product partnerships at New_Public; previously community & growth @ Geneva
In working so hard to become independent, we forget how much satisfaction we get from the sense that others depend on us, and the meaning we can create by allowing ourselves to be dependent on others—if only we have the courage to let them help us.
The worst version of a fundraising ask is “we need $3M to give us 24 months of runway”.
The best version is “we need $3M to accomplish these 3 critical projects we have planned that will take us from X users/revenue to 5x in 18 months.
We need these 4 new positions to pull it off and we... See more
And I came to believe that heroism is neither being perfect, nor doing something spectacular. In fact, it’s just the opposite: it’s regular, flawed human beings choosing to put others before themselves, even at great cost, even if no one will ever know, even as they realize the walls might be closing in around them.
A social media app that aims to be town square is different to a social networking app that aims to provide a smaller, safe community. The latter has a far easier time banning accounts from entities like ICE, because it can set a tighter set of community rules. So one lesson is perhaps that we need — or at least, many people need — a pluralistic... See more
Pitch-deck advice: I don't think I have ever seen a fundraising deck getting better by using a designer to design it. The same goes for using fancy tools like Figma, Keynote, https://t.co/SeKkLrTe6G, or Canva. At @ycombinator we recommend people to use Google Slides and keep it…
At the most basic level, being an artful gatherer is being a creator of relevant ceremony.
When @colinhanks decided to close his business @hankskerchiefs, he didn’t just shut the doors. He marked the moment with a wake.
Watch this space all week for more highlights of how folks are... See more