Hey — It’s Charlie.

Welcome to the latest edition of Great Startups! Here’s what’s in store:

• The Code is Your Enemy: Discover why focusing solely on coding can hinder your startup’s success and learn essential activities that can drive growth.

• Anatomy of High-Converting Homepages: Uncover the key elements that make homepages effective at converting visitors into loyal customers.

• Free or Paid? Get a framework to help you decide whether to offer your new features for free or as paid upgrades.

• Startup Pivots That Don’t Work: Explore Andrew Chen’s insights on common pivots that failed to deliver results, ensuring you avoid the same pitfalls.

• Startup Hiring Trends for 2024: Check out Carta's latest data insights on what startups are doing in hiring this year.

Get ready to dive into these power-packed insights for founders and growth enthusiasts!

Resources

• The anatomy of high-converting homepages (LINK)

• A framework to choose if your new feature should be free or paid. (LINK)

• Andrew Chen’s list of startup pivots that don’t work. (LINK)

• Carta shares data insights on startup hiring in 2024. (LINK)

• Extreme brainstorming questions to trigger new, better ideas (LINK)

ICYMI

• Kiwibot acquires Nickelytics to turn delivery robots into mobile billboards. (LINK)

• Nvidia Acquires OctoAI To Dominate Enterprise Generative AI Solutions. (LINK)

• Adam Neumann’s Flow launches a co-living community in Saudi Arabia. (LINK)

• Definitive list of everything startups did that didn’t scale (LINK)

• An important metric you may not be considering (LINK)

Quick Links

• Sam Altman shares expert tips on how to succeed with your startup.

• High school dropout Vise Samir becomes a $1B CEO, defying all odds.

• Tibo shares how he turned failure into a $10M startup success.

• A founder stops sharing MRR updates to prioritize mental health.

• The realistic journey of a founder before it found success.

Nurture, Engage & Convert Users into Customers

v01 is the tool every startup needs to simplify user management. Designed for SaaS founders and growth teams, it automates key tasks, drives growth, and ensures you never miss a revenue opportunity. If your startup has a product, v01 is your go-to for scaling faster and optimizing customer engagement.

The Code is Not Enough

As a builder, it’s easy to get wrapped up in the thrill of creating, perfecting your code, or designing something beautiful. But the reality is, most startups fail not because the product isn’t great, but because not enough people know about it or the problem it solves isn’t clear. You can have the best code in the world, but if customers aren’t coming to your website or paying for your product, it won’t matter how clean it is.

The key is to step out of your comfort zone early on—talk to at least 50 potential customers before you start building. Validate the problem, make sure they’d actually pay for a solution, and test the market. Solving those high-risk business challenges first (like marketing, selling, and positioning) will give your startup a real chance to succeed, instead of just coding your way to nowhere. (LINK)

Ok that’s it for this week, We keep refining our newsletter content, just hit reply to let us know what you think about this issue.