Why do 98% of website suck? ๐
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To improve my templates, I used Pospy (more on this below). Check out the new and improved version here. If you haven't purchased the template you can grab it here.
๐ Articles
It's a simple fact that most startup ideas are not going to work out. As Chris McCormick points out in this post, "Just like most tweets never get a retweet, most GitHub projects have no users, and most Hacker News posts never get an upvote. That's a simple truth". So it makes sense to kill the bad ones quickly. Chris argues that by looking to 'validate' a business concept you are inherently creating a bias towards a positive outcome - so don't validate them, invalidate them. Whether or not you agree with this approach, his post is a fantastic read and full of great tips to invalidate your business idea. (8 min read)
๐ Bonus Read: James Fleischmann's - 19 Product Testing and Marketing Validation Techniques.
YC's is still one of the most sought-after accelerator programs to join. Founders from around the world apply every quarter to join their latest batch. However, it's said their acceptance rate is between 1.5% to 3% - that's harder than getting accepted into Harvard. As much as we know about YC and its positive effects we know little about the financial costs of enrolling. Mat Sherman explores the true cost of enrolling into YC and the implication it can have based on their terms. Mat's analysis doesn't just cover YC but also Venture Capital in general and if it's the right option to consider when building your business.
"If you're focused on the capital, you're looking at the wrong side of the deal" (9 min read)
๐ Bonus Listen: Alexis Ohanain (Co-Founder of Reddit) discusses what it was like being in the first cohort of YC.
๐ Bonus Read: Corey Haines wrote this fantastic post exploring all the options available when fundraising for your startup.
Jelmer and Marcus are both prolific makers, so when they wrote this post about a new framework to help makers manage multiple side-projects with no code I was all ears.
"Side projects are like potato chips. You can't just have one".
No-code has allowed us to take a series of smaller bets as opposed to big moonshot bets over a longer period of time and resources (Max Haining summarised it perfectly with this graphic). "You can make multiple smaller bets, see how they perform, and double down on one that works." By creating a series of small bets we can decrease our risk - additionally, no-code tools are disposable to an extent with limited associated cost apart from your own time. (6 min read)
๐ Links
Adrian Alfieri started The Proof because he couldn't find the advice he needed online. Having struggled with heightened stress and anxiety frequently he sought out to find this advice from well-known founders, investors and creatives. Every week, he digs into their daily habits, tactics, and routines. Personally, I find it fascinating how others manage their daily schedules and routines and usually pick up some great tips and hacks to incorporate into my own personal routines. I personally found both Sahil Bloom and Rob Dyrdek's interesting.
I'm a sucker for nostalgic tech, so when I discovered 'Mobile Phone Museum' I got lost searching through their directory of mobile devices I owned decades ago. Mobile Phone Museum is a not-for-profit entity conceived by Ben Wood to safeguard the rich history and design diversity of mobile devices which have been launched over the last four decades.
Ok, since you asked... my first mobile was a Philips Savvy back in ~2000, my first colour phone was the Samsung T100 then my favorite of all time the Sony Ericsson W800 in 2005 which had an incredible design aesthetic. Go on give it a shot! ๐ค๐ป
๐ฑ Products
Miha Mlakar recently launched Popsy - a free website builder to supercharge your Notion site. I've tried both Super and Potion which provide similar functionality, however, this IMO is way easier to use. It took me just an hour to update my entire Notion website template pack - adding additional functionality such as a navigation bar on desktop and mobile, custom domain, CTA buttons, themes, fonts, callout cards, social icons, and much more. Check out my improved Notion website template here in action.
I've been searching for a while for a no-code NFT tool like this and I think I have found it. The team at ๐ ๐ ๐จI created from what I understand, one of the slickest no-code NFT creation tools currently available. I had a brief play around with the demo (found here) and found it really straightforward and mildly addictive to play with. You can easily generate custom and randomized designs, test your layer combinations, traits and export for Solana, Ethereum, and Polygon.
๐ Bonus Read: On the topic of NFT's check out this fantastic campaign the Australian Open is running in partnership with Decentraland ๐พ
As Miguel Ferreira put it "A website without good copy is like Chuck Norris without a beard. Powerless. Unnatural. A tragedy." So to combat this tragedy he built Great Landing Page Copyย to showcase & celebrate websites that do the opposite. Writing good copy is a struggle for me. My personal website is in a constant state of iteration and I'm still finding my style. Over the holiday period, I used this resource for inspiration and started to rewrite a few pages. A lot of the sites are D2C brands but IMO I think they do some of the most creative design and branding work anyway. Check it out.
๐ Bonus Read: Check out Miguels copywriting on his on personal site. I dare you, you won't be able to stop reading.
๐ฆ Tweet of the month
It's been a while since I featured anything about MSCHF, but they are back with another fascinating online stunt. Whether you agree with this stunt or not you gotta admit they do make the internet fun.
This thread by Colin Landforce explains how MSCHF bought an original Andy Warhol for $20,000 and made 999 exact forgeries.
They were mixed with the original and sold 1,000 pieces that *might be a real Warhol* for $250 each netting them $250k from a $20k purchase. Check the thread out and if you haven't heard of them before check out this NY Times article.
โก๏ธ Flashback
This month I'm going to leave you with a photo taken from a 1992 NASA conference exploring the world of VR. Doesn't it look suspiciously like the ill-fated Google Glass but two decades prior?
However, VR at the time was a solution without a problem. It was developed internally within NASA as a means to train engineers and astronauts to maneuver the space shuttle's robotic arm. Years later, two NASA engineers saw more potential and started the first VR lab to further explore its potential in space exploration. For decades this low-fidelity VR was used in numerous training scenarios including that of the crippled Hubble Telescope which needed repair. However, creating a $2.5b replica of the telescope on earth just wasn't feasible so they took to creating a digital VR model to train the astronauts on instead.
That's it for this month!
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Until next month,
Sam | @thisdickie ๐จโ๐ป
P.S you can view all my past content in this Notion repo ๐