Gymshark went from nothing to a billion dollar company in just 8 years with no outside capital.

How did they get here? What strategic risks are they exposing themselves now?

(Megathread) This info comes from a Seedtable essay I co-wrote with @paghuo – The Rise of Gymshark.

editions.seedtable.com/gymshark/

In 1990, Encyclopaedia Britannica sold 117,000 book sets and generated $650 million in revenue. By 1996 that number had fallen to less than 3,000.

(Thread ↓) The first Encyclopaedia Britannica was published 250 years ago but the company saw the opportunity in the 80s to go after the "homes" market.

They built a door-to-door salesforce and found traction IMMEDIATELY. By 1990 they had 7,500 salesmen $600m in revenue.

@Spotify is today’s ubiquitous music provider and one of Europe’s biggest tech companies.

• €1.89b in revenue
• 299m monthly active users
• 138m subscribers
• 60m songs
• 1.5m podcasts

This is the story of how two Swedish entrepreneurs changed audio.

(Megathread) @eldsjal (Spotify’s co-founder and CEO) came up with the idea in 2002 when the file sharing software Napster stopped working and was quickly replaced by another similar site, Kazaa.

What was this epiphany about? Piracy.

~ Some thoughts on startup visas ~

A few weeks ago a fund asked me what are the three most important aspects of a European startup visa policy.

The intersection of Seedtable + Jobbatical puts me in a decent place to answer this.

Here's me thinking out loud:

(Thread) VISAS FOR STARTUP EMPLOYEES

Assuming the goal is to drive the ecosystem forward and facilitate hiring by bringing as many qualified workers as possible, then:

• Fast processing times.
• No diploma required.
• Visa not tied to a specific employer.

Yesterday @TechCrunch reported some @efounders portfolio numbers.

🤑 $1.5b valuation
📈 ~$120m ARR
💸 $148m raised in 2020 (!)

I'm a fan of the @efounders model (and the workshops in their Paris office) and I think that's only going to grow from here. @efounders started in 2011 and since then they've launched 25 companies.

They do exclusively B2B SaaS apps that solve workplace problems – "We build the future of work."

Some winners @Mention @sliteHQ @FrontApp @Spendesk @aircall

MEGATHREAD

Looking to start or join a company in Europe? Here's a list of 40+ European visas for tech founders and employees 🇪🇺

(Thread) 1. Tech Nation Visa 🇬🇧

A UK visa for technology workers or founders with demonstrated exceptional talent and/or promise.

🗓5 years
🔄 Renewable
👨‍🎓 No diploma requirement specified
👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Family allowed

technation.io/visa/

~ MEGA THREAD ~

A running list of mental models to analyze technology, business, and product strategy.

They shape my thinking, guide my writing and help me understand what is going on in European tech.

↓ 1. Bundling

Combining multiple small offers into one large offer. The more offers contained in a bundle, the higher the Perceived Value of the bundle will be.

This helps create value without having to create something new.

𝐀 𝐝𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐨𝐧 𝐄𝐮𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐧 𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐡 🇪🇺

Every day for the rest of the year I'm going to tweet my take on something going on in European tech.

For every day I miss I will donate $100.

(thread) Why am I doing this? It's a forcing function to:

- read more
- think more
- write more

But here's the real reason: it cuts my feedback cycle + chances of being wrong from weekly (the newsletter) to daily (Twitter).

https://twitter.com/gonsanchezs/status/1263213802767687688

~~Media vs Big Tech~~

I'm fascinated by the relationship between media and technology and how it changed in in 2013.

I couldn't figure out what why.

Then it hit me: Media realized Tech is their competitor and that attacking them was profitable.

Here's the story:

(Thread) For decades, Tech was the good guy. Tech gave us cars, phones and the internet.

And Media LOVED it: "We can reach more people (and sell more ads) without printing more papers!"

The climax of the story was the 2008 election. Facebook gave us Obama, the first black US president!