Collapse Your Talent Stack

And get access to a new creator marketplace idea I've been working on

On Saturday I shared a deep dive on 7 reasons Meta’s new app could fail. Join the community to get access to my library of over 40 deep dives, and a new one in your inbox each Saturday.

Today at a glance:

  • Opportunity → Stripe for Athletes

  • Framework → Pirate Framework

  • Tool → SaaS Discount Marketplace

  • Trend → Creator Marketplaces

  • Quote → Collapse your talent stack

By the way…

🤝 A Message from PartnerHero

There’s a secret that all savvy founders know: the key to growth is customer experience.

Customer-led companies that think about CX holistically reduce churn, increase LTV, and drive more referrals. But building a support team on your own can take a lot of time and money.

That’s why the smartest founders I know are in on another secret: the best way to deliver amazing CX is by working with PartnerHero. They build high-quality, affordable, on-brand CX teams for incredible brands like Loom, Miro, Lovepop, Privy, Etsy, LMNT, and more.

Whatever stage you’re at – solo founder who needs to reclaim their time or scaling startup that needs help keeping up – PartnerHero has a solution to fit your needs.

Give them a shout and see how they can help you grow through customer experience.

Want to get in front of 45,000+ founders? Go here. Want to stop seeing ads? Upgrade now.

💡 Opportunity: Stripe for Athletes

This is framed as Stripe for athletes but the rest of the tweet makes it clear the idea is bigger than payment processing. It sounds more like Copilot (or what Stir originally wanted to be) for athletes.

Athletes, especially now in the age of NIL where even college athletes are able to sell sponsorships, are a unique class of influencer so existing financial management solutions may not be a fit in the same way that they’re typically not a perfect fit for tech employees who receive a good portion of their wealth through equity-based compensation.

Ashton Eaton is a 2x Olympic gold medalist who has likely experienced this problem firsthand so he’d critically be able to win the trust of other athletes and kickstart usage of the tool.

I would have one concern though (upgrade for my full analysis):

🧠 Framework: AARRR Pirate Framework

No matter how simple you make it, your users are taking a journey through finding and using your product.

Investor Dave McClure developed the AARRR Framework (aka the pirate framework) to outline the questions you should be answering at each stage in that journey.

What I like about this framework is that each step feeds into the next and that it’s another straightforward way to use NPS.

🛠 Tool: Giraffe

You know how founder communities and accelerators typically offer discounts on SaaS tools to all members? Well, Giraffe offers that to everyone.

They’re a SaaS discount marketplace that offers deals on everything from AWS and Notion to more niche tools.

To join you pay an annual subscription, and each deal on the site has eligibility criteria.

📈 Trend: Creator Marketplace

Brands are increasingly realizing that traditional marketing channels are becoming less effective. Consumers want to buy from the creators they trust.

Creator marketplaces match brands with creators who fit their niche. Often, this is for content creation (either sponsored posts or ads) but, increasingly, we’re seeing creator marketplaces for other tasks as well.

I’ve been working on one myself — it’s called Megaphone. It’s a platform that matches startups with the most reputable creators on Twitter and LinkedIn to engage and amplify their content.

Imagine the biggest creators you follow adding their massive social proof to all of your launches, and even just the various content that you as the founder (or your brand) creates.

I’ve already signed up creators with over 1.5 million aggregate followers in various niches. Take a look and drop your email to learn more.

💬 Quote: Collapse your talent stack

Ok, bear with me here because I know the screenshot looks like a giant wall of text.

Scott’s main point here is that startups should look to hire team members who can naturally act in multiple roles. Your designer is your product manager. He calls this “collapsing the stack” in the same way you would if a SaaS tool was able to manage multiple parts of your tech stack.

The best employees looking to work at a startup won’t blink at this. In fact, it’ll probably excite them and is a selling point for you to use — the extra ownership is likely something they feel is missing at their current job.

🔗 Houck’s Picks

  • Subscribe to AI Marketing School: The number 1 AI newsletter for ambitious marketing professionals (Link*)

  • Hacker News comments on the launch of now-unicorn startups (Link)

  • Valuations have started to increase after multiple down quarters (Link)

  • The 5 levels of product-market-fit (Link)

  • Zuckerberg’s potential master plan for Threads (Link)

  • The future of entrepreneurship may be multipreneurship (Link)

Upgrade for additional picks this week:

  • Conditional commitments from investors are not commitments

  • Lessons learned from founder-led sales to reach $1M in revenue

  • Why Paul Graham says startups have “a unique type of luck”

  • Why the “eureka” moment doesn’t ever need to happen

  • Having an “angel champion” can make or break your fundraise

💡 How Can I Help?

Here are 2 ways I can help you close your fundraise, find PMF, or accelerate growth:

Here are 3 ways for me to help you close your fundraise, find PMF, or accelerate growth:

Reply

or to participate.