5 min read

📲 Full-Send February: 5 Hacks to Scale Your Startup

📲 Full-Send February: 5 Hacks to Scale Your Startup

Hey LOI Fam,

Welcome to February:

  • the finance markets are in shambles
  • you haven't secured a valentine's rezo yet and
  • you're wondering how the hell Janurary ripped by so quick

Don't sweat it. Our newsletter's here to help. Let's jump to our menu for the day

  1. Founder News you missed this month
  2. Startup advice from the founder of Hush Blankets
  3. Hangouts and shoutouts to know about

Since you've been busy watching the last of us building your startup, we'll do a quick round-up of what you missed the last 30 days 👇

🔎 Founder News you Missed this Month:

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  • 🎧 Sam park did a podcast on how he landed a deal with Ashton Kutcher
  • 📌 Sophie Wyne got into YC
  • 🚀 Dawson Wood launched RedBoy on ProductHunt
  • 🌮 Lily Bond passed 20 stores for Spyce Girlz Seasoning
  • 👋 20 of us are attending the MFM event Feb 16th in Vancouver
  • 🤞 A couple dozen of you are waiting to see if you got accepted into Lab X 2023. Here's how Justin (LOI grad from 2018) responded when he got in
  • 📸 Daniel Dubois hosted a fireside chat with Rick Heitzmann who had a 1900x return on his Pinterest investment
  • 🏆 TalkMaze won 2nd place at the Queens’ Entrepreneur Competition
  • 💸 Brittany Charlton won some cash from BBPA
  • 👏 IUVOX made waves with stripe sales coming in
  • 📰 Maika raised $4m from folks like Gary V to scale Webacy
  • 🧦 We got fresh socks delivered to LOI HQ, reply if you want a pair
  • 🚶‍♀️ Launched LOI Wellness events with Anastasia/Sharad
  • 💯 Apricotton shared the best meme of the month below (don't @ us, it wasn't even close) 👇

*P.S. Not Part of our LOI Slack?

Email Rob your favourite Bruce Lee quote and he'll let you back in. It's full of:

  • intros being made
  • strategies/tactics being offered
  • ways to win cash for your startup fuel

Email Rob to Join LOI Slack

💰 Startup Advice from the Founder of Hush Blankets

We've been following Aaron Spivak's newsletter and tbh it's full of golden nuggets.

Since ya'll are busy buildin', we rounded up 5 pieces of advice he'd probably pass onto you if you met for a "cortado" (Toronto-tarian for coffee) ☕️

Why trust Aaron? Great question diligent newsletter reader that isn't reading this while listening to a podcast:

  • 🔥 in the last 10 years, he's built over $100M in total sales
  • 🔥 he sold his company to sleep country
  • 🔥 he lives in Canada and was a young founder
  • 🔥 anddd the dragons den fam loved his blankets [we know, we know, photos or it didn't happen] 👇

Here's 5 lessons Aaron wished someone told him at 18:

1. 📌 Choose a co-founder who's truly exceptional

  • don't settle for anyone; make sure they're chasing greatness
  • if you're not inspired or challenged by this person, how are they gonna inspire or challenge your team, customers and investors etc

2.  📌 Conduct thorough customer interviews

  • "To truly understand the needs of your customers, you must speak to at least 20 to 30 of them. You'll be surprised by how much you can learn and how your perspective may change"

3.  📌 Plan for the long-term

  • "How will you make it to the 24-month mark and beyond? Make sure you have the resources, strategy, and drive to reach your first inflection point and continue growing"

4.  📌 Have a solid plan to acquire your first 10 customers

  • "Don't rely on them finding you, have a clear strategy in place to attract and retain them"

5.  📌 Choose your funding sources wisely

  • "Raising funding is never easy, especially in the early stages. Make sure you're talking to the right people and not wasting precious time and energy."

🧐 WDYT of Aaron's Advice?

  • If you hated it, unsubscribe from this newsletter and get back to building your startup (honestly, we're not joking) 🛠
  • Liked it? Follow him on LinkedIn by smashing that blue-ish button below ⬇️
  • Loved it? reply to this email so we can screenshot it/send it to our boss to get a raise so I can afford valentine's dinner in Vancouver for my wife) 🍷

Follow Aaron on LinkedIn

🛳 Shoutouts and Ship-Outs:

  • 👏 Brian Scudamore ($1b founder of 1-800-got-junk) is meeting w/ one of our LOI founders next month...
  • 🚀 Josh Gray launched Arty AI a new data interface for founders & operators.
  • 👏 Max shared some great thoughts on going viral w/ content on a micro vs macro scale
  • 🚀 Nino, Cameron, Shitanghsu and Connor helped out Dragos from PathPeer with a short-notice business proposal
  • 👏 The Spontivly team onboarded Laura Mesa to their advisory board after they met her at a Boost AMA last year

If you read this far, I hope you're noticing a trend in the newsletter. The trend goes like this:

  1. We learn about cool stuff LOI founders are doing
  2. We feature it in the newsletter with a sprinkle of memes
  3. We try to help you get connected and scale your startup

But there's good news and bad news to this content formula.

The bad news is if you're NOT in our LOI slack posting your good news or key asks, we can't mention you in the newsletter

The good news is if you are slacking, emailing, texting and Instagram DM'ing us you WILL get shouted out again and again

We wanna help you. We really do.

But you need to do the work to let us know what you're up to.

Then and only then, can we promote it to the 1,500 readers opening this email and all across our networks.

Sound fair?

If you got a cool update we should know about smash the big ol' blueish button below and watch what happens.

You may just be email intro'd to a billion-dollar founder without even knowing 😏

Here's how Jonathan respond when we pranked him:

Email LOI with a News Tip

Let's make a "holy shit" moment for you next month. Ball's in your court founder.

Always in your corner,

🖤 The LOI Fam