Startup Riders

I'm having a blast meeting like-minded people on twitter and its really helping me out on multiple fronts - on top of being really fun.

This week I had the biggest bump in subscribers I've ever had (>300 in 24 hours) thanks to a Twitter follower's mention, which was really awesome of him.

I've been wrestling with the idea of monetizing via sponsors on the newsletter.

On the one hand, I've had 5 people reach out to me asking if they could sponsor the newsletter + others asking to please feature their startup / other news on it.

On the other:

1. Not sure how I'd price it, I've heard anything from 0.05-0.1 euros per subscriber on specialized newsletters - but I want to make sure that if I charge people they are getting a lof of value out of it.

2. The spanish tax system is less than obvious to figure out, and charging for thiswould require spending some time figuring out how much money to put aside for next year. Its the type of stuff that really drains my energy, and I'm having so much fun writing and building this out + a full time job that I like - that I'm really not sure the amount I'd be charging for now is worth the trouble.

Decided for now. tokeep growing the business, and start accepting sponsorship deals once I get closer to 5-10K subs.

Any tips or recommendations on this highly appreciated!

I kept to the schedule - publishing every 2 weeks.

I was still struggling with the decision of wether to niche down on a specific set of topics and how to keep the content flywheel going (to be honest, these questions keep entering my mind - but I push them back).

I decided to keep the value prop simple, and the content flywheel as it was:

1. Startup trends
2. Startup problems

Solved, by experts in their field. Easily digestible, 2x per month.

So far so good - we shall see!

Also ended the year with a review of everything that had happened that year and what I had learned. https://www.startupriders.io/p/principles-toolbox-2022-?s=w

Slowly but surely! Got lucky enough to keep growing my Twitter audience, acting as a top of the funnel, and hit 1000 subscribers - bringing a good friend as a guest writer on Creativity (whom I had met at a startup years ago in silicon valley, also my surfing buddy!)

Super happy and feeling very lucky.

https://www.startupriders.io/p/17-creativity-tap-?s=w

To get my content flywheel going - I decided to focus on 2 things:

1. Emerging startup trends
2. Solving startu problems

For both, I was going to bring on my friends and people from my network who were well positioned to provide value to readers.

Sometimes I'd be the writer, others it'd be a guest writer.

The #6th edition (B2B SaaS Sales) got me to 500 subscriptions

https://www.startupriders.io/p/spanish-startup-riders-6?s=w

I was trying to find ways to help entrepreneurs in the region (spain) and noticed there wasn't an easily accessible compilation of VC funds and angels by company stage. There had been a couple of attempts with medium posts and other articles in hard to pin-point formats - so I decided to solve it.

I built a super simple Google Spreadsheet with all angels and vc funds by stage, and on another tab, all of the incubators and accelerators in the country.

The idea was to easily be able to find what you needed applying relevant filters - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qTk9P4z2kT7ZXJLcZly1FE6foGINbZMHAQvgA4bC9DY/edit#gid=125961678

Published it on Twitter and got a lot of attention.

Next thing I know someone sends me a link to the Techcrunch article referencing Startup Riders! I couldn't believe it.

https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/01/spains-startup-ecosystem-9-investors-on-remote-work-green-shoots-and-2020-trends/

Thanks to Twitter and meeting awesome people from the spanish startup scene there - I got a DM from a partner at one of the best VC firms in spain (who I already admired).

I was very direct about wether they'd be open to a coffee and wether they were looking for someone for the investment team.

I got incredibly lucky and received a job offer shortly after. I couldn't believe how powerful Twitter could be.

I hadn't posted a newsletter yet, and was lucky enough to find a great little audience on Twitter that trusted me (even though I was stil anon) to subscribe to my Substack.

I reckon it was because they saw there was actually a lot of effort gone into making those book summaries and news.