Over 3 years @dvassallo‘s remarkable journey:

→ Twitter followers: ~0 to 120K
→ Products released: 6
→ Revenue: ~$700k
→ Community: ~700 strong (where I met him)

Yet his entrepreneurship approach is opposite of the norm

His 3 counter-intuitive lessons for Solopreneurs👇 1️⃣ WHOSE MODEL SHOULD A SOLOPRENEUR EMULATE ?

(A) Founder of a VC backed startup

OR

(B) The VC

Most would say A
So would I, a year ago

Here are revenue splits of Daniel’s 6 products:
→ Top product: ~ 40%
→ Top 2: ~70%
→ Top 3: ~90%

Clearly Daniel has picked B.

You already know the best productivity hack in the world

“SAY NO”

But it’s hard to do it quickly + kindly + clearly

So I went searching all over the internet.

Here are 16 of the best tips I found on ‘How to say NO’
👇 … 1️⃣ Evaluate the Present value of Future time

@TimHarford

If you says yes to future commitments & then regret it when they come around, ask yourself

‘If I had to do it today, would I say Yes ?’

If No today then high chance you will regret saying yes

Just say No

You dream of being a Solopreneur

But you have questions

Lucky for you @dagorenouf has answers
He shared it all on @joinquda

I combined his replies into 3 core questions:
→ How long does it take to succeed ?
→ What if I hate marketing ?
→ What’s the hardest part ?

🧵… 1️⃣ HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO SUCCEED ?

If you are an aspiring Solopreneur, this might be your 1st question.

Dagobert’s answer won’t please you but will certainly help you.

His Start
→ Quits job
→ Has 2 year runway
→ Wife is co-founder

His timeline 👇

For years, I carried a naive belief:

‘Just do the work & everything else will take care of itself’.
Then a painful experience shattered this belief.

Here’s the story & 2 things I would now advise my younger self.

[A short 🧵] 👇 It’s 2018, 8 years since I started 321 Foundation.

All this while we have focussed on 1 aim:
Improve learning for some of India’s poorest children.
A big funder invites us to be part of their impact evaluation.

We say yes.

7 great SaaS tweets from the past week

There are many other important things in the world right now, but if SaaS is your work/distraction:

SaaS boring or life changing ?
India ❤️ SaaS
SaaS CEOs are becoming content marketers
Instead of a house buy a SaaS business ?
…

👇 1/

Is SaaS Boring or Life-changing ?
Yes.

@briannekimmel points out how seemingly boring SaaS products can change the trajectory of your life & allow you to have an even amplify your impact later on

https://twitter.com/briannekimmel/status/1498806566597771265

ONE-GLANCE CARDS

I used to make them for my students, my team & my self.
Made 100s over the years.
Now I share them online.

Here are the ones that people have found most useful
👇 3 traits of successful startup Founders:

https://twitter.com/gauravsingh961/status/1466370731260801025

Last 7 days ➡️ 7 best SaaS tweets

Not a lot of happy news to go around.

But if SaaS interests you & you need a distraction, the best tweets 👇

💞Dates -> SaaS in Bangalore
🦠Covid & SaaS
⁉️ Challenging common SaaS advice
💪 DB platform moats
📉 Expectations vs reality

🧵… 1/

India just got its 14th SaaS unicorn (@HasuraHQ)

The force is so strong with Bangalore’s SaaS scene that Dates turn into SaaS meet-ups.

@BhosalePratim

https://twitter.com/BhosalePratim/status/1496029240193597444

Twitter friends, help me pick a name:

You might have seen these visual cards I make on various concepts related to leadership, management, strategy & business (examples in thread 👇)

I have two name options. Please help me pick one: Example 1:

https://twitter.com/gauravsingh961/status/1491018980051632133?s=20&t=3S-vROvRdb-6jCT68wwGRg

Most meetings are a waste.

But there is 1 which:
- Builds ownership
- Increases alignment
- Strengthens culture
- Doesn’t take a lot of work

Yet very few teams & leaders conduct them.

Open Forums:
A 🧵 on how you can do them & lessons from doing 100s of them @321School
… WHAT

Definition: ‘A gathering where team members can ask any question to the leadership’

You see them everywhere: politics (town halls), investing (shareholder meetings), social media (AMA).
My focus is on how organisations use Open Forums (OF).

Here’s how we did them…

SaaS Twitter’s 7 best tweets from the last 7 days

4 attributes of 🚀 SaaS companies
Why sales efficiency drops post $1M
Compounding of bootstrapped SaaS
GRR vs NRR vs NRE
Free trial VS No trial
Courage to charge fair price
Danger of discounts

🧵… 1/

Four attributes of fast-growing SaaS businesses

Original post: @poyark
Summary: @buccocapital

https://twitter.com/buccocapital/status/1493314481526611969

How to excel in your career (the early years)

Today @StoaHQ asked me to do a session on this topic.
I compiled lessons from a decade of running @321School & shared this:

7 things high-performers do in the early stages of their careers

🧵… The incomplete list of inspirations
(just twitter connections)

@rimabist @swamisgtd @aadirungta @laxminair17 @nikhataga @kamini88_ @ArnabDatta321 @RooshiED @anukshi13 @SomyaAggarwal14 @abhinavghosh_ @akanshashukla25 @simplymanyu @RevanthPeddi @MangaMentality @alishamahen11

7 best SAAS tweets from the last 7 days

Twitter is full of great SAAS content.
But it gets lost in the noise.

Here is your curated weekend reading list:

Inevitability of SAAS, lessons from top 20 PLG SAAS, China SAAS, Churn benchmarks, SAAS+payments.

🧵… 1/
Lessons from top 20 public SAAS companies using Product Led Growth & Freemium.

Zoom, Expensify, Datadog, Freshworks, Shopify, Cloudflare…
All these companies grew FASTER than last year, despite an avg. ARR of $400M

@jasonlk

https://twitter.com/jasonlk/status/1490727960504008711

You are a Non-Profit.
You are interested in Cohort Based Courses (CBC).
But you don’t know where to start.

No problem.

Here is a 🧵 with everything you need:
1️⃣ What are CBCs ?
2️⃣ Why are they working ?
3️⃣ Things to keep in mind to launch one
4️⃣ Sources to learn more

👇…. Background:
- Recently, several non-profits reached out to ask about CBCs. So this thread.
- I am not an expert on CBCs but a student of them (have taken a few & studied many)
- I am writing this for non-profits but most of it is broadly applicable

Let’s start with basics…

For a decade, I was on a set life path.
Then I decided to change it all & start from scratch.

This was hard.
For many months, I was lost.

Till I did @dvassallo’s “Small Bets” course.
It was 1 of the most transformative experiences of my life.

Here is what was game-changing… Daniel shared many things that I agreed with & was already doing.
I am NOT sharing any of those.

I am sharing the 4 lessons that were hard.
The ones that challenged my assumptions.
They led to the most personal growth for me.

Let’s dig in:

I ran my own organization for 10 years.

Stepped down 8 months & knew that for my next phase:

I want to be neither Employee nor Employer.

Let me explain…

https://twitter.com/kunksed/status/1471491383038906372

I was clear on this point when I stepped down in April.

Then I heard @dvassallo articulate this and it resonated a lot.

I had been an employee for 3 years (sort of) and then an employer for 10+ years.

But right now I neither paths look attractive to me.

Where on Earth is Online Learning working ?

I have spent the last several months obsessed with this question: from deep dives in Edtech history to the craziest AI experiments.

Thankfully I have found some places where it is working & actually quite well.

A thread… I started my search in K-12 education as I spent my last decade there.

Sadly online learning is not working in K-12.
There are rare teachers & programs that have made it work but they are the exception.
For now, there are just too many challenges.

So I broadened my search…

There is a story told to every new @FreshworksInc employee:

It is 2010 & Girish Mathrubootham is very unhappy.
He wants the insurance for his TV. It broke during shipping from USA to India.
Despite 5.5 months of follow up, he has gotten no response.

In his frustration he… Goes to a forum popular for people moving countries & shares his story.

Within a day the shipping company gives him back his money.
He even gets a personal apology email from the CEO.

Apparently the forum was where the shipping company got a lot of its customers.

You: What’s the 1️⃣ EdTech story that all should know ?
Me: One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)

You: Why ?
Me: Many have heard of it, few know the details of it’s shocking failure & it is a great example of what I call:
“The iceberg theory of EdTech”

But its start was full of promise… Great sounding idea: One Laptop Per Child ✅
Charismatic leader: Nicholas Negroponte ✅
Famous University: MIT ✅
Press adoration: NYT, Time & others ✅
Lauded designer: Yves Béhar ✅
Hit TED talk ✅
Millions in funding ✅

UN Secretary General does your demo: Priceless 🤩

I lead 321 Foundation for 10 years. I was often asked:

We hear so much about 321’s culture.
How did you build it ?

The obvious answer: We put a lot of effort into it.
The secret answer: Our recruitment process.

Here are 3 things we did that that most organizations don’t: 1️⃣ Obsession with CX
2️⃣ Seeing recruitment as a relay race
3️⃣ Focusing on ‘Your share’ & Shadowing

Let’s dig in…