo
✔️ Innovates through nonconformity

If you want to be bold and shake up the status quo, then you are the outlaw.

Examples:
@Virgin
@harleydavidson
@LiquidDeath