This week’s Founder Finds includes:
💵 Why charge 100% upfront
🚀 How to launch on Product Hunt
📊 Metrics that cannot be measured
🌎 An SEO guide for international traffic
✨ Official Guide to Prompt Engineering
➡️ And more…
🪶 Remember This
Start before you’re ready.
🏆 Trends Pro Member Wins
👥 Aaron Nesser unlocked 1:1 Founder Intros by joining daily standups
📺 Elie Steinbock reached 1,500 YouTube subscribers
🎙️ Hj Barraza launched the En Contxto podcast
🔥 Bernardt J. Vogel spoke at a fireside chat
📝 Julien Collet shipped new features for Scheduled.so
🐦 Kevin Galang announced A Team Overseas
🧠 Avy Leghziel and Patrick Reker unlocked Trends.vc Masterminds by reaching 30-day standup streaks
🤓 Fav Finds
Tools, tweets and more from Trends Pro Members
✨ OpenAI Prompt Engineering Guide shared by Avy Leghziel
The official guide to writing better prompts from OpenAI
🚀 How to Launch on Product Hunt shared by Simon
A practical guide on launching on Product Hunt
🌎 International SEO shared by Daniel Berggren
A guide on reaching new target audiences in different countries
📘 Read This
Metrics that You Can’t Measure in Retrospect
Some important metrics are impossible to measure:
- Probabilities of “risks”
- How a single feature affects revenue
- How your actions affect customer churn
- How small design choices affect user experience
- The value of proactively fixing bugs or good engineering practices
If they can’t be measured in retrospect, they can’t be measured now or later.
🌟 Founder of the Week
“I had valuable conversations with Trends Pro Members that gave me a deeper understanding of fractional leadership and venture capital. Lots of inspiration.”
Marc helps purpose-driven brands build, adopt and maintain strategies to foster deep connections with their customers.
What’s your most important habit?
Running. It boosts my health, energy and creativity. The best ideas come to me while running.
What are you reading right now?
Shoe Dog by Phil Knight, the founder of Nike. Nike serves as a fascinating case study in brand-building. Its story resonates with me as I’m a runner and a brand consultant.
What product or service do you wish existed?
A tool that can automatically build a knowledge base from everything I read. Then integrate it with my writing tools to suggest relevant information while I write.
What product are you obsessively using right now?
Apple Shortcuts. It’s an underrated tool. In combination with Notion and OpenAI, it adds so much value to my daily life by automating repetitive tasks.
What are you bullish on?
AI as a value-creation tool. The technology opens a lot of ways to do things better. It will have a huge impact across industries and daily life.
What are you bearish on?
AI as a cost-saving tool. If we use this powerful technology to do more of the same, but cheaper, there is no real progress. Brands that use AI to merely cut costs will lose to companies that understand the AI‘s potential in creating more value for their customers.
What’s your favorite Trends Report?
🤓 Consulting
This report offers useful insights for building my business, which is a mix of consulting and agency. It serves me as a roadmap to where I’m heading.
💬 Join the Conversation
Here’s what Trends Pro Members are talking about…
- (📈 Pro) Scheduling tools
- (📈 Pro) A directory of GPTs
- (📈 Pro) Favorite online communities
🔧 Try This
Why You Should Charge 100% Upfront
Have you ever been stiffed by a client?
The client either paid you late or never paid you at all.
Fix this by charging 100% upfront. Stop worrying about:
- Getting paid on time
- Abandoned projects
- The number of revisions
- Enforcing legal contracts
- Sending multiple invoices
The money becomes the contract.
Pro tip: for clients who don’t want to pay 100% upfront, break down payments into tiers and never start working on the next part of the project until the new payment arrives.
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