Sep 8, 2020

From a Whatsapp group prototype to a $1.3 million investment. A founders validation journey.

By Sam Dickie • Issue #3 • View online

Hey 👋

Quick shoutout to everyone who recently signed up to the newsletter - I’m pretty shocked by but extremely humbled - thanks!

So this month I have been obsessing with early beta registration forms and flows. I have been trying a number of super early beta software products and documenting their pre-registration flows and questionnaires. Ye I know…. it’s slightly odd 🤭 However, I have found some really interesting and alternative approaches I’m going to share in next months newsletter.

Do you know any good early beta products I should give a shot? hit reply and let me know.

Right, let’s get to it - time for this months roundup below 👇

Articles

From a Whatsapp group prototype to a $1.3 million investment. A founders validation journey.

This is how a founder validated his early concept with off the shelf tools and ultimately lead to him creating Amie - A unique habit-forming productivity platform.

www.samdickie.me • Share

Tencent: The Ultimate Outsider

Part I in a two part series on the biggest company we know the least about. This write up is absolutely fascinating. Part 2 covers the future of Tencent - spoiler alert! It’s like ‘Ready Player 1’.

notboring.substack.com • Share

Top 40+ SaaS Growth Case Studies

What can we learn from successful SaaS companies and their growth? Here’s a curated list of the best growth case studies.

www.cenario.co • Share

Links 📓

mmhmm beta preview

If you regularly spend time on Zoom as much as me this new product by the founder of Evernote called ‘mmhmm’ seriously spices up your video calls. This demo provides a great overview of the product and it’s current and future features.

www.youtube.com • Share

Trends #0027 — Million-Dollar, One-Person Businesses

Looking to discover new trends and market insights with real in-depth case studies? Check out Dru Rileys TrendsVC 5 min newsletter. Scroll to the bottom of this link to see his past issues - you won’t be disappointed the detail is incredible.

trends.vc • Share

Makerpad & Flowmingo: Webflow fundamentals and shortcuts

Mackenzie Child is a Webflow wizard. He’s recently just launched a Webflow training course called Flamingo. He recently held a webinar with Makerpad and ran through some great Webflow tips and hacks.

www.flowmingo.co • Share

Products 📱

Airport - TestFlight App Store

Why didn’t I think of this! A TestFlight App Store. I’m an early adopter nerd and love trying super early software products. Get access to a library of TestFlight builds to try and test.

airport.community • Share

Macro - Give your Meetings Superpowers

Macro is a customisable meeting interface built on top of Zoom. The UI is super slick and has a bunch of custom command shortcuts to create meeting notes through your G-Suite account. If only it worked with mmhmm.

www.macro.io • Share

Clew – Unified file system for all work apps.

See and organize all your work from one place. Currently they support Figma, Gdrive, Dropbox and Github. Looking forward to more integrations. Another similar tool called ’FYI’ provides more integrations.

clew.ai • Share

Pitch - Easily create stunning presentations with your team

I just got my hands on a beta version of Pitch. I have been waiting for a while and it was totally worth it. Pitch helps teams build better presentations. And when I mean better - I mean SO much better!

pitch.com • Share

‎Poolside FM on the Mac App Store

‎Looking for some nostalgic summer retro chill tunes? This free online radio station plays back to back summer 1997 beats through an ultra retro browser and native Mac app.

apps.apple.com • Share

No newsletter would be complete these days without mentioning GPT-3 somewhere. Pieter Levels hacked together a startup idea generator using GPT-3 and it’s actually got some pretty reasonable suggestions to get those creative juices flowing - check them out 🦾

@levelsio

✨ This week I built a startup idea generator with GPT-3, here's the best ideas it came up with as voted by you

A thread 👇

1:53 PM - 28 Aug 2020

That’s it for this month!

Let me know what you thought of this newsletter by hitting reply.

Sam | @thisdickie 👨‍💻

Did you enjoy this issue?

By Sam Dickie

This isn't your typical newsletter! I'm not going to send one if I don't have anything interesting or of value to share.
‍
It's a simple once a month newsletter packed with super interesting content I have been digesting this month.

Including;
• Product Management
• Hottest Software Beta's
• Tech Trends, Personal Experiments
• No-code tools and hacks
• Productivity
• and much more

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