I still remember the story when one unexpected article from a niche tech journalist saved us. New partners appeared out of nowhere. Customers who had never answered our emails started booking demos. That single piece of honest coverage flipped the switch from “We might have to shut down” to “We can keep building.”

That experience shaped two things.

1. It pushed me to launch BYVI so early-stage founders would never again feel invisible.
2. It forced me to figure out how to turn content into traction when you have no advertising budget, no brand recognition, and no time.

Read from start to finish or skip to the trend that tackles today’s fire. Either way, plan to act. Content only works when it ships.

Trend 1: Collaborative Content That Sells and Builds Trust

Trust is the currency you trade for pipeline. Research confirms what founders feel every day: three out of four B2B decision-makers trust a vendor more when industry experts stand beside it. That is a remarkable number if you operate in a crowded market.

Most seed-stage teams respond to the trust gap with paid ads or an endless stream of SEO articles. Both tactics are slow and expensive. A faster route is to borrow credibility from people your buyers already follow. You do that through content collaboration.

My 3-Step Content Collaboration Playbook

1. Define the narrow audience you want to reach this quarter. Maybe it is heads of revenue at Series A SaaS firms or compliance managers inside fintech. Make the persona so specific you can picture what that person eats for lunch.
2. List the voices those people already respect. Ignore whether you know them. Open LinkedIn and scan whose posts your target buyers like, comment on, and share. That list becomes your dream roster of collaborators.
3. Send a direct, personal note. I usually highlight one sharp insight they posted recently and propose turning it into a long-form article, video, or guide. Then I make the work extremely easy for them: “All I need are bullet points or a quick voice memo. My team will handle the heavy writing.”

9 times out of 10 they say yes because people see it as a win-win. They gain free distribution and backlinks, and they look smart in front of their own followers.

A Live Example

Not long ago we teamed up with a niche finance podcaster. He recorded eight unscripted minutes into his phone. We turned those raw notes into a tactical guide called “How to Launch a Finance Podcast That Drives Leads.” That single post still lives at the top of Google, brings targeted traffic every month, and has closed paid DeckLinks accounts without a single outbound call.

The lesson here is simple: depth beats volume.

Where Founders Blow It

Many founders limit invitations to their existing network. That is comfortable, but it is also unproductive because you keep talking to the same people. Stretch past your comfort zone. Your ideal collaborator is two messages away.

Trend 2: Founder-Led Media

Logos do not build rapport. People do. Social algorithms also agree. LinkedIn gives personal profiles far more reach than company pages. When you, the founder, show up consistently, prospects understand your principles and see the human stakes behind the product. That transparency matters because the TrustRadius survey found that 58% of B2B buyers distrust vendor claims. Your unfiltered voice cuts through that skepticism.

My friend Adam from Linkus Group, a recruiting agency for startups, does a great job at this, especially on LinkedIn where he consistently shares short, insightful posts that reveal his perspective, not just his company’s polished message. Check out his profile and see exactly how he leverages that personal transparency.

How to Step in Front of the Camera Without Melting Down

Pick one channel where your buyers hang out. For B2B, LinkedIn still rules, but if you sell to designers maybe it is Twitter or even TikTok. Commit to one substantial piece of content per week. That could be a three-minute explainer video, a 300-word text post, or a short LinkedIn Live session. Start small but stay consistent.

Base topics on real questions that land in your inbox. If a prospect asks how your AI model handles data privacy, record a quick explainer. When you respond publicly, you educate that person and everyone else checking with the same concern.

Each post needs a gentle invitation. I like to end with, “If you want to see how we solve this problem, send me a DM.” Keep it conversational. You are inviting, not pitching.

Practical Benefits Beyond Awareness

Founder-led content doubles as user research. I once explained on LinkedIn how DeckLinks tracks slide-level analytics. Within hours six people commented asking for a HubSpot integration. We built it. Two of those commenters later became paying customers because they felt heard.

Common Mistakes

Founders often treat content as a side job that can be skipped during a hectic period. Block calendar time just like you would block time for investor calls. Building in public compounds.

Trend 3: Ungated, Snackable Product Education

Gartner reports that 61% of B2B buyers now prefer a rep-free journey. They want to research on their schedule, not ours. That shift means long forms and complicated sign-ups discourage more sales than they create.

Turning Aha! Moments Into Micro-Demos

Find the exact second a prospect understands your value. In DeckLinks that moment arrives when someone sees which PDF slides a recipient watch in real time. We translated that into a 90-second video, added call-outs, and posted it everywhere. No gate, no email wall.

Make your own version with a screen recorder. Narrate casually. Explain why each step matters, not just what you click. Then embed that clip on a landing page alongside a three-question FAQ and a “Book a Live Walkthrough” button. The page educates, filters, and qualifies, all while you are not working.

From Short Video to Closed Deal

One prospect binge-watched 10 minutes of my micro-demos at 11 p.m. I sent a personal note the next morning: “Saw you were looking at analytics features. Want to see how they connect to your CRM?” They answered yes, joined a call, and signed within a week. You cannot achieve that speed when every asset sits behind a gate.

Mistake to Avoid

Founders often insist on collecting emails to “build the list.” Early on, visibility and credibility outweigh list size. Let the product earn the opt-in by impressing them first.

Trend 4: Video-Infused Marketing Collateral

Given how much information exists and how quickly buyers lose focus, video-based sales materials are now the standard.

Why Static PDFs Are Invisible in 2025

91% of businesses now use video somewhere in their marketing stack according to Wyzowl’s 2024 survey. Buyers expect motion, voice, and personality. Static documents feel like dial-up internet in a 5G world. When you add a brief video narration to your documents, you bring back the human element to selling and get data on which pages keep attention.

Building a Video Deck in One Afternoon

Duplicate your current deck and cut ruthlessly until only 10 slides remain. Then attach a quick video narration to each slide. Speak as if the buyer sits across from you. Emphasize the “why” behind every feature. Keep the tone helpful, and not stagy.

When the deck is ready, host it on a platform that feeds back real-time analytics. DeckLinks lets you see when someone replays the pricing slide three times. That signal tells your sales rep exactly where to steer the next conversation.

The Deal That Started With a Video Content

You might not credit content marketing for landing enterprise deals, but we actually secured a massive client, a true ‘huge logo,’ through a simple video collaboration. It was a quick, rapid-fire interview format designed to capture raw human insights, and that genuine connection instantly translated into a real friendship and a substantial business opportunity.

See all the videos in our rapid fire series right here.

Trend 5: AI-Assisted Content Iteration

This is where a lot of people will debate, with some arguing for total reliance on AI generated content for scale and others taking a strong stance against its use entirely due to quality fears. But I believe you can achieve the effective middle ground, treating AI not as a content creator, but as a powerful iteration engine that speeds up the drafting process.

Amplify Your Human Insight, Do Not Replace It

AI finally lets two-person marketing teams act like they are 10. But there is a catch, of course. If you feed the model fluff, it returns polished fluff. Tools like ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude should polish your thinking, not supply it.

My Real-World Workflow

I start with raw material, usually a Zoom interview or an internal voice memo. I paste that raw transcript into Claude and prime it. The generative AI spits out a serviceable draft in seconds. My team then fact-checks, adds personal notes, and trims any wordy phrases.

For tasks I don’t enjoy, such as generating alt text or basic meta tags, I let the AI handle them. It saves my mental energy for strategy and connecting with others.

A Speed Record Worth Sharing

Last week BYVI transformed 30-minute founder interview into a full article and a workbook in under two hours. Before AI the same output would eat a week.

Trend 6: Distribution-First Mindset

Yes, distributing content is equally important as producing it. When resources are tight for new founders, the success of your content is entirely up to your distribution strategy.

Content That No One Sees Is Just Expensive Copy

I often joke that writing is the easy part. The grind starts at publish. My rule is simple: plan to spend triple the effort on distribution as on drafting. The numbers back the approach. The Inbox Insight survey shows that 88% of B2B buyers trust a vendor more when that vendor produces valuable content. But they cannot trust you if they never see it.

Building Reach Into the Content Brief

Before your team writes a single sentence, choose where the piece will live and how it will move. For example, your in-depth guide can get chopped into a newsletter snippet, a LinkedIn post, and a short YouTube clip. You can also identify relevant Slack or Discord channels and line up a speaking opportunity or AMA for the week after launch. If distribution is built into the brief, you will never panic on launch day looking for things to post.

Sales Enablement as Distribution

Sales reps love warm excuses to re-engage stalled deals. Hand them a fresh article and suggest a simple message: “Thought of you – especially the part about onboarding analytics. How are things on your side?” The outreach feels helpful because it is helpful, and prospects reply.

The Line Between Content Sharing and Pure Spam.

Founders sometimes confuse distribution with spam, thinking volume equals velocity. Genuine distribution, however, demands respect for the platform: it adds specific context, a tailored angle, or a fresh spin optimized for that channel’s culture. If you just share the same main title and a basic picture everywhere on social media, both the platform algorithms (which favor content made just for them) and tired users will quickly ignore you by showing your posts less or not at all.

Trend 7: Community Co-Creation

For founders with bootstrap mindset running lean, this is perhaps one of my favorite trends: leveraging your most engaged users to scale authentic content creation.

Turn Users Into Storytellers

Users crave recognition almost as much as they crave product improvements. When you feature their workflow in public, you elevate them and validate your solution at the same time. That authenticity beats any polished case study a freelance writer can deliver.

How We Built a Playbook in 2 Weeks

I posted a question inside our customer Slack: “What’s one creative way you used DeckLinks this month?” The offer was simple – share your tip and get a backlink. Over 20 replies arrived in 48 hours. We chose the best 10, designed each tip on a separate page with the founder’s headshot, and released the “Q2 DeckLinks Playbook.” Every contributor blasted the link to their network. Our newsletter list doubled over night without a single paid ad.

Hidden Benefit: Product Insight

Patterns jump out when you study how users hack your tool. One agency combined DeckLinks analytics with a spreadsheet to forecast win probability. We built that workflow natively and turned that agency into a beta partner. Co-creation breeds both marketing reach and product evolution.

Mistake to Avoid

Editing the contributor’s language until it sounds like sterile corporate copy. Leave their voice unaltered. The quirks and character make the content believable and sharable.

Trend 8: Intent-Based Micro-Offers

This is the new, smart way to boost conversions. It completely replaces the old idea of just offering generic freebies.

The New Lead Magnet: Quick Win, Zero Fluff

Old-school lead magnets were 12-page eBooks nobody read. Today’s buyers just want a quick, clear answer to one specific problem. When you deliver that win in under 15 minutes, you earn both gratitude and permission to follow up.

Building a Micro-Offer in 1 Day

Identify one bite-sized problem your product solves. For DeckLinks it was “How do I know which slide my prospect cares about?” We built a single-page template showing our analytics panel and shared the link ungated. At the bottom we invited readers to clone the template by entering their email. That tiny ask converted 16% of visitors, well above the typical 2% benchmark for gated eBooks.

From Download to Deal

Three days after the download we emailed a case study on how the template helped a real SDR cut follow-up time in half. The message included a Calendly link. Conversion felt natural because the prospect had already used the template and tasted value.

One Warning

Place micro-offers where intent spikes. Inside a high-traffic blog post, after you solve part of the problem, add a line: “Want the ready-to-use template? Grab it here.” Burying the offer three clicks deep kills momentum.

Conclusion: Pick Two Trends and Ship

Early-stage content marketing is not about pumping out 50 SEO articles or burning precious runway on ads you cannot track. It is about embeding trust into every buyer interaction.

Collaboration lets prospects hear from experts they already believe. Founder-led media shows the human behind the logo. Ungated demos honor self-service buying. Video decks combine story and analytics. AI frees you from grunt work. Intent-based offers deliver value before asking for anything.

Do you need to roll out all eight trends this quarter? No. Choose two that fit your immediate stage. Maybe you lack awareness – start with collaborations and distribution. Maybe your pipeline stalls – build a micro-offer and video collateral. Block time on the calendar, assign clear owners, and ship.

Remember the journalist who changed my trajectory with one article? Your next collaboration, video clip, or micro-offer can create that same spark. Keep iterating, stay visible, and never apologize for telling your story in public.

FAQs

How can startup founders measure ROI from b2b content marketing trends?

Focus on “consumption metrics” and qualitative feedback rather than just vanity views. Track how often prospects mention specific articles during sales calls or demos. While tools like Google Search Console are free, direct buyer feedback is the ultimate validator for early-stage strategies involving b2b content marketing trends.

Should startups hire freelancers to execute b2b content marketing trends?

Proceed with caution. While scaling requires help, the initial voice and narrative must come from the founder. Outsourcing too early often results in “generic fluff” that fails to convert. Establish your unique point of view and messaging pillars before handing off the pen to external writers.

How does sales-marketing alignment impact b2b content marketing trends?

It is critical for maintaining trust. A Gartner study reveals that 69% of B2B buyers report inconsistencies between a website and sales reps. Ensure your content assets and sales scripts share a single “source of truth” to prevent losing qualified deals due to mixed messaging.

What role do user reviews play in modern b2b content marketing trends?

Third-party validation is essential. Buyers often prefer user reviews over vendor-created collateral. Encourage happy customers to post on platforms like G2 or Capterra, then repurpose those authentic testimonials into social proof assets for your marketing funnel.

What is “zero-click” content and why does it matter for b2b content marketing trends?

Zero-click content delivers full value directly within a social feed (like LinkedIn) without forcing users to click a link. Algorithms favor this format, and it builds authority faster. Optimize for “feed consumption” rather than just trying to drive traffic to your blog, which aligns with current b2b content marketing trends.

Are interactive tools replacing static whitepapers in b2b content marketing trends?

Yes, tools like ROI calculators or maturity quizzes are gaining traction. Unlike static material, interactive content provides immediate, personalized value to the user while simultaneously qualifying leads based on their inputs. It is a higher-engagement alternative to traditional lead magnets.

How specific should my targeting be to leverage current b2b content marketing trends?

Extremely specific. Gartner data shows that 73% of B2B buyers actively avoid suppliers who send irrelevant outreach. Instead of casting a wide net, craft niche content that addresses the precise pain points of a narrow ideal customer profile (ICP). You can even build a dedicated landing page just for one specific client.

Is starting a newsletter still effective amidst shifting b2b content marketing trends?

Absolutely. An owned email list is insurance against algorithm changes on social platforms. Focus on a “value-first” newsletter that offers actionable insights rather than just company updates. This builds a direct line of communication with your most engaged prospects, independent of third-party platforms.

What is a realistic budget for executing these b2b content marketing trends?

For early-stage startups, invest time rather than money. You do not need expensive agencies to succeed. Focus on high-leverage activities like founder-led writing and video content. Your primary cost should be the founder’s focus and consistency, not ad spend or production perfection.

About the author

Lidia Vijga

Lidia Vijga is a content engineer focused on building in-house growth engines and training AI agents that help companies scale content and dominate brand visibility across traditional and AI search. She is also co-founder of DeckLinks, bringing firsthand founder experience in building and scaling technology products.

The post Actionable B2B Content Marketing Trends for Startups in 2026 appeared first on BYVI.

Startup founders don’t live in neat compartments. We live in the grey. One minute we’re fixing a database index, the next we’re reading bedtime stories, then we’re pitching an angel in a Twitter DM. Traditional work life balance says, “Clock out, recharge, come back fresh.” It treats work and personal life as two worlds that are supposed to remain separate, but work life blend challenges that separation. Reality says, “You’re always on.”

So please, let’s stop beating ourselves up for failing a system that was never built for us. We don’t need work life balance. We need a work life blend.

Why I’m Done Preaching “Work Life Balance”

I’ve been that founder sitting in a coffee shop at eleven at night pretending I still had a social life. Friends would ask, “When are you free?” and I would answer, “Soon.” Weeks later “soon” still hadn’t happened. Those same friends sent me articles on “work-life balance.” Unplug, they said. Take Friday off. Plan a spa day. That advice works if you run a nine-to-five. It collapses the moment you are fighting for your first ten customers.

I stopped chasing balance. I chose the blend, because with blend, you don’t have to compromise one part of your life for another.

Blend means I let work and life intertwine on my terms. I reply to a beta-user’s email at dinner without guilt, and I brainstorm a product name while brushing my teeth. The trick is to set clear guardrails so the blend doesn’t swallow you. This mindset is how I built BYVI, grew DeckLinks, and kept my sanity.

What Work-Life Blending Really Means for Startup Founders

Work-life blending means making your venture part of your day so the line between work and life fades. It does not mean working twenty-four hours a day. It means designing a rhythm where work fuels you instead of draining you. This is about making work an intentional, meaningful part of your life, rather than letting it happen by default.

Researchers call this role integration. When people see their roles as complementary not competing, they experience lower stress and higher engagement. Flexibility matters. A 2023 Mental Health America survey found only 17% of flexible-schedule workers reported poor mental health versus 27% without that choice. The same study said 92% believed flexibility makes them happier people. Translation: Blending works because it hands you control.

Why Work Life Balance Fails Founders

Work life balance, as a concept, was born on factory floors. Workers clocked in, hammered metal, clocked out, and left their obligations on the conveyor belt. Our grandparents needed that barrier. The work was physical, the rest was also physical – a clear on – off switch. Today, your factory fits inside your phone. There is no whistle at five o’clock.

Modern media makes it worse. Social feeds show a founder meditating at seven, signing term sheets at ten, surfing at two, and enjoying candle-lit dinner at six. You stare at the reel from your cluttered desk and think something is wrong with you.

Obviously that reel is edited.

Real life looks like Slack pings mid-wave set and Zoom calls from a parking lot.

Numbers confirm the chaos. Over 20% of small-business owners grind more than 50 hours each week, and nearly half admit they can’t unplug for more than 11 days per year, according to an Adobe Work-Life survey. The same study says 82% of entrepreneurs lost sleep last year worrying about work. That’s not failure. That’s the early-stage reality.

Why the Work Life Blend Wins

Momentum is fragile. When you finally land a growth lever – maybe a cold-email script, maybe a viral TikTok – you can’t tell momentum, “Hold that thought, I’m balanced today.” Blend allows you to ride the wave when it shows up.

Creativity ignores office hours. Good ideas pop while you jog or fold laundry. Balance tells you to switch off. Blend tells you to catch the idea, jot it down, and then get back to the jog.

Your life experience feeds your startup. I’m an immigrant in Toronto. My background, my city, my network, even my evening walks shape the founder stories I publish on BYVI.

Culture starts with the founder. If you preach balance yet answer Slack at midnight, the team stops believing you. If you openly embrace blend and show the healthy limits you keep, they model that instead.

3 Pillars of Sustainable Work Life Blending

Over years of trial, error, and a few near meltdowns, I refined 3 pillars.

1. Non-Negotiables: Draw the Bright Lines

A non-negotiable is a life element that, if sacrificed repeatedly, weakens your health or identity. You only get a handful. Mine are simple.

When you set your own list, just start by writing every activity you think you need. Strip it down until only the habits that keep you functional remain. Then tell someone. A public promise makes back-sliding painful.

2. Anchors: Create Small Routines That Hold the Day

Anchors are short, repeatable actions that mark the start and end of your day.

Pick one anchor for morning and one for evening. Keep each under 30 minutes. Once they turn into habit, the chaos in between feels less overwhelming because your mind knows exactly how the day starts and ends.

3. Micro-Transitions: Switch Hats Without Losing Focus

Founders swap roles all day – coder, marketer, recruiter, customer-support rep. Cognitive science is brutal on this reality. Research shows people slow down and make more errors when they switch tasks without a reset. The phenomenon is documented in a Cerebrum paper on task switching.

The fix is a deliberate five-minute ritual before each change.

I close the laptop, stand up, inhale once, glance at the next task, and ask, “What does success look like in the next thirty minutes?”

Then I begin. That short movement and the question clear my head. Without that pause, I’d carry leftover thinking and jargon into the next task.

You can add environmental cues. I take sales calls at my desk, brainstorm features on the couch, and record DeckLinks demos on the balcony. Your brain labels spaces, so even a small location change helps.

Organic Growth Hacks Rooted in Blend

Blend is even useful for marketing. When my friend worked in downtown caffee shop twice a week, he chatted with baristas about their payroll mess. Those talks turned into a mini case study, then three paying customers for a friend’s SaaS. That’s the coffee-shop customer hack.

A founder in our BYVI network joined a local spin class and offered lifetime use of her nutrition app to anyone who gave weekly feedback. She sweated, refined the product, and built a wall of testimonials in eight weeks. That’s the fitness beta group hack.

I often record five-minute voice notes while walking. Each note answers one real customer question. I transcribe the file, polish the text, and post it. One stroll produces four assets. That’s the commute content engine hack.

Measuring Success Without a Timecard

Traditional work life balance counts clocked hours. Work life blend counts results. My scorecard tracks 5 things.

1. I rate personal energy each week.
2. I measure output per hour, not hours logged.
3. I collect qualitative “customer love” quotes.
4. Every month the team answers two anonymous trust questions.
5. I log new skills acquired each quarter.

Improvements in any category signal progress and declines trigger conversation.

Your 7-Day Work Life Blend Blueprint

Here is a one-week starter plan.

Day 1: write your 3 non-negotiables and tell a friend.

Day 2: install a morning and evening anchor.

Day 3: script your five-minute micro-transition and tape it to your monitor.

Day 4: audit your tool stack. Keep one app that saves you time, delete one that steals it.

Day 5: call another founder and trade blend tips.

Day 6: block a two-hour digital detox and observe your mental state after.

Day 7: run the Friday check-engine review and adjust next week accordingly.

Email me your results. The best stories end up on BYVI, which in turn brings you readers, beta-users, and sometimes unexpected investors.

Work That Feels Like Play Doesn’t Require Escape

I used to read “work-life balance” and hear an implication: your job is so unenjoyable that you always need to find a way to escape it just to recharge. What if you spend your time on work that genuinely lights you up? You might never need to “escape” work again.

So perhaps work-life blend is really about chasing work that feels alive, almost playful, and letting the rest of your life fall into place around it.

The different domains of a person’s life – work, relationships, and personal interests – are interconnected and can support each other, helping to create a sense of purpose and overall well-being.

Final Word: Give Yourself Permission

Stop apologizing for loving your work. Early-stage founders are not broken because they think about product at midnight. We are explorers. Exploration blurs lines. Give yourself permission to blend, then add smart guardrails so the blend serves you instead of consuming you. That is the sustainable way to build something worthwhile – something deserving of your limited time on this planet.

I’ll be here, ready to tell your story when you are. Now go create.

FAQs

How does work life blending differ from work-life balance?

Work life balance treats work and life as two separate worlds with a clear line, requiring equal time in each. Blending integrates all aspects, letting work enhance rather than compete with personal time. Instead of trying to achieve a perfect 50/50 split, blending allows for flexibility and integration of work and life activities. It focuses on overall fulfillment and productivity rather than rigid time allocation.

How do I explain work life blend to my family when they expect traditional boundaries?

Explain that work life blend integrates work and personal life meaningfully, not working more hours. Show your family how flexible arrangements support relationships. Demonstrate clear boundaries like protected family time while staying present for crucial business moments that matter most.

How does work life blend affect physical health compared to traditional balance?

Studies show work life blend can improve physical health when managed properly. Unlike rigid balance, blending allows rest when your energy naturally dips and work during peak hours. The key is prioritizing important things like sleep, exercise, and nutrition as non-negotiables for overall well being.

How can companies and organizations support employee work life blending?

Companies support work life blending through flexible work arrangements, outcome-based metrics, and well being programs. Smart businesses train managers to lead teams effectively, focusing on results over hours. This approach attracts talent and builds future-ready organizations.

What happens when work life blending goes wrong?

When work life blending goes wrong, boundaries disappear and health suffers. Signs include constant fatigue, inability to focus, and compromising essential rest. The person loses energy and can’t protect important things. Recognizing these warnings is crucial for adjusting your blending approach.

How do younger people view work life blending differently than older generations?

Younger people view work life blending as natural integration, not separate worlds. Growing up with technology, they expect flexibility and passion-driven careers. Unlike older generations with rigid school-to-job structures, younger workers prioritize present fulfillment and future adaptability.

How should first-time entrepreneurs approach work life blending?

First-time entrepreneurs should define success beyond business metrics and focus on essential priorities that maintain energy. Create a weekly review process answering: What drained me? What energized me? This systematic approach helps find your optimal blending point before overwhelm.

How does work life blending impact parenting and raising children?

Work life blending with children requires crucial attention to family priorities and home life conversations. Kids benefit when parents model passionate work and personal growth, but need consistent morning routines. Talk openly about how work contributes to the family while maintaining close relationships, and remember that work life blend can also support spending more quality time with your wife and family.

About the Author

Lidia Vijga

Lidia Vijga is a content engineer focused on building in-house growth engines and training AI agents that help companies scale content and dominate brand visibility across traditional and AI search. She is also co-founder of DeckLinks, bringing firsthand founder experience in building and scaling technology products.

The post Work Life Blend: Forget Balance, Embrace the Blend appeared first on BYVI.

A small, personal note before the how to: I started companies because I loved solving a problem. But somewhere along the way I learned that purpose can vanish quietly, like a light dimming, and the work turns grey. What follows is my attempt to map the switch back on, with examples you can steal.

Why I’m Writing This

I’ve hit burnout three times.

Every single time, the spreadsheets, our KPIs, and my carefully color-coded boards said I was “crushing it.”

My body disagreed.

One morning in 2021, I opened my laptop to check DeckLinks metrics. Click-throughs looked strong. Trial sign-ups were up. Revenue had nudged forward. I should have felt proud. Instead my hand hovered over the trackpad like it weighed fifty pounds. I couldn’t bring myself to click. I closed the lid, walked to the kitchen, and stared at the coffee machine like it had betrayed me.

Sound familiar?

If you’re feeling that same heaviness, I’m not here to lecture you on meditation apps, green smoothies, or productivity hacks. You don’t need another hack. You need your why.

Burnout isn’t evidence you’re weak. It’s the mind and body telling you that you’ve drifted away from what made you start.

So let’s talk about realigning with that spark – practically, brutally honestly, founder-to-founder.

What Founder Burnout Really Looks Like

More than half the founders I meet describe the same symptoms: Sunday dread, inbox paralysis, and that “I just need to finish this sprint” lie we tell ourselves.

The data backs up the stories. A recent survey of African founders showed that 86% said building their business hurt their mental health, while 78% say being a founder is a lonely job. You can read the numbers for yourself in the Flourish Ventures report.

Work hours alone don’t explain it. A UK study found that a quarter of founders work 50 – 80 hours a week, yet some of them still feel alive, focused, even playful. Others are dying inside at 35 hours. Hours matter, but meaning matters more.

Medicine tells the same story. Physicians – yes, the people who lecture us on self-care – keep answering email while lying on a beach. In one U.S. study, 70% worked during vacations, and the ones who did felt far more burned out. The paper is open-access, and if you want the clinical details, start with the figures in JAMA Network Open.

Purpose flips the script. Founders who feel “deeply connected” to their mission are far less likely to flame out, according to a recent TIME feature that breaks down how meaning protects our mental wiring.

You get the picture. Burnout isn’t just about load; it’s about losing sight of why the load matters.

Three Myths I Need You to Drop

Let’s go over the biggest myths first, because bad assumptions keep you stuck.

Myth 1: Burnout comes from working too many hours.

I’ve powered through 90-hour weeks that felt lighter than air because they were tied to a problem I loved. I’ve also crawled through 25-hour weeks that felt like digging graves. Time on the clock is a weak predictor. Alignment to purpose is the strong one.

Myth 2: Burnout proves you’re not founder material.

Some of the sharpest operators in my network have hit the wall, taken a breath, and then built category leaders. The crash was a warning light, not a personality verdict.

Myth 3: You just need a vacation.

Sure, a week in Tulum will help you repay sleep debt: better sleep, fewer late nights, clearer headspace. It does nothing for mission debt – the vagueness around purpose, positioning, and next steps that continues to drain energy.

Here we are in Tulum – me and my co-founder – trying to outrun burnout. The same questions came along. A towel on the sand fixed our tired bodies, not our direction.

Hold those myths up to the light and watch them melt. Now we can work on the real problem.

Step Zero: Admit the Drift

I catch myself drifting when I notice four simple signals.

1. I scroll Twitter longer than I work on product.
2. Customer wins feel like admin tasks instead of little celebrations.
3. Sentences in my head start with “I should” instead of “I can’t wait to.”
4. I reach for tactics – ads, funnels, automations – before I think about people.

If two or three of those ring true for you, the drift is already underway. Don’t panic, see it for what it is.

Why Losing Your “Why” Hurts So Much

To be clear: purpose isn’t a spiritual hobby – it’s an operational tool. Those who know me know I went to India to pursue business objectives, not to seek spiritual alignment, and that choice reflects how I treat purpose at a startup: something you design, not meditate into existence.

Purpose is straight physiology. Work that feels meaningful triggers dopamine and serotonin. Those chemicals are your brain’s own Red Bull. Strip meaning away and the same tasks feel twice as heavy.

One study of 273 founders discovered that having control over their daily tasks slashed burnout dramatically. The authors used fancy regression tables, but the takeaway is dead simple: control your mission, or your mission controls you.

The key phrase in the paper is linked here for anyone who wants to dig deeper: job autonomy reduces burnout.

So if the body rebels when meaning fades, the fix is obvious. Bring the meaning back.

Mission Drift: How It Sneaks In

Every company I’ve co-founded started from personal pain.

BriefBid fixed my media-selling headache. As a sales rep, I kept asking why I had to chase RFPs and waste so much time. Why couldn’t there be a hub that simply matched me with RFPs tailored to my offerings? There wasn’t one, so we built it.

DeckLinks started because static PDFs that couldn’t be tracked were killing B2B deals. It wasn’t only my problem; many sales reps poured hours into proposals and then received no reply, leaving them with no insight to refine their next pitch.

BYVI exists because early-stage founders struggle to get even a single journalist to write about them, and I know how that feels – the same thing happened to us when we were building our startups.

Here’s what happens next.

You raise a small round, or land a shiny client, or see a competitor launch a new feature. Suddenly the original pain gets fuzzy. Goals multiply. Your roadmap bloats. You start caring about what makes sense on a slide deck, not what makes sense to the human who inspired the idea.

In my worst drift, Year Two at BriefBid, I chased enterprise RFPs because they looked impressive in investor updates. Our platform began to feel like corporate middleware, not the scrappy matchmaking tool we loved. Meetings multiplied. Energy vanished. That was burnout waving a bright orange flag.

The Re-Ignition Protocol

I run the same five-step rescue plan every time burnout taps me on the shoulder. Use it. Adapt it. Ignore any piece that doesn’t fit you. Just move.

1. Talk to Your Favorite User

Find a customer whose story warms you up. Send a quick video message, ask what’s hard this week, listen for five minutes, no selling. Their emotion is rocket fuel. When BYVI felt uncertain, I Zoomed a bootstrapped founder who told me our article landed her first enterprise pilot. My battery went from 5% to 85% in one call.

2. Purge Your Calendar

Print next week’s calendar on real paper. Yes, I really mean it. Circle anything that doesn’t move the product closer to solving that user’s pain or that you secretly dread. Cancel or delegate most of those circles. The space you free up is oxygen for creativity.

3. Ship Something Ridiculously Small

Momentum crushes burnout. Pick a micro-feature, a one-page landing test, even a clearer checkout button. At DeckLinks we once stalled six weeks. Morale tanked. We then shipped a tiny “Send via WhatsApp” link. Two hours of code. Team Slack exploded with GIFs. Energy recovered.

4. Feed Your Brain, Not Your Dashboard

When I’m exhausted, dashboards feel like concrete. Instead I absorb stories and art. I re-read “Founders at Work,” binge “How I Built This,” or walk Toronto’s Harbourfront and eavesdrop. Input precedes output. Give your brain fresh clay.

5. Say the Why Out Loud

Write a one-line mission and share it everywhere. Tweet it, drop it in Slack, stick it above the coffee machine. When the mission lives outside your head, you can’t ignore it. Mine is taped to my monitor: “Make press coverage accessible to every founder.”

Run the full cycle in a single week. You’ll know it’s working when meetings feel lighter, and ideas sprout again.

Work-Life Balance vs Work-Life Alignment

People love to ask if I believe in balance. They imagine tidy pies where work, family, fitness, and hobbies each own a perfect slice. That’s a fantasy for most early-stage teams. Startups demand obsession. But obsession is sustainable when the mission and your work towards that mission feel like play.

Alignment means the hours feed something you care about so deeply that even the problems make sense. I go long stretches without “days off,” yet I feel lighter than I ever did in a corporate nine-to-five. That’s alignment. If you hate every hour, that’s exploitation – fire the boss, even if the boss is you.

When Founder Burnout Means It’s Time to Pivot

Not every company deserves resurrection. Sometimes the market moves, and your burning problem vanishes. When that happens, no amount of user calls or GIFs will fix burnout, because the purpose is gone.

Three signals tell me it’s pivot time.

1. Users no longer scream about the pain we set out to cure.
2. I can’t describe a clear before-and-after transformation in one sentence.
3. My team only lights up when we toy with side projects that don’t fit the current roadmap.

BriefBid pivoted multiple times. We started as an RFP aggregator, moved to a matchmaking engine, and then turned into a workflow tool. Each shift followed a period of deep fatigue. Burnout, in that case, wasn’t a weakness – it was data.

The Role Investors and Advisors Play

Investors love talking about founder resilience, yet they often measure it in revenue charts. True resilience lives in the quality of purpose. If you back founders, ask them why they started before you ask for updated CAC.

Encourage weekly user calls. Celebrate a heartfelt testimonial as loudly as you celebrate a funding round.

Protect the why, and the valuation protects itself.

I also like to treat purpose as our most valuable constraint. We use it to say no to distractions, prioritize roadmap tradeoffs, and measure success by real customer outcomes rather than vanity metrics.

What Keeps Me Grounded

Founders keep asking for my “toolkit,” so here it is.

A Fast Science Detour

Stay with me for two quick paragraphs of neuroscience.

Dopamine fuels anticipation and motivation. Serotonin gives us the warm glow of pride when we finish a task.

Purposeful work raises both.

When meaning drops, the chemistry reverses. Tasks that once felt like quests now feel like chores. That’s not weakness; that’s wiring. Re-igniting purpose is a biochemical play, not a motivational poster.

How Storytelling Fights Founder Burnout

I built BYVI to give overlooked founders a place to share their stories. Here’s a happy side effect. Every time a founder crafts a genuine piece for us, they DM me later saying, “Writing this reminded me why I started.”

Storytelling turns vague memories into concrete language. Concrete language forces clarity. Clarity slays burnout.

So if you’re frying, pitch me a story. The article might land you a customer, sure, but the bigger win is inner alignment.

A 48-Hour Reset Plan

Theory is nice. Action wins. I’m spelling out a two-day reset.

• In the next hour, message one real user and ask, “What’s your biggest headache this week?” Listen. No selling.
• Three hours in, print your calendar and slash every meeting that lacks direct user impact.
• Six hours in, consume one story – podcast, article, or video – from a founder at your stage. Write three takeaways in that notebook.
• Twelve hours in, ship anything tiny. Push a landing page tweak, schedule a quick email, or record a raw demo.
• Twenty-four hours in, post your fresh one-line mission in public and tag me.
• Forty-eight hours in, sit quietly for ten minutes and check your energy. If it’s up, great. If it’s still flat, gather the team and ask the hard pivot question.

Do the work, then ping me on LinkedIn. I read every note and reply when the coffee’s fresh.

Final Thoughts

You are not weak for feeling drained. You are a mission-driven human whose compass needs calibration. Find north again and the grind turns back into the game you signed up for.

Close this tab and call your favorite customer. I’ll wait.

About the author

Lidia Vijga

Lidia Vijga is a content engineer focused on building in-house growth engines and training AI agents that help companies scale content and dominate brand visibility across traditional and AI search. She is also co-founder of DeckLinks, bringing firsthand founder experience in building and scaling technology products.

The post Founder Burnout Isn’t a Weakness. It’s a Sign You’ve Lost Your ‘Why’ appeared first on BYVI.

Looking for that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create the next big thing with AI? That moment is now. We’re currently living through a revolution. It’s not exaggeration; it’s reality. Just a few years ago, AI was mostly hype. And now? It’s everywhere. The tipping point came with GPT-3.5 and 4. These models blew past expectations, impressing even the most skeptical experts.

In this article, I want to share how to evaluate and pick an AI idea that’s worth pursuing. What to look for, what to avoid, and most importantly, where to start and how to think bigger.

The Evolution of AI Technology

What’s fascinating is how quickly things are changing. In 2017, the “Attention is All You Need” paper laid the groundwork for modern language models. Fast forward to today, and we’re seeing multimodal AI that can generate text, images, and even video. It’s mind-boggling.

Key players in the AI industry

The AI field is a mix of tech giants and scrappy startups. OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft are the heavyweights. They’re pushing the boundaries with massive models and seemingly endless resources.

But don’t count out the underdogs. Startups are innovating at incredible speeds. They’re finding niches and solving specific problems that the big players overlook. And let’s not forget the open-source community. They’re democratizing AI, making powerful tools accessible to all.

The difference between general AI and specialized AI applications

Here’s where it gets interesting for us founders. General AI, like ChatGPT, is impressive. It can handle a wide range of tasks. But specialized AI? That’s where are the real opportunities.

Specialized AI focuses on specific domains or tasks. It’s like the difference between a jack-of-all-trades and a master craftsman. General AI might be able to do a bit of everything, but specialized AI excels in its niche.

Take sales, for example. A general AI might help draft emails. But a specialized AI could analyze years of sales data, understand industry-specific jargon, and provide tailored strategies for closing deals. That’s the kind of value that customers will pay for.

The key is to find that sweet spot. Where can AI solve a specific, painful problem? It might not be as flashy as general AI, but it’ll be far more valuable to your target market.

The next big thing often starts small and focused. Don’t be afraid to dive deep into a niche and follow the money. That’s where you’ll find your billion-dollar idea.

How to Identify Promising AI Startup Ideas

Want to know a secret? The best AI startup ideas are often found in the most mundane places.

Look for boring but essential tasks

Boring tasks are goldmines. Why? Because they’re essential, yet overlooked. Everyone’s chasing the next shiny thing. But real value? It’s in the grunt work.

Think of automation for government contract searches and RFPs.

There are still individuals out there spending all their days refreshing government websites. Searching for contracts. Submitting proposals. Mind-numbing work, right?

This is a perfect use case for LLMs. Think about it. Repetitive tasks. Information processing. It’s what AI excels at.

There is actually a startup that has implemented an AI in this specific niche. The founders already saw this opportunity. They built a tool to automate the process. Boom! Instant traction. Why? Because they solved a real problem.

Here’s the thing about everyday mundane problems: they’re everywhere. Every industry has them.

AI can transform these tasks. It’s not just about saving time. It’s about unlocking potential. Freeing up humans to do what they do best: think creatively, strategize, innovate.

At DeckLinks, we’re always looking for these opportunities. Where can AI streamline our processes? How can it make our users’ lives easier?

The next big thing might not look exciting at first glance. It might be buried in spreadsheets or hiding somewhere in back-office operations. But if it solves a real pain point? That’s where you should start digging for it.

So, my advice? Embrace the boring. Look for those tasks that make people groan and whine. That’s where you’ll find your golden AI startup idea.

Focus on specific industries or use cases

Let’s get real. The AI gold rush is on, and everyone’s trying to strike it rich. But the real winners are those who dig deep into specific industries and build a laser-focused solution that solves real problems.

Healthcare

Healthcare is ripe for AI disruption. Think about it. Mountains of data. Life-or-death decisions. Overworked staff.

AI could revolutionize diagnostics. Streamline patient care. Accelerate drug discovery.

But you can’t just walk in with a generic AI solution. You need to understand the nuances. The regulations. The workflows.

One startup I admire is focusing solely on using AI to interpret medical images faster and more accurately. Or optimizing hospital staffing to reduce burnout.

Finance

Money talks, and in finance, AI is becoming the new language.

From fraud detection to algorithmic trading, the opportunities are endless. But again, specificity is key.

I’ve seen startups succeed by tackling specific challenges. Like using AI for credit risk assessment. They’re not trying to boil the ocean. They’re solving one problem exceptionally well.

Legal

The legal industry might seem old-school, but it’s begging for AI innovation.

Contract analysis. Legal research. Predictive case outcomes. These are goldmines waiting to be tapped.

Here’s the bottom line: pick an industry. Dive deep. Understand its unique challenges. Then build an AI solution that speaks directly to those needs.

This is not about being everything to everyone. It’s about being indispensable to someone.

Reimagine existing software with AI capabilities

Here’s a thought that keeps me up at night: what if we could rebuild every piece of software from the ground up with AI? It’s not just a pipe dream. It’s happening right now.

The key is to look at existing software with fresh eyes. Don’t just slap an AI chatbot on top and call it a day. That’s lazy thinking. Instead, reimagine the entire user experience.

Let’s talk about CRMs. They’re the lifeblood of sales teams. But most of them? They’re glorified databases. Useful, sure. But revolutionary? Hardly.

Now, imagine a CRM powered by AI. It doesn’t just store data. It analyzes it. Predicts it. Acts on it.

Let’s just look into the future for a second here. You log in on Monday morning. The AI has already prioritized your leads based on the likelihood of closing. It’s drafting personalized follow-up emails for each prospect. It’s even suggesting the best time to make your calls.

But it doesn’t stop there. This AI-powered CRM is learning from every interaction. It’s identifying patterns in successful deals. It’s coaching you on your sales technique in real-time.

This isn’t science fiction. It’s the near future of sales software. And it’s just one example of how AI can transform existing tools.

The opportunities are endless. Project management software that predicts bottlenecks before they happen. Design tools that generate mockups based on a simple text description. Accounting software that not only tracks expenses but also provides strategic financial advice.

Here’s my advice: look at the software you use every day. What frustrates you about it? What manual tasks do you wish it could do for you? That’s your starting point for an AI-powered reimagining.

And again, the goal isn’t to replace humans. It’s to augment them. To free them up to do what they do best: think creatively, build relationships, and make strategic decisions.

The future belongs to those who can blend the best of human intelligence with the power of AI. So, don’t just build another app. Reimagine an entire category of software.

Explore AI applications beyond chatbots

Let’s face it: chatbots are so 2022. Don’t get me wrong, they’re useful. But if you’re only thinking about chatbots, you’re missing the bigger picture.

Voice AI agents

Voice is the new frontier. It’s natural, it’s hands-free, and it’s incredibly powerful.

Voice AI agents are always on, never take breaks, and can handle multiple calls simultaneously. It’s not just about cost-saving. It’s about scaling customer service in ways that were previously impossible for small businesses.

These aren’t just glorified answering machines. They’re intelligent agents that can understand context, ask follow-up questions, and even detect emotion in a caller’s voice.

Multimodal AI systems

Multimodal AI can process and generate different types of data – text, images, audio, video – all at once. It’s like giving AI a full set of human senses.

I recently saw a demo of a multimodal AI system for e-commerce. It could take a photo of a room, understand the style and color scheme, and then recommend furniture pieces that would fit perfectly. All in real-time.

Think about the applications. In healthcare, it could analyze patient symptoms across multiple data types – medical history, x-rays, and even the patient’s voice during a consultation. In education, it could create personalized learning materials that combine text, images, and videos based on a student’s learning style.

Here’s my advice: don’t limit yourself to text-based AI. Look for opportunities where combining multiple data types could solve complex problems in innovative ways.

The future of AI isn’t just about smarter algorithms. It’s about creating more human-like interactions and insights. So think big, think multimodal, and you might just stumble upon the next big thing in AI.

Avoiding AI Startup Pitfalls

Beware of “tarpit” ideas. Let me tell you about a trap I’ve seen many founders fall into. It’s called the “tarpit” idea. Sounds intriguing, right? Well, it’s not as fun as it sounds.

A tarpit idea is like a shiny object that lures you in. It looks promising from afar. But once you’re in, you’re stuck. It’s quicksand for startups.

I’ve seen it happen. A friend of mine got excited about building an “AI co-pilot” for businesses. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Everyone wants an AI assistant. He got lots of interest, even some early customers.

But here’s the catch: nobody knew how to use it effectively. It was too general. Too unfocused. In the end, it solved no real problems.

So, how do you spot a tarpit before you’re knee-deep in trouble? Here’s what I’ve learned:

First, be wary of ideas that sound too good to be true. If it seems like it could solve everything for everyone, it probably solves nothing for no one.

Second, look for specific, tangible problems. That focus will keeps you out of the tarpit.

Third, talk to real users. Not just people who say they’re interested, but people who will actually use and pay for your solution. If they can’t articulate exactly how it’ll help them, you might be heading for a tarpit.

Finally, be honest with yourself. Are you excited about the technology, or the problem you’re solving? If it’s just the tech, watch out. That’s tarpit territory.

Trust me, the view from solid ground is much better than the one from the bottom of a tarpit. Choose your AI battles wisely.

Evaluating the Long-term Potential of an AI Startup Idea

Let’s talk about the future. Not just next year, but five, or ten years down the line.

Assessing scalability and market size

Here’s the thing about AI startups: they can scale fast. Really fast. But only if you’re targeting the right market.

I’ve seen founders get excited about niche problems. That’s great for starting out. But ask yourself: can this grow? Is the market big enough?

Look at the numbers. Really dive into them. And don’t be afraid to think big. If your AI solution works for one industry, could it work for others? That’s where true scalability lies.

Considering defensibility against larger AI companies

Let’s face it: the big tech giants are in the AI game. And they’ve got deep pockets. So how do you compete?

The key is to be irreplaceable.

Here’s my advice: go deep into a vertical. Understand the nuances that the big players miss. Build relationships. Gather data that no one else has.

Remember: big companies move slow. They can’t specialize in everything. That’s your advantage. Use it.

Potential for creating an ecosystem

Now, this is where things get exciting. Don’t just think about building a product. Think about building an ecosystem.

I recently met a founder who started with an AI tool for legal document analysis. And now, they’re building an entire ecosystem for law firms. Document analysis, case prediction, and client management – all powered by AI.

That’s the dream. To become the go-to platform in your industry. It’s not easy, but it’s where the real value lies.

Think about it: could your AI solution be the foundation for other tools? Could developers build on top of it? Could it become the ‘operating system’ for your industry?

Here’s the bottom line: building a successful AI startup isn’t just about having cool tech. It’s about creating long-term value. It’s about becoming indispensable to your customers.

So, as you evaluate your AI startup idea, don’t just think about the now. Think about the future. Can it scale? Can it defend against the big players? Can it become an essential ecosystem?

Answer these questions honestly, and you’ll be well on your way to building not just a startup, but a lasting, impactful company.

Final Thoughts

We’ve covered a lot of ground, haven’t we? Let’s wrap this up.

Choosing the right AI startup idea isn’t easy. But it’s not rocket science either. Remember: look for the boring but essential tasks. Focus on specific industries. Reimagine existing software. And don’t get stuck in the chatbot trap.

Here’s the thing: the best AI ideas aren’t about the coolest tech. They’re about solving real problems.

So, ask yourself: what problem am I really solving? Who’s life am I making better? If you can answer those questions, you’re on the right track.

As I mentioned already we’re living through a revolution. The opportunities in AI are massive. They’re transformative. And they’re happening right now.

Don’t wait for the perfect idea. Don’t wait for someone else to build it. The time to act is now.

Will it be easy? No. Will there be challenges? Absolutely. But that’s what makes it exciting.

So, go out there. Explore. Experiment. Fail fast and learn faster. The next big AI breakthrough could be yours.

Every giant tech company started with a simple idea and a lot of hard work. And your AI startup could be next.

About the author

Lidia Vijga

Lidia Vijga is a content engineer focused on building in-house growth engines and training AI agents that help companies scale content and dominate brand visibility across traditional and AI search. She is also co-founder of DeckLinks, bringing firsthand founder experience in building and scaling technology products.

The post How to Pick the Best AI Startup Idea appeared first on BYVI.

When my co-founders and I stopped chasing VC capital, and decided to bootstrap our second startup, we had no choice but to embrace the struggle in the early days and develop a resourceful bootstrap mentality. But now that we have done it, and have no regrets, I want to write about this valuable experience and how it helped us cultivate a new way of thinking and building a sustainable business.

Nothing in startups is easy, and to be completely transparent, bootstrapping a company is probably the most difficult thing I have done in my life. But would I go back and change anything? Absolutely not!

I speak with many early-stage tech founders who spend more time and energy on fundraising rather than customers and traction. The reality is 98% never close those fundraising rounds. And even for those who do secure funding, having a bootstrap mindset is invaluable no matter how much capital gets raised.

The skills you built from bootstrapping enable not only starting lean but smart reinvestment of profits when capital does come. Whether or not your startup ends up VC-funded, I always advise adopting the bootstrap mindset from day one to build a sustainable business focused on customers and value creation.

And if you choose to build a company from the ground up with no outside funding, I strongly believe that with creativity, resilience and self-improvement, it will become a sacrifice worth making in the long run.

The only question I have for you is: “Can you eat chicken soup without a chicken for a year or two?”

If your answer is YES, then you came to the right place.

In this article, I’m sharing how my co-founders and I cultivated and embraced the bootstrap mindset, some of our strategies for acquiring clients on a $0 marketing budget, and ultimately how we are continuing to build a sustainable startup without outside capital.

Where did the Bootstrapping term come from?

The term “bootstrapping” comes from the phrase “pull oneself up by one’s bootstraps” which is a metaphor originating from the impossible physical task of someone lifting themselves off the ground by pulling on their shoelaces. This phrase is used to describe tasks that require additional effort due to their difficulty.

Another origin of the term Bootstrap comes from the computer world, where it is used to refer to the process of starting up a computer or initiating a series of processes that ultimately lead to the operating system being launched. In essence, when you press the power button on your computer, you are booting up the system and setting off a chain of events that culminates in the operating system being loaded and ready for use.

In the startup context, this term refers to the immense challenge founders take on when they are building the company without external help from investors. With no capital investments, you need to depend fully on your own resources, traction with customers, and good old grit and hard work to grow. It almost feels like you are trying to levitate a business using nothing but sweat and tears.

The Bootstrap Mindset

As a tech founder who bootstrapped my 2nd startup with no funding, I learned firsthand how embracing constraints with hardship breeds innovation and progress.

It’s surprising that our willingness to endure discomfort and develop self-reliance and self-improvement has become the driving force behind determination, resourcefulness, and innovative problem-solving, which are essential for bootstrapping startup growth.

We are all familiar with the saying “Necessity is the mother of invention” which rings true for many founders who have built companies by solving the problems that they have experienced firsthand. But in the world of bootstrapping, one of the primary driving forces behind their startups is the tough conditions and the harsh constraints that naturally cultivate a strong need for survival.

Yes, I’m talking about the basic instinct, a simple need to survive, which fuels the bootstrap mindset more than anything else. That doesn’t mean that founders who bootstrap don’t solve problems. It simply means bootstrapped startups are just built differently.

Founders who bootstrap thrive by gaining strength from adversity and often convert misfortune into grit. 

The bootstrap mentality is the biggest factor that not only sets these founders apart but also helps them get ahead and become more resilient and durable in distressing situations.

How to Bootstrap a Startup

If you are prepared to endure a few years of discomfort while living on the bare minimum and have total faith with conviction, then you can bring your startup dream to life through bootstrapping. This involves being creative with very few resources and managing to survive the initial stages of company creation, even if it means living off instant noodles.

Here are the key concepts I share with founders on bootstrapping and how to approach this difficult yet very rewarding startup journey.

Earn runway through revenue, not funding

I cannot emphasize enough the importance of earned runway over fundraising when it comes to sustainable growth. Too often founders build bloated products based on assumptions and then desperately chase funding to sustain themselves. But by bootstrapping traction yourself first, you can build exactly what the market needs, extend the runway with the dollars from your customers, and retain control rather than climbing on the VC treadmill.

Given that our 1st startup was backed by investors and 2nd is completely bootstrapped, the most important lesson was that investors’ money does not solve money problems long-term. But customer traction does.

With the right business model, quick iterations and frequent remote user testing, you can extend your hustling years through revenue rather than fundraising – buying time to build assets investors eventually want to back.

In the early bootstrapping days, my co-founders and I were focused on 3 key areas:

Learn new skills to build and grow on your terms

When you are building a VC-backed startup, it’s on the VC terms, not your terms.

In the early stages, most startups raise capital to build a working product and hire the right talent. But if you constantly learn new set of skills, you can build your MVP and get to the market without the help of investors. Curiosity and outgoing self-improvement is the key.

And since we didn’t have funding to hire experts, we had to learn everything ourselves, from designing in Figma to SEO and growth hacking.

This is a photo of one of my co-founders working late to apply the lessons learned from an online tutorial. When we were just starting to build our first company, Ravil was a stock trader with a biochemistry degree. Now, he has learned how to create mockups on Figma, build websites on WordPress, create SEO-optimized content, prompt engineer AI and much more.

Learn new tools fast and become really good at them to expand your skill set. This way you can enable organic business velocity through your own skills, not capital. And with the right rapid iteration, you can build and grow on your sustainable terms.

Become insanely creative in acquiring customers

When you have to persistently win over users with little resources, it activates creativity and a completely new way of thinking, something you didn’t even think you had before. It’s funny to think this way, but out of adversity came our secret sauce.

Some of our most successful growth hacking tactics stemmed from scarcity – the biggest wins were small bets that created intimacy and word of mouth. For example, I discovered niche Reddit subgroups passionate about the problem we solved so we provided insane value there rather than broad social media bursts.

We avoided mass blasts and instead focused on laser-targeted communities who shared our ethos. We were determined to get our product in the right user hands even if only a few at a time. Small but mighty tribes of advocates organically multiplied our message despite no funding.

If people love your product enough, they become the marketing. And your early adopters will spread your story far more powerfully than any advertising.

Expect to fail hard and fail often

By embracing the bootstrap mentality, startups operate on the fastest lane despite having scarce resources. This means they build fast to fail faster, so they can iterate much quicker and get to market with a better solution that stands out from the rest.

I became familiar with the concept of failing fast only after we started bootstrapping our 2nd startup. When we had funding in our previous startup, we kept adding fuel to our hypothesis hoping it would all work out one day. But when we started to bootstrap, we didn’t have that funding safety net. What you do have is competitors with funding and bigger teams. So you have no choice but to rapidly test ideas and iterate without hesitation.

In the startup world, failure is inevitable. But failing cheaply and failing often is precisely what enables bootstrap founders to eventually find the formula that works.

Bootstrap Mentality in Marketing

As an entrepreneur bootstrapping a startup, stretching our ultra lean budget forced us to innovate on marketing with a resourceful bootstrap mentality. In those early days, our marketing was driven by time and vision rather than media dollars. We leveraged existing relationships and focused on building a community around our product and our mission.

In this section, I’m sharing exactly what we did to grow and attract more customers. But first I want you to start thinking of the resource constraints as an asset, approaching marketing with a thriftiness mindset so that you can unlock growth potential through ingenuity and customer collaboration rather than excessive ad spending.

Create engaging content with industry experts

As someone who experiments with SaaS content marketing a lot, one of the most powerful marketing tactics was creating authoritative content featuring industry experts. When capital is scarce, you need to establish credibility quickly and affordably. That is where leveraging the voices of respected leaders pays dividends.

I have identified rising stars and veterans in our startup’s niche and requested to collaborate on the video content together. Not only was this free access to esteemed perspectives my audience craved, but it also associated our unknown brand with trusted names.

Instead of podcasts and long interviews, we decided to produce short rapid-fire Sales Rush videos for LinkedIn, where I ask industry leaders questions about sales and their personal lives.

By creating a casual yet insightful format, we were able to get leaders to open up and share off-script, which allowed us to extract tactical gems that our audience craved. This approach helped us to introduce leaders in an authentic way while still providing unique value to our audience.

The ingredients to replicate this are straightforward for bootstrapped founders:

Rather than paying your way to legitimacy through sponsorships like funded competitors, bootstrapped serial entrepreneurs can earn recognition through smart relationship building. If you demonstrate you can create value and readership for industry leaders, they will return the credibility favor.

Set up channel partnerships

Since we didn’t have external funding to hire salespeople, we had to tap into our network for channel partnerships. This strategy served us very well and helped us expand into new markets.

We started by identifying players serving our target client segments with an offering that could be enhanced by our solution. For instance, we explored partnerships with consultant firms and mid-sized agencies that help clients create presentations. Since sharing and tracking PDF presentations is the next obvious step, our partners would recommend our platform to their existing clients to track the recipient engagement in real time.

For bootstrapped founders, channel partnerships can magnify market penetration exponentially based on shared objectives rather than just advertising budgets. This high-leverage model fuels scalability through credibility borrowing and incentive alignment so mutual customer growth unlocks your own.

Stand out at the events

I will always remember one of our tech events when we had no budget for a fancy backdrop or company swag. Moreover, the invitation was sent out at the last minute, which meant we had to come up with a quick solution. We decided to purchase a piece of white cardboard from Home Depot and drew our logo and tagline on it. During the event, we took selfies with the attendees and asked them to share their best sales tips and write them on the backdrop.

We had a great time at the event and our startup stand was the most popular among all the exhibitors. But the best part was that we got to connect and interact with the attendees in a more meaningful way. Plus, we even met someone who became our startup lawyer.

Learn SEO to build your Moat

With no ad budget, we needed traffic and conversions from organic search to compete with VC-backed players. This forced us to become proficient at content writing and SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

We focused on creating in-depth, engaging content that answered key questions and gave our ideal clients exactly what they needed to satisfy their search queries.

It takes time to build your domain rating, so to rank faster we doubled down on building a topical authority and we focused on our firsthand expertise and experience in our content approach.

We also started to collaborate with industry specialists respected by our niche to create educational “How To” articles filled with insider tips. By featuring their specialized know-how with practical guidance, it helped us establish our own credentials and helped us outrank other competitors on Google.

I was recently invited to speak at the SaaStock event to share our SEO strategy with other bootstrapped founders. In this video, I give some of the most practical tips that you can start implementing today.

To share the SEO knowledge with the content process that we have developed, I started running private SEO group workshops for early-stage founders and marketers.

Adopt founder-led growth approach

If your are not building in startup stealth mode, you can leverage your voice as a founder and build your company in public. For me that was a bit challenging at the beginning. As someone who doesn’t even have a personal Instagram, putting myself publicly out there as the face of the brand was a leap. I had to embrace sharing my insights to cultivate community and grow our brand in the most authentic way possible.

While I barely tweeted and lacked polished delivery, I felt called to spotlight the raw journey and the lessons learned directly from the entrepreneurial trenches. So I cautiously began documenting my personal journey building a tech startup with my two co-founders and sharing these learnings on LinkedIn.

The most difficult part was finding my own own voice. The vulnerability didn’t win style point, yet it resonated as other founders started to reach out and thank me for “keeping things real.”

That was the time when I realized that raising up other entrepreneurs and bootstrapped founders through grounded and real experiences was the voice I was looking for.

If I could leave imprints for those feeling alone on their own founder path, magic happened through every transparent story shared. Personally, I’ve had success by approaching common beliefs from a fresh perspective or delving into unpopular opinions that haven’t been explored before.

I urge founders still finding their voice to:

While it may feel vulnerable to share imperfections, your grounded place fosters inclusive ecosystems. If your goal is to grow your online community and advance your brand, a great start is to highlight your existing customers and empower others through reflections and real stories.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Bootstrapping

As a founder who has gone both routes, I’ve experienced firsthand both the advantages and disadvantages of pursuing the self-reliant bootstrap route versus VC funding.

Advantages of Bootstrapping

On the advantage side, bootstrapping breeds resilience, self-improvement, focus, and operational excellence out of necessity. With limited resources, you become incredibly lightweight, adaptive to market signals, and creative at doing more with less. The scrappy mindset forces laser targeting of early adopters and agile development keyed to customer traction vs vanity metrics.

Most importantly, you retain flexibility, control, and financial independence without chasing outside capital or prematurely scaling. The ability to organically grow on your own steam also makes your unit economics highly attractive when you do eventually seek investment.

I’d summarize this into 3 main advantages:

Disadvantages of Bootstrapping

The flip side of bootstrapping can be a painful test of persistence, hard work and never ending hustle in those wilderness years. You need to squeeze every dollar while living on passion and chicken soup without chicken before finding a product market fit. Rather than a quick injection of capital to accelerate growth, you earn slow organic velocity through long hours and waved salaries.

And once you achieve takeoff, not having deep pockets still limits how fast you can scale up marketing and beat others. There are periods where inches feel like miles while funded competitors move in leapfrog strides.

These are the main disadvantages that both of my co-founders and I experienced:

The tradeoff is between slowed short-term growth but control and resilient models long term. My advice is to embrace constraints now and leverage funding later once you’ve proven sustainability. As I mentioned previously, the skills forged in scarcity are invaluable regardless of the later runway.

My Final Notes on Bootstrap Mentality

The bootstrap mentality recognizes that money simply funds the fire but true traction comes from solving real problems creatively. By embracing constraints, you give yourself no choice but to build products users innately want through insight and invention rather than glossy veneer.

You will need to eat a lot of instant noodles, close sales yourself, and leverage assets creatively along the way. But out of that hunger comes the capability to construct a sustainable startup from the ground up using time and care rather than just capital.

What emerges from working shoulder-to-shoulder with customers using your bare hands is far more rewarding than a hockey stick metrics bought through capital alone.

So have courage during the early days, fall in love with the problem you are solving for your customers, and keep your vision rooted in creating authentic value. If your commitment outlasts the darkness, the bootstrapping lessons will transform you into a new type of leader – one that possesses an enormous amount of empathy and can adapt to any situation, but most importantly a leader who can eat the chicken soup without the chicken if needed.

FAQs

About the author

Lidia Vijga

Lidia Vijga is a content engineer focused on building in-house growth engines and training AI agents that help companies scale content and dominate brand visibility across traditional and AI search. She is also co-founder of DeckLinks, bringing firsthand founder experience in building and scaling technology products.

The post Bootstrap Mentality: The Key to a Sustainable Startup Growth appeared first on BYVI.

With 65% of startups failing due to co-founder conflict, according to Harvard Business School professor Noam Wasserman and the author of The Founder’s Dilemma, how do you find a co-founder for your startup that you can trust to perfectly complement your skills and share your vision?

Finding a co-founder isn’t about seeking someone who merely echoes all your concepts; rather it’s about discovering someone whose strengths can fill up gaps left by yours while constructively questioning your assumptions. A competent co-founder should bring out the best in you while mitigating risks. This balance cultivates deliberate decision-making processes for startups, leading to a more successful and sustainable business.

But most importantly, a perfect co-founder is someone you would enjoy working with for long hours without burning out. Together, you will spend countless hours brainstorming, strategizing, and executing plans. It’s highly likely that you will end up spending more time with your co-founder than with your family. Therefore, it’s crucial to have a good working dynamic and a strong desire to see each other succeed. When you enjoy working together and have fun while doing it, you can build a stronger competitive edge that makes it more difficult for other startup founders to compete with you.

You have to figure out how to work hard without burning out. People find their own strategies for this, but one that almost always works is to find work you like doing with people you enjoy spending a lot of time with.

Sam Altman

Understanding the importance of a Co-Founder

When starting a company, having a co-founder can be crucial for a variety of reasons. One of the most important is that it helps to distribute the heavy load of risks and responsibilities that come with starting a new venture. It also means you have another person who understands the nuances of your business just as well as you do. This mutual understanding can be invaluable in critical moments or when facing obstacles, as you have another mind on deck to help make important decisions and find solutions.

Furthermore, having more than one founder in the startup can bring unique perspectives and a lot more connections. The right co-founder may have skills and technical expertise in areas where you lack experience or know people who can help your business grow. Their different viewpoints can also lead to innovative startup ideas and solutions that you may not have thought of on your own. Investors also tend to favor startups steered by two or more founders since this implies teamwork and lessens dependency on a solo founder.

Identifying the necessary qualities in a good Co-Founder

If you want your startup to succeed, it’s important to find a compatible co-founder who has the necessary qualities. When evaluating potential co-founders, look for individuals who exhibit the following characteristics.

Strong knowledge in areas where you lack expertise

When searching for a co-founder, it’s crucial to identify the skills that can complement your strengths and weaknesses as I mentioned earlier. An ideal co-founder should have knowledge and expertise in areas where you may lack proficiency. For instance, if you excel in technical skills but struggle with marketing or business development, you’ll want to find a non-technical co-founder who’s got those fields covered. Together, you can make a great team and build a strong foundation for your startup.

Resilience, flexibility, and determination

Being a successful entrepreneur is not just about having the right set of skills; personal qualities also play a significant role. A good co-founder should exhibit resilience, flexibility, and tenacity, as most of startups face countless challenges during the establishment and growth phases. It is essential that your co-founder can handle pressure while maintaining optimism and focus on achieving strategic goals.

High conviction and low ego

It’s not easy to come across someone who has the ideal mix of confidence without arrogance. A co-founder who exudes fearlessness and remains grounded with humility is a rare and valuable individual to hold onto.

Trustworthiness and high ethical standards

From my own experience, trustworthiness is another attribute that must never be disregarded while evaluating potential co-founders. Trust forms the cornerstone of any thriving partnership; thus ensuring this individual upholds high ethical standards becomes a top priority. Given you’re likely to invest more time interacting with your co-founder than anyone else over forthcoming years – it’s crucially important to opt for someone reliable who matches your level of commitment toward nurturing a flourishing venture together.

Good communication skills

When searching for a co-founder, I believe it’s essential to find someone with excellent communication skills. The ability to articulate ideas and thoughts clearly is critical in any business partnership. Effective communication can help prevent misunderstandings and foster a more productive working environment.

Ability to make hard decisions

Another significant aspect when choosing a co-founder is their capacity to make decisions under pressure. Startups are often rife with uncertainty; hence having someone who can navigate through tough times confidently is invaluable. However, this can be a challenging trait to identify in someone, and you may not know how the other person will react until you both face a difficult situation.

Key decision-making abilities include:

• Ability to think critically under stress
• Confidence in making difficult choices
• Capability to take calculated risks

Shared passion for solving problems

Finally, a shared passion for building a startup cannot be overlooked. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you both have to be in the same space pursuing similar interests. Rather, it’s about having a common drive to solve complex problems and create products that customers will love.

My co-founders and I have a folder named ‘Customer Love‘ where we collect screenshots of all the social media shoutouts from our customers, as well as their direct messages thanking us for the product we have created. And because all 3 of us are driven by solving problems for our customers, this folder serves as a source of motivation for us during challenging times.

Previous experience in building a startup

If you are new to the startup world, it would be beneficial to partner up with someone who has prior experience in building a startup. This person doesn’t necessarily have to be a serial entrepreneur or a founder who exited from a highly successful unicorn. Most founders generally fail their first few companies before achieving success. I’d look for someone who has previously failed a company as a solo founder and wants to build another company but this time values the importance of having a co-founder.

Where to find a Co-Founder

You should now have a solid comprehension of the reasons why seeking a co-founder is vital for your startup and what qualities to look for in a co-founder. But, you may be wondering where to find this individual. Here is a list of the most reliable channels where many co-founders have successfully met and established thriving ventures together.

Industry-Specific Events – ideal for finding a co-founder in your niche

Immersing oneself in the dynamic hive of industry-specific events often unlocks pathways to discover a co-founder for your startup venture. The spectrum of such gatherings, be it trade exhibitions, symposiums, workshops, or conferences is rife with opportunities to connect with individuals whose interests, goals, and set of values echo your own.

Additionally, these events go beyond just being regular networking hotspots; they are transformed into educational arenas that offer market trend insights as well as consumer behavioral patterns specific to their industrial sector. You might even come across a groundbreaking idea during panel debates by experienced entrepreneurs or experts that could help your startup grow within your area of interest.

Tech Conferences – a great way to find a co-founder in person

These tech-focused junctures draw professionals thirsty for learning about freshly emerging trends in their field. A tech conference is a great place where you can both network and spotlight your idea or business model. This could strike a chord with potential co-founders who vibrate on the same frequency as what you’re endeavoring to create.

YC Co-founder Matching Platform – find a co-founder with the help of algorithms

Through conversations with other founders, I have discovered that the Co-Founder Matching platform by Y Combinator is an excellent place to find your other startup half. It almost works like a dating site and it’s completely free. To connect co-founders, YC has created an impressive matching engine that filters co-founder listings and shows only the profiles that fit the preferences. I have personally met several startup founders who have found their co-founders on the YC Co-founder Matching Platform after going through YC Startup School.

Currently, YC Startup School has the largest networking pool, and it has facilitated over 100,000 matches. If you are in San Francisco or New York City, you could also join their exclusive in-person co-founder matching meetups.

Social Media Platforms – great for finding a co-founder with expertise

Social platforms such as LinkedIn, Reddit, Indie Hackers, and X (former Twitter) serve as indispensable conduits for individuals to engage and connect. They are also a great resource for startup founders looking for co-founders. But as the founder, it is up to you to use these platforms wisely to find the right business partner for your venture. This means more than just announcing your search – you need to join industry-specific groups or participate in relevant discussions on r/Entrepreneur and other subreddits. I also recommend to follow business influencers including Peter Thiel and Sam Altman as they attract like-minded individuals who could potentially become your business partners in the future.

Hackathons – Ideal for finding a technical co-founder

Hackathons are collaborative events that provide a platform for individuals with diverse backgrounds and experience levels, ranging from students to seasoned professionals, to come together and collectively tackle problems that are of mutual interest. By assembling teams of talented individuals from a variety of fields, hackathons foster a dynamic environment that encourages innovation, creativity, and resourcefulness.

Participants work together closely to develop solutions, leveraging their unique skill sets and perspectives to produce novel and effective outcomes. This collaborative approach not only facilitates problem-solving, but also promotes knowledge sharing and networking, making hackathons a perfect place to meet your future co-founder.

Previous Employment

One of the best places to start is by considering your former colleagues. In fact, I met both of my co-founders while working at previous jobs. Many successful startups were created by founders who have previously worked together, so it’s definitely worth considering. Make a list of people you’ve worked with in the past, and think about who among them possesses the necessary skills and capability to be your co-founder. Having a personal connection with your co-founder can be a great advantage, so don’t overlook your former colleagues.

Founder Institute

Founder Institute is the largest pre-seed startup accelerator in the world, providing support to founders at the idea and pre-seed stages to help them achieve their next milestones. Their network of leading advisors and investors has empowered entrepreneurs across 200+ cities and 6 continents. Founder Institute also organizes about 1,000 free startup events every year, where local entrepreneurs can connect with potential co-founders, network with investors, and learn from advisors.

Before enrolling in the program, I recommend reaching out to startup founders who have taken the program from the Founder Institute to discuss their experiences.

Startup Incubators – ideal for finding a co-founder with a startup idea in early stages

If you are in the ideation stage of your entrepreneurial journey, joining a startup incubator can prove to be very beneficial. Incubators provide you with opportunities to meet with mentors and advisors who can guide you in the right direction and connect you with an ideal co-founder from their network. Additionally, you may come across potential co-founders with whom you can collaborate. This could be someone who has a similar business idea as yours or someone who is already working on an MVP that complements your vision. Incubators often provide co-working spaces, networking events, and workshops, creating even more opportunities to find a co-founder.

The best way to evaluate a Co-Founder for your startup

It’s always a great idea to work on a small project together with a potential co-founder before making it official. This mini project could be a simple tool or an app if both of you can code. Or you could participate in a hackathon and collaborate on developing a solution together. The main goal of this project is to get a sense of how well you work together and understand the team dynamics. You’ll also be able to determine if you enjoy working together or if you clash and make each other miserable.

7 Steps to finding the right Co-Founder

Whether you are looking for a technical co-founder or you would like to find a co-founder who will take care of the business side of the startup, these steps will help you navigate the journey.

What percentage does a Co-Founder get?

Deciding how to divide equity among co-founders is often a daunting task, especially for first-time entrepreneurs. As tempting as it may be to divide it unequally based on who came up with the initial business idea or who has been working on it longer, it is recommended to split equity equally, especially if you want to ensure a successful and long-lasting partnership.

An equal split of equity ensures that both co-founders are equally invested and committed to the success of the company. It also means that both co-founders are expected to make the same contributions in terms of time, effort, and resources. If there is a founder conflict or other issues that arise in the future, the equal split of equity can help mitigate any disputes and provide a fair solution for both parties.

It’s particularly important to consider an equal split if you’re bringing on a co-founder at a later stage. This will help ensure that they are just as motivated and invested in the company’s success as you are. Additionally, it can provide a sense of security for both parties, as it shows a mutual trust and respect for one another’s abilities and contributions.

What happens next after you find a Co-Founder

Once you decide to work together with your co-founder, it’s crucial to establish a legal framework and put everything you discuss and agree upon in writing and signed contracts. This legal documentation ensures that both parties understand their roles and responsibilities and that there is no ambiguity in terms of equity and other arrangements. It also minimizes the possibility of future misunderstandings or disputes that may arise between business partners.

You may also be interested in reading: How to Find the Best Startup Lawyer for Your Company

As a co-founder, it’s important to establish an open communication, providing positive feedback, and recognizing your partner’s contributions. It’s also crucial to ensure that you and your business partner are on the same page regarding the company’s vision, goals, and strategies. Having a clear understanding of each other’s expectations and aspirations will enable you to validate, build, iterate, and get to revenue much faster.

In a startup, speed and execution are among the most critical factors for success. Therefore, it’s essential to establish a culture of agility and creativity, which includes experimenting with different approaches and embracing failure as an opportunity to learn and grow.

Finding co-founders is crucial, and when you do find them, a sense of great dynamics ensues. With the right person, the hard work that goes into building a startup won’t feel like work at all. Instead, it will be exciting and motivating as you both work towards a common goal. You’ll find that your conviction in your ideas only grows stronger when you have someone to share it with. And with a lot of resilience, a couple of pivots (trust me those are inevitable), and a little bit of luck, your startup will have all the chances to succeed.

FAQs

Post Updated ON:

About the Author

Lidia Vijga is a co-founder of DeckLinks, a SaaS platform that supercharges PDFs with Video narrations, CTAs, and real-time Analytics. Lidia is an early tech adopter, and as a passionate tech enthusiast, she actively supports other founders and shares her knowledge in building startups.

The post How to Find the Right Co-Founder for Your Tech Startup appeared first on BYVI.

Think of your pitch deck as the trailer for your Netflix series: its purpose is to spark interest, leaving investors wanting more and ultimately leading to that crucial follow-up meeting where you can dive into the nitty-gritty details. Creating a persuasive startup pitch deck presentation is essential to make a good impression on potential investors. This guide with pitch deck examples will provide you with all the necessary instructions and tips to create a successful startup pitch deck that will attract investors, increasing your chances of raising venture capital.

What is a startup pitch deck?

Key attributes of successful startup pitch decks

A winning investor pitch deck is like a well-coordinated orchestra where all the components work together seamlessly to create a captivating experience. However, the most crucial aspect is showcasing to investors the clarity of your vision: what you do and why you do it.

1. Clear: Investors should be able to grasp your idea quickly and easily.
2. Compelling: Your startup pitch deck should tell a story that hooks investors from the get-go.
3. Easy to act on: Leave investors with a clear path to invest in your startup.

Tell a compelling story

Storytelling is the secret sauce that turns a good pitch deck into a great one. Weave a narrative that takes investors on a journey. Start with the problem your startup solves, show how you came up with the solution, and why you believe your team has what it takes to get the product to the market. This video by Y Combinator, a Silicon Valley based accelerator explains how angel investors and venture capitalists evaluate startup ideas.

Based on my own experience, investors resonate more with founders who have personally encountered the problem they intend to solve or have a unique insight that no one else has.

Show investors you can sell that pen

At the end of the day, investors aren’t just investing in a product or concept, they are investing in you and your ability to bring that business idea to fruition. Show them that you are committed to bringing your vision to life and that you can effectively sell your idea to others. After all, if you can’t convince them, how will you convince customers?

Balance visuals with messaging

A picture is worth a thousand words, but that doesn’t mean you should cram your pitch deck with flashy visuals. Strike the right balance between visuals and messaging to create a great startup pitch deck that’s both engaging and informative. To give you an idea of how that balance looks, here is a pitch deck from Lexop, I think it has a perfect mix of visuals and branded elements paired with concise messaging.

Startup pitch deck design tips

The key to an effective design is simplicity. While it may be tempting to overload your pitch deck with graphics and complex layouts, sticking with a minimalistic approach can be much more impactful. By cutting down on clutter and focusing on the essentials, you can help your audience stay engaged and focused on your message. Here are a few tips to help you make your pitch deck visually appealing and persuasive.

• Use clean, easy-to-read fonts.
• Stick to a consistent color scheme that reflects your brand.
• Break up complex information into digestible chunks.
• Less than 30 words per page would be ideal, let the visuals do the talking.

If you ever require expert design assistance in crafting top-notch pitch decks, you can confidently enlist the services of the premier pitch deck designers at Toptal.

The 10 most important slides to include in your startup pitch deck

Less is definitely more when it comes to startup pitch decks so try not to bury your potential investors under an avalanche of slides. Instead, aim for a concise presentation around 10-15 slides. Your investors will thank you for it. The overall goal is to share a compelling story and your big idea, without bullet points or text-heavy slides. Below are the 10 essential slides you should include in your startup pitch deck. 

1. Problem / Current Pain Slide
2. Solution / Product Slide
3. Why Now Slide
4. Market Opportunity Slide
5. Business Model Slide
6. Competitive Landscape Slide
7. Traction & Key KPIs Slide
8. Go-To-Market Slide
9. Financial Projections Slide
10. Team Slide

Investor pitch deck template

Here is my favorite startup pitch deck template that I like to share with early-stage founders raising a seed round. It has a perfect structure for a slide deck and has been successfully implemented by startups to raise funding.

1. How to create the perfect problem slide

Demonstrating the significance of the problem your startup seeks to solve is vital for securing venture capital. Investors want to see that your solution addresses a real need or pain point in the market and that there is significant demand for it. You can demonstrate this by presenting compelling data, such as market research or other relevant statistics to illustrate the scale and severity of the problem.

Focus on one problem only

Even if your startup addresses multiple issues, it’s important to concentrate on one main problem. Summarize the problem on the slide, and create a one-sentence overview that concisely explains the issue you’re addressing.

It’s crucial to keep things simple and straightforward to prevent any possible confusion. This slide is significant, and if investors can’t comprehend the problem, they probably won’t connect with your solution.

Use real-life stories

As humans, we process information better when it’s presented in narratives. By giving your problem a human touch and presenting it in the form of real-life stories, you can connect with investors on an emotional level and demonstrate why solving this issue is crucial. Additionally, sharing a compelling story about the challenges your target audience and customers face can help investors truly understand the importance of your solution.

2. How to create a strong solution slide

To make the most impactful impression, it is essential to clearly link the problem with your solution. Focus only on the most important aspects of your solution that directly address the problem, and emphasize the positive impact it has on individuals or companies.

Show that your solution is scalable

Investors recognize that one-hit-wonders rarely have lasting success so demonstrating your startup’s scalability is key. Show them how your solution can expand throughout the market – geographically or through product diversification.

Show a clear gap in the market

The market is already flush with solutions, but that doesn’t mean all problems have been solved. To convince investors of the need for your solution, you should explain the current solutions available in the market and their limitations. This will allow you to show a clear gap in the market and demonstrate how your solution has the potential to disrupt the industry.

3. Why Now Slide – Timing is everything

Timing is paramount when it comes to launching a successful startup. Explaining how current market conditions are ideal for your solution can help you demonstrate the significance of the opportunity and emphasize why now is the right time to make an impact. Showcase this readiness in your presentation slides.

4. How to create a market opportunity slide

Investors are looking to back the next big thing – and your market analysis can make or break that dream. Get accurate with the numbers, using sources and graphs that illustrate the size of your market realistically. Remember, honesty is the best policy. Don’t oversell your potential; investors appreciate realistic growth projections.

Position your startup within the market

Now that you’ve painted a picture of the market landscape, it’s time to show where your startup fits in. Clearly articulate your startup’s unique position within the market and outline the competitive advantages that set you apart from the pack.

Divide and conquer

To further refine your market strategy, delve into market segmentation. Discuss the specific segments your startup targets and explain how your product or service caters to the unique needs of each group. This level of detail will showcase your startup’s adaptability and strategic thinking.

TAM, SAM, and SOM

Total Addressable Market (TAM), Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM), and Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM) figures will provide investors with an understanding of what opportunities lie ahead for you and how far-reaching your potential is.

For example, if you’re looking to sell your solution to car repair shops in the US (there are about 230,000 according to Statista) and you’re looking to charge them $12,000 / year (or $1,000 / month), then to calculate TAM, you need to multiply 230,000 by $12,000 which would give you a TAM of $2.76B.

Very often startup founders make a mistake and list an industry market size as their TAM so don’t make that mistake, investors will easily catch that and make one of the two conclusions: a) that you’re trying to inflate the opportunity size, or b) you don’t know your basic numbers.

In the case above, say your solution would not be a good fit for the car repair shops that use specific payment systems, and those payment systems are used by 40% of all car repair shops in the US. Now to calculate your SAM, you simply need to multiply your TAM by 40% and subtract it from your TAM. SAM = $2.76B – ($2.76B * 40%) = $1.66B.

For our car repair shops example, if you think you can realistically capture 10% of SAM, then your SOM is $1.66B * 10% = $166M.

5. Pitch deck example of a business model slide

The slide that outlines your business model is a crucial component of your presentation. Investors are less likely to invest in a startup that lacks a clear business plan for generating revenue.

Explain how your startup is / will generate revenue

A successful startup hinges on its ability to generate revenue – and investors want absolute clarity about how you plan to do it. Whether your business model is complex or straightforward, concisely explain the various ways that customers will be generating income for your venture.

6. How to create an effective competitive landscape slide

A competition slide is a crucial element that demonstrates your knowledge of competitors and showcases your startup’s competitive advantage. This is your opportunity to stand out by showcasing why your startup will perform better than the competition and win over customers.

Acknowledge the competition

Having no competitors in your industry oftentimes can raise concern amongst early-stage investors as it may suggest there is insufficient demand for your product or service, or your market may be too limited to support a profitable business.

Showing investors that you understand the market landscape while also emphasizing how your product is different conveys trust in a realistic way, so they can be sure their investment has its place on the map.

Demonstrate why customers will choose your product

When pitching your startup, it’s crucial to think about how your products or services can improve the lives of your potential customers. You need to articulate how your startup can effectively address their concerns or fulfill their requirements in a way that surpasses what your competitors offer.

7. How to create a solid traction slide

The traction slide is a crucial part of your startup pitch deck. It presents your initial achievements and provides investors with confidence that their investment is a wise decision.

Demonstrating revenue in the initial stages of your startup is a strong indication that your business has potential. To showcase your progress, share your daily/monthly growth metrics and highlight any early wins. If you don’t generate revenue yet, show the growing trend in your user base or signups for your minimum viable product (MVP). Use supporting figures and visual aids, such as graphs and charts, to help investors better understand your traction.

Showcase your milestones

Showing evidence of tangible progress and accomplishment gives potential backers confidence that they’re making an educated choice in investing in your startup. Share the exciting milestones you’ve hit, like product launches or strategic partnerships. Then give them a sneak peek into what’s in store – provide an inspiring vision of how your startup will continue to grow and innovate. Make sure they can visualize success ahead so they know that investing in you means joining something special on its way up.

8. The importance of go-to-market slide in your startup pitch deck

Creating a product is only half the battle. Understanding how to successfully launch it to the market is equally important, if not more challenging. Simply having a groundbreaking concept is not sufficient for success; it’s essential to possess the abilities to market and sell it effectively. Experienced investors know this and they will scrutinize this slide a lot.

Show your customer acquisition strategy

Your startup should have a well-defined plan for attracting and retaining customers to generate revenue. Your go-to-market strategy slide has to outline the steps you’ll take to accomplish this goal and bring your business idea to life.

Take a look at this slide that displays a successful tactic validated by the founder along with associated customer acquisition cost (CAC). It’s a great example slide that shows what tactic works and how much money it takes to acquire a customer. However, I personally think that given these unit economics, it may be wise to bootstrap the company.

9. How to create a financial projections slide

When it comes to crafting a pitch deck for your early-stage startup, the financial projections slide can be a bit intimidating, especially if you don’t have much in terms of real-life data to base your estimates on. Experienced investors understand that. In many cases, investors that do ask for the financial projection slide just want to see your line of thinking and your relationship with numbers. 

Your numbers don’t have to be perfect! Sure, accuracy is important, but what’s even more crucial is that they make sense. And if you’re struggling to come up with solid financial projections, try to analyze your competitors or similar companies in your industry and see if you can find any relevant data. Using those numbers to build a better financial model can do wonders in impressing potential investors.

If you are building a software as a service (SaaS) company, I highly recommend that you watch interviews with startup founders on Nathan Latka’s YouTube channel. These interviews often share go-to-market strategies for getting early traction, actionable insights, case studies, and other valuable information that will help you better articulate your value proposition and solidify your business plan.

10. Demonstrate why your team is the right fit

When it comes to startup success, there is one key element that stands out above the rest: the team behind it. Investors need to know that your startup is backed by a team with the skills and experience necessary to build the product and take it to the market. That’s why adding a team slide to your startup pitch deck is so important.

From sharing unique skill sets to highlighting past accomplishments, this slide should paint a clear picture of why your team is the ideal match for your startup. After all, when it comes to securing funding and building a successful company, having the right people in your corner can make all the difference.

Connect the dots between each team member’s expertise and the specific challenges your startup aims to tackle. By doing so, you’ll paint a picture of a well-equipped team capable of overcoming any obstacles that come your way.

Show any team gaps that need to be filled

Investors know that no team is flawless so be honest if any of the key positions remain unoccupied. Explain how you intend to locate the right candidates. This will show that you are conscious of your team’s strengths and weaknesses and you are dedicated to creating a diverse and highly skilled team. Take advantage of this chance to emphasize how acquiring seed funding will allow you to draw in top-notch talent and fill crucial positions, thereby enhancing your startup’s likelihood of success.

How to send a startup pitch deck

To effectively share a pitch deck, it’s recommended that you use a method that allows you to monitor investor engagement and maintain control over the sharing process. DeckLinks is a great option for this as it enables you to track whether your deck has been opened and how long investors are spending on each slide.

Once you design your presentation slide deck with google slides or other builder, you can make your pitch deck more impressive by adding a video narration with DeckLinks. This will help you communicate your vision with enthusiasm, confidence, and clarity – important aspects that investors often look for when evaluating startups.

A final thought – Share a good story but always leave the juice for the call

Remember the goal of the startup pitch deck is to secure a call with the investor. To achieve this, it is important to craft a captivating narrative and share a compelling story that will capture their attention and motivate them to reach out to you. Avoid divulging all the information in your pitch deck and save the juicy details for the call. After all, a little mystery can add to the allure.

The post How to Create a Startup Pitch Deck to Get Funded in 2024 appeared first on BYVI.

A revolutionary language model ChatGPT developed by OpenAI uses artificial intelligence (AI) to communicate with people using natural language processing. ChatGPT has been trained on 570Gb of data mostly from the Internet, books, and Wikipedia. As a result, ChatGPT can comprehend and converse with people about a wide range of topics. Including startup-related stuff! Startups can use this AI tool in many ways and the number of ChatGPT use cases is growing quickly. Here are the top 10 ChatGPT examples and use cases for startups:

1. Identify ideal customer profiles

This sounds crazy but it works! Many first-time startup founders can find it challenging to identify ideal customer profiles the traditional way.

Identifying ICP is no simple task! It requires the right mindset and techniques. Many startup founders also oftentimes fall victim to their own bias. As an early-stage startup, your goal is to find the right customers for your product as quickly as possible. But how can you gain an insight into who exactly would benefit from it without being too biased?

ChatGPT can help startup founders identify ideal customer profiles. How? Simply describe your SaaS product, list its main features, and let ChatGPT do its magic. It may not identify all of the ICPs but it can give startup founders a great starting point and save them months and months of work. While having a human-human interaction is still preferable for more accurate results, leveraging the power of ChatGPT can give startup founders a great starting point and save them months and months of laborious research.

2. Identify product features to build

Have you ever spent a lot of time and resources to develop a cool product feature that you hoped would increase product usage or bring new customers? Only to discover that no one uses it! That feeling of discouragement and frustration is all too familiar for startup founders.

ChatGPT will not tell you with 100% certainty which features will be in high demand, it can certainly speed up the process. You still have to get feedback from your users. However, I and my startup founder friends were getting very accurate results. With ChatGPT, what used to take weeks or even months for them can now be done in a matter of minutes!

So how ChatGPT can help startups identify what product features they should be building? Simply describe your product, and existing set of features, describe the user profile and use case and ask ChatGPT what features you should build that can help this user get more value out of the product, be more productive, etc. The results may surprise you!

3. Figure out a monetization strategy and pricing model

Monetization is a tough topic for early-stage startups. Unfortunately, many startup founders sadly fail to successfully monetize their products, though it may appear simple on the surface. Pricing models greatly vary based on your product, industry, and go-to-market strategy.

Many founders always flock to subscription-based pricing where customers pay a recurring fee per user to access software. This is the simplest pricing model, however, it can pose many challenges. One of the main ones is account sharing. Is your product tightly integrated into your customers’ workflows where account sharing is not a viable option? Can you effectively expand ACV (average customer value)? In many instances, you will find that the bigger the client is won’t necessarily correlate to more licenses purchased.

This is where you will need to get more creative with your pricing model. This is where ChatGPT can help you! Ask ChatGPT to come up with the most effective monetization strategy for your product. Just like in previous examples, describe your product, product-defining features, use cases, and challenges that you’re experiencing monetizing your product. The next step is to go and get feedback from potential clients!

4. Identify additional use cases for your technology

Did you know that Play-Doh originally was designed and launched as a wall cleaner under the name Kutol in the 1930s? Back then, coal heaters that people used to heat their houses left a lot of black residue on the walls. However, as oil and gas heaters pushed coal heaters out of the market the demand for wall cleaners declined significantly. While looking for a pivot, the company heard of a school teacher who used their product in arts and crafts classes. This insight sparked the Play-Doh revolution. These days the company sells over 100 million cans of Play-Doh per year.

Not many people know but YouTube was originally launched as a video-dating site with the slogan “Tune In, Hook Up.” However, the concept failed to gain traction and so when it became apparent that users were using the platform differently than expected by its creators – the founders pivoted.

One of the biggest mistakes startup founders can make is getting too attached to their perfect idea of how and who should be using their technology. If you don’t have a sizeable user base to get real-world data you have to try asking ChatGPT! Describe your tech and existing use cases and ask ChatGPT to list any additional use cases for your technology. You may not realize what your technology is capable of!

5. Identify pain points for your product and how to overcome them

Creating interactive mockups in Figma has become a norm for most startups. It is the best way to test a product with potential customers before actually building it. You can get quite granular with mockups, however, it is still quite difficult to foresee many challenges that can come up later down the road. Identifying and addressing these pain points is especially important for hardware startups.

So how can ChatGPT help startup founders? Easy!

Simply ask ChatGPT to create a table listing the most common pain points of the product and how these pain points can be solved.

Example for a cell phone: 

Limited Battery Life | Optimize battery usage – Improve the software and hardware of the cell phone to optimize battery usage and provide longer battery life.

do it for “insert your product description here”

This simple ChatGPT prompt can potentially save you weeks if not months of work!

6. Improve website messaging

One of the biggest challenges that many startup founders experience, especially at the early stages, is they fail to clearly explain what their product does in Layman’s terms.

Many have the urge to get fancy and creative. However, that is the privilege of later-stage companies with established brand awareness. When people land on your home page you literally have seconds to grab their attention and explain what you do. Even minor improvements in your website messaging can significantly increase conversion rates. This is especially true about the hero section (above the fold section) of your website.

While ChatGPT can give you great ideas on how to improve your website messaging you will still have to A/B test it.

7. Create a pitch deck

Creating a startup pitch deck is equal parts art and science, and early-stage startup fundraising can be one of the most daunting obstacles founders may encounter. Without any prior fundraising experience, it might become challenging to make a good first impression on investors and speak their language. After all, why should they trust a complete stranger with their hard-earned money? Not only do founders have to get investors excited about their product but also demonstrate that their business model is viable, and create a human connection with investors.

Just like with the website messaging, ChatGPT can help you create a copy for your pitch deck. Just let Chat GPT know that this is an investor deck. Oh and one more thing to mention, ChatGPT is notorious for coming up with bogus statistics so make sure to verify any numbers that it comes up with.

8. Write code faster

Yes, ChatGPT can even help you write code speeding up your product development cycles. ChatGPT uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology that can understand what you’re trying to code and also generate the code for you! Also, if you’re using GitHub, you can give GitHub Copilot a try. It is a more specialized and integrated solution for software engineers.

9. Write sales and marketing emails

For any B2B startup looking to take their product to the market, having a well-crafted email outreach cadence is paramount. But creating effective cadences can be tricky and time-consuming. Fortunately, ChatGPT can simplify this process by giving startup founders an easy way to craft custom email sequences for different customer types that they can plug into their automated email software!

It does sound easy, however, it may take you quite a bit of time to figure out the right prompt for ChatGPT but it’s well worth it. We highly recommend you tell ChatGPT to use a certain tone of voice so it doesn’t sound too robotic and unnatural.

For a more in-depth guide on how to use Chat GPT for sales, check out this article.

10. Create article outlines

If you’re pursuing PLG (product lead growth) strategy like many SaaS startups, most likely you will need to write a lot of content to drive organic traffic to your website.

However, do not make a mistake that many startup founders make and use ChatGPT to write content for your website! Many popular search engines like Google and Bing have already implemented AI-generated content detectors. And you definitely don’t want your website to get flagged by search engines for pumping out AI-generated content.

Instead, use ChatGPT to generate article outlines that you can use as a guide to write content for your website. Simply ask ChatGPT to write an article outline, specify the topic, target audience, keyword, or key phrase that you’re targeting, etc.

All in all, ChatGPT is an amazing tool for startup founders that can help them overcome many challenging obstacles on their journey toward success.

The post Top 10 ChatGPT Examples and Use Cases for Startups appeared first on BYVI.

For businesses that want to stay ahead of the competition, investing in modern asynchronous video tools is a must. Teams that use video grow revenue 49% faster compared to those that do not.

There are a number of reasons for this. Video provides a way to share information and data in an engaging and visually appealing way. When people see a real person on screen, they are more likely to engage with the content. Prerecorded video presentations can be easily shared with all of the decision-makers leaving no room for misinterpretation compared to static sales materials like PDF presentations.

The ability to connect with prospects and customers via video has been shown to increase sales and close rates. B2B Decision Labs reports a 64% increase in meetings booked from sharing short videos with prospects.

How to choose a video sales tool?

There are a lot of different asynchronous video tools for B2B video selling and video marketing, and it can be tough to know which one is right for you and your sales team. It’s important to consider what features you need to fit your overall sales and marketing strategy. Some video tools are better for certain types of businesses and use cases than others. For example some video prospecting tools have screen recording capability and they are ideal for tech sales, while others are perfect for sending video narrated proposals and have more granular analytics.

If you’re looking to leverage asynchronous video to accelerate buyer’s journey, there are a few things you should keep in mind. First, consider what type of video presentations you want to create. Do you need to create screencasts or product walkthroughs? Are you looking to share presentations and sales materials? Or do you want to prequalify your prospects? Once you know what type of videos you need to create, you can narrow down your choices. We have put together a list of some of the best asynchronous video tools for B2B sales and marketing available on the market.

Videoask

Videoask is an asynchronous video tool for B2B sales and marketing teams. Videoask allows its users to create a sequence of prerecorded videos that show up based on the answers recipients provide. It is a great way to engage your website visitors or prequalify prospects and is a good alternative to chatbots. One of the cool features Videoask has is the ability to collect testimonials from your clients in video form. It provides analytics allowing you to identify where users drop off so that you can optimize your videos to make them more engaging. Videoask has a great number of integrations, however, the majority of them are done through Zappier.

Videoask has a free plan, the plan includes 20 minutes of video or audio processing time (minutes are counted every time you or your respondents generate video or audio content). Their paid plans start at $24/month. This plan gives you an extra 80 minutes per month, allows you to collect files from respondents and answer live calls inside your videoasks. The biggest limitation this plan has is the number of minutes. To buy extra minutes and to remove Videoask branding you have to upgrade to their $40/month Brand plan. It will give you an extra 100 minutes and the ability to purchase more minutes.

DeckLinks

DeckLinks is a video platform for B2B sales teams. With DeckLinks sales professionals can video narrate their existing sales material and share the video presentation with their prospects or clients with a live trackable link. The platform has a wide range of features tailored toward B2B sales like custom CTAs, email capture, company profiles, and personalized client portals. It has by far the most granular engagement analytics compared to other video tools, allowing sales reps to see how much time a viewer spent per slide, where they clicked, what they downloaded etc. Marketing teams can also leverage this tool for their video marketing initiatives by adding a deck link as an embedded video on the website or by sharing deck links on social media platforms. DeckLinks does not support screen capture, although it does provide the option to embed pre-recorded videos in your sales presentation.

DeckLinks has a free plan. Their paid plans start at $8/user/month. This plan gives you unlimited presentations, access to engagement analytics and the ability to include your contact info in all your videos. However, if you want to add custom CTAs, access data rooms and CRM integrations (like HubSpot and Salesforce), you will have to upgrade to their Business plan at $28/user/month.

Loom

Loom is a video messaging tool for remote teams. Loom is great for recording quick video messages to share with your prospects and clients. Loom allows you to record your screen and your camera simultaneously. With Loom, you don’t need to worry about video hosting, all videos that you record can be shared via a trackable link. Loom will show you if your video was opened and how much time a viewer spent watching it. Loom does require a browser extension to capture your screen.

Loom has a free plan. Their paid plans start at $8/user/month. This plan gives you access to analytics and removes the video recording limitations. One of the most notable integrations Loom has is Salesforce, however, it requires an Enterprise level plan that starts at $45/user/month and requires a minimum of 10 users.

Vidyard

Vidyard is a video platform for B2B sales and marketing teams. With Vidyard, sales reps can record their screen and camera to create a video that can be shared with their prospects and clients. The videos can be shared via a link or embedded on a webpage. Vidyard reports analytics like video opens and viewing duration. One of the cool features that Vidyard has is custom CTAs (call-to-action). Custom CTAs can be very powerful as they provide a clear next step for the buyer. Similar to many other video tools, Vidyard requires a browser extension to work.

Vidyard has a free plan. Their paid plans start at $19/user/month. This plan gives you access to analytics, 1 shared CTA across all videos, and removes the video recording limitations. However, if you want to have different CTAs and access CRM integrations (like HubSpot and Salesforce) you will have to upgrade to their Business ($300/month, 3 users included) or Enterprise ($1,250/month 5 users included) plans.

There are a variety of tools available on the market for video selling and video marketing, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Keep in mind that the best video tool for one person may not be the best for another. The most important thing is to find a tool that works well for you and your sales and marketing team. With the right tool, you’ll be able to create engaging video sales presentations for your prospects and clients, and close more deals in much shorter time!

The post Best Video Sales Tools for B2B Sales and Marketing Professionals appeared first on BYVI.

Last month we launched DeckLinks on Product Hunt, and we were the #2 product of the day. I decided to write about our experience and share everything we did to prepare for the launch. Launching on Product Hunt is a 24-hour battle – 12:01 AM to 11:59 PM – so, before I share our tips and best practices, I want to highlight the Belarusian band whose music helped keep me awake all night during the launch.

What is Product Hunt and why should you launch there?

Product Hunt is the place for tech-loving enthusiasts to discover and share new products. Every month, over 4 million visitors go to Product Hunt to find the latest software, mobile apps, websites, hardware projects, and tech creations. If launched successfully, you will be able to drive awareness for your product, get early adopters, and receive feedback from a highly engaged community.

Preparing for the Product Hunt Launch

If you or your teammates are not on Product Hunt, a good start would be to sign up for an account and get active. Find friends and Makers (people who create products to launch on Product Hunt) to follow, upvote products every day, try your favourite ones, share your feedback, and participate in discussions.

Imagine your ideal supporter on Product Hunt and become that for everyone else.

Engage with Product Hunt community to build your following

The community discussions are a great place to connect with experienced makers who have launched many times before or meet new members who are planning to launch the same week as you. That’s how we met some of our initial supporters and we received tons of great advice.

Explore the most upvoted products

To learn from the best and most successful launches, enter * into the search bar and explore the most upvoted products in the Product Hunt history.

Start a mailing list via Ship

About 3 weeks before our launch, we created a landing page on our own website to start building a list of emails from our supporters. Then we let everyone know on social media, in slack communities, and in our newsletter that we were launching soon, and we drove everyone to that landing page to capture emails. That was a mistake on our part – most of the emails we collected were from people that were not active members of Product Hunt, and some subscribers had never heard of Product Hunt before. The best way to start collecting emails from active Product Hunt members while also creating buzz around your launch is to create an upcoming page through Product Hunt Ship. If your landing page ends up on the list of popular upcoming products, you will drive awareness organically from the community. 

Make friends from the other side of the planet 

The Product Hunt homepage runs on Pacific Time, and it resets at midnight daily. The best practice for launching your product is to do so at 12:01 AM PST and get as many votes as possible within the first hour to get your product featured in the popular feed. If you’re in North America on Eastern Time like we are, that’s 3:00 AM, and it’s incredibly challenging to outperform those Makers who launch in Europe and Asia during their morning and daytime, especially if the votes come from their colleagues and or large teams during their workday.

We focused on building relationships with startups from the other side of the world, and Makers from Europe, India, and Pakistan supported us in the early morning hours of our launch day. The best way to start these conversations is by supporting them and connecting with them via DMs on Twitter.

Create a video with text or subtitles

A short 30-second video is a great way to engage the community and explain your product. A lot of users watch product videos with the sound off since Product Hunt auto-plays your product video on mute when someone lands on your product page, so it’s best to add subtitles or make a video with text that can be viewed without the audio.

Find a Hunter or Hunt Yourself

If you are new to Product Hunt, a Hunter is someone who submits your product to Product Hunt and schedules the product page for the launch day. The Hunter will add you as a Maker so you can edit, update and add other Makers to the page before it goes live. When Hunters hunt products, their followers receive in browser notifications that your product has launched.

Upvote Bell created a leaderboard of the top 100 hunters on Product Hunt so you can find the best Hunter for your upcoming launch, based on the topics and previously hunted projects. If you plan to launch with a Hunter, make sure to connect and confirm the launch with them at least a few weeks in advance.

You can totally hunt your own product and submit it to Product Hunt yourself. We’d suggest adding your entire team and the contributors as Makers. If your product makes the homepage, everyone who follows Makers will receive a notification and an email.

Get lots of sleep before the launch

We knew that the Product Hunt launch was a 24-hour battle, so we decided to split the hours. In theory, this was a great idea; one of us could cover the night shift, and the other could take over from the morning onward. However, when launch day came, we both stayed up all night, all morning, and the entire next day. And that was after working the entire previous day!

When sharing on social media, ask for feedback, not votes

When sharing your launch announcement on social media, be sure to ask for feedback on your product, or ask if anyone is willing to take a look at what you have created and if they’d be willing to show their support. The Product Hunt community does not like it when you ask for upvotes, as it may even affect the results of your launch entirely. In the words of Product Hunt’s own Head of Support, Jake Crump, he advises Makers to not ask for upvotes, expressing a core idea behind Product Hunt “People should upvote things they genuinely like or find interesting, not because they were peer pressured to do so”. So, when generating buzz for your product, ask people if they’d be willing to show support for your launch in any way that they can – sometimes that upvotes, or resharing your launch, or even providing feedback on your launch page.

Commenting on your launch page is an opportunity for conversation

When you get feedback in the comments section of your launch post, make sure to answer the questions, but also take the opportunity to start a conversation with people; it’s a “Yes, and…” opportunity to maximize engagement on your post. You’ll meet other Makers, and learn about when they’re launching, or you’ll learn cool facts about other launches that you’ve seen. We learned the hard way that “Thank you for the support” is easy, but “Thank you. What are you working on?” is tougher, but more rewarding for everyone. 

Get Product Hunt Launch Checklist

A tool that we found very useful when getting ready for our Product Hunt launch was the Product Hunt Launch Checklist, which we conveniently found on Product Hunt. The checklist by Falak Sher and his team is only $40, and was vital for our team when getting organized in the week before our launch. Our only wish is that we had found it sooner, so we could have utilized more of the resources a month before our launch.

Nurture Your Product Hunt Leads

The Product Hunt community is composed of tech enthusiasts from every background, from every stage of their career, to every stage of a product – MVP to IPO – so it’s highly likely that you’ll make some great connections, and have a few great leads come out of your launch. The best thing you can do after your launch is keep engaging with the Product Hunt community, and nurture the leads you’ve earned. Those leads may be your next customers, your next product champion, your next power user, or your next investor. And by continuing to contribute to the Product Hunt community, you’ll become that ideal supporter for the next Maker in your shoes.

If you can take any one tip, best practice, or piece of feedback away from this guide, it should be this: start earlier than you think.

That was our biggest mistake, and one that you can learn from, since we thought starting three weeks ahead of our launch day was enough. It wasn’t. We thought ramping up activity a week before launch was enough. It wasn’t. If we were to do anything differently, it would be to start sooner. Maybe even a month sooner. Become a member of Product Hunt sooner. Engage with members sooner. Plan your launch sooner. And ultimately, become a helpful member of the community sooner. Because it’s great, and you’ll get so much more out of it than you put in.

The post How to Launch on Product Hunt: Step By Step Guide with Tips and Best Practices appeared first on BYVI.