I aggregated the best stuff I read on entrepreneurship this week - Week 1

Here's a list of topics so that you can skip to anything you find interesting :)​Chris Bakke’s interview on why you should hire a fax machine salesman from Baltimore than someone from Google, pivoting from an agency business to SaaS like Workday, why most startups pivot like Shopify and Slack, looking for middle-market opportunities in startup investing, and VC firms hacking their way into early-stage startupsHow a tiny peanut butter company grew to $500k per month in salesHow Jeff Goins hacked guest posting for popular bloggersNow that I've made sure you don't waste your time if none of this relates to you, let's move on with those who're still here :D​My takes from Chris Bakke's interview on the Acquirer's podcastChris finds lucrative deals in companies that lie between bootstrapped small businesses and Unicorns, ideally the ones that raise a few million and sell for 10-20X in 3-4 years. Most investors are looking for either unicorns or undervalued public companies. Chris finds middle-market opportunities.Another interesting trend is VCs writing $10-50k checks to multiple startups as an engine for gathering information. It helps build relationships with founders early on in their career and VCs get regular updates on growth and can decide which startups to double down on. $50k is pennies to write off for VCs and can give them a glimpse into the next unicorn.Investment philosophy - who's the founder I know will kick ass? There are only a few companies that never pivot. It's almost always better to bet on the founder than the idea. Slack was a videogame startup, Twitter was a podcasting startup.Hiring - It's better to hire a fax machine salesperson from Baltimore than someone in charge of YouTube ads growth. You're not great just because you inherited a great process. He shared the story of Lambda school founder, Austen Allred on his mission in Ukraine. He went door-knocking every day from 11 am until 9 pm. “Nine hours of a 19-year-old American boy mustering all the courage he could to knock on the door of an old Ukrainian Communist and strike up a conversation about God”. The story reminds me of this story of Mitt Romney over the course of his 30-month mission abroad, Romney’s duties consisted mainly of going from door to door in Paris. He watched many of those doors close in his face. “Most of what I was trying to do was rejected” There's something about door to door sales I guess.Agency to SaaS - Workday is a prime example of a company pivoting from services to SaaS company. Even at the time of their IPO, almost 50% of their revenues came from services. Chris is building his startup Laskie to understand sales and marketing in large companies from the agency side and then productize his services into a SaaS.Play Long term games - Shopify was a snowboard shop for 2 years. Palantir had 1 customer for 6 years​How a tiny peanut butter company grew to $500k per month in salesNerdy Nuts leveraged TikTok, Supreme-style drops, and scarcity to scale their tiny operation into a peanut butter powerhouse. They borrowed Airbnb’s playbook and leveraged the US elections to drop 4 flavors based on the food preferences of Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders. Zachary Crockett has done an excellent job, sharing the startup cost, profits, and growth numbers in detail.​How Jeff Goins hacked guest posting for popular bloggersJeff Goins grew his blog Goin Writer to 10k subscribers in 2 years and made $150k. It was his 10th attempt at blogging. He'd failed in all previous 9."All my failed blogs had 1 thing in common. I had quit them." So with Goins Writer, he made 1 decision. He'd write every single day for 2 years. And if he failed to get 250 subscribers at the end of 2 years, he'd quit. He also decided that for every 1 thing he'd sell, he'd give away 3 things for free.And here's how he hacked guest posting - Become someone's case studyAn example of this is Jeff Goins becoming Michael Hyatt's case study. Michael, in those days, was teaching his readers about implementing lead magnets. Jeff did exactly what Michael had asked and reached out to him with his results."I did this enough times with enough people that some of them started talking about me"Michael asked Jeff to write a chapter in his book "Platform".An important insight that Jeff had in the process was, everyone is looking for testimonials. If you implement someone's strategies and ask them to share your story, there's a chance you get to tap into their audience. You're helping them for sure, but every relationship starts with a favor.---------------------------Thanks for reading. My Twitter if you like to say Hi! :) see hubwealthy.com/wealthy