Hacks to become a successful startup founder 👍🏻

Hi FTF Friends 👋🏼,

I hope you are keeping well.

Five Things Friday' (aka FTF). FTF is a short weekly dose of inspiration; this email captures five things I encounter in my startup journey. This includes, the books I read, blogs, podcasts, favourite productivity hack, startup strategy, quote I'm pondering, smart tools and stories.

What's packed in this week's post

📚  10 Must-read books for any startup founder

🚀  Why your business needs a podcast

✅  NFT - Metaverse and more

🤩  Benji v3.0 coming soon - New productivity level

🎙  I will listen to this again ❤️

10 Must-read books for any startup founder

Early this week, I was mentoring two amazing early-stage founders from a pre-accelerator program. One of the questions asked in the session was

Benji, how do you know these information and what do I know if I don't have enough business experience

Answer 👉 Books

Reading and accumulating information is essential in building your startup. I have no experience in building or running a high-growth startup (valued a few million dollars). I rely on advice from mentors, fellow founders and a lot of books.

Books provide me with lessons, key concepts, strategies and validated practices. The stories and case studies in the books help me calibrate my approach to leadership, team building and various other elements of running a startup.  

Many successful strategies within my startup journey and the companies I manage have been inspired by reading books.

P.S - These links are affiliate links from Amazon. I will get a commission if you click and purchase through this link.

1. Lean Startup - Eric Ries
2. 24 Steps to disciplined entrepreneurship - Bill Aulet
3. Zero to One - Peter Thiel
4. Thinking fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman
5. Start with WHY - Simon Senek
6. The startup playbook - Rajat Bhargava, Will Herman
7. The 7 habits of highly effective people - Stephen Covey
8. Tools of Titans - Tim Ferris
9. Good to Great - Jim Collins
10. Play Bigger - Al Ramadan et al

Click here to read more

Why your business needs a podcast

Podcasting is a popular format to share valuable content with your audience. Yes, Podcasting is audio-based rich content that provides the listeners immersive and insightful information about the topic of their choice.  

There are over 2,000,000 podcast shows across the world producing over 48 million episodes.

Read more - 2021 Podcast Stats & Facts (New Research From Apr 2021)

This number may look big but compared to other forms of content. For example, there are over 500 million blog sites on the internet.

I started a podcast channel for my startup - MyGigsters. The main reason was since my users were rideshare and delivery drivers, the hypothesis was they would listen to audio content better than visual or written content. Show link on Spotify here.

With no experience in Podcasting and hosting an interview, I started recording great interviews with industry experts, regulators and gig workers.

In my journey after recording 20 episodes, I am starting to see the fruits of my investment.

In the last 7 months, I have recorded 20 episodes and had the opportunity to interview some fantastic individuals, government departments and even earn revenue through the podcast.  

The channel has gained over 700+ listeners 👇

This experience and encouraged me to start another podcast channel as a personal hobby - Founders Lane 🥳  - link here

I have been interviewing some astounding founders and capturing their stories. So stay tuned; the episodes are coming soon. Please listen and share your feedback and comments.

NFT and Metaverse

Facebook, now called 'Meta', revealed the future social platform 'METAVERSE.'

Horizon Home - Horizon Worlds and soon 'Horizon WorkSpace' (not the actual name). Mark Zuckerberg shared his vision of bringing a hybrid workspace that infuses the latest advances in Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and Mixed reality.

In my opinion, I believe in this future of mixed reality and virtual spaces to connect, interact and experience new ways of social connection. I am intrigued by the upcoming advances in social technology and the growth of the creative economy.

Spoiler alert - Soon we will launch Founder Lane NFT on opensea. Don't know what is NFT - Read here for more information

My tip to aspiring founders, watch the trend and see what big companies are investing in and become an early adopter in the space. This will allow you to reap the benefits and get in early before the world goes crazy.

Think about bitcoin 10 years back

Benji v3.0 coming soon - New productivity level

I have invested $299 and become a member of the puddlepod community.

What is PuddlePod?

Puddle Pod is an 8-week virtual cohort to upgrade your productivity in work and life.

This is conducted by one of the inspiring individuals in the startup community in Australia - Michael Batko (CEO of Startmate (Australia's leading program for startup)

What am I expecting?

With a new baby home and changes to my life, my current productivity system needs a review and update. I hope that by joining the puddlepod community, I will connect with some fantastic fellow productivity hackers and re-assess my habits and re-calibrate productivity.  

So stay tuned, I will  share my progress in the weekly update

Another episode you don't want to miss

Find Focus in a Chaotic World from HBR Ideacast

Remember

Well, that's all for this week. 😁

I hope you like my FTF posts. I have completed my challenge of writing weekly for the last 3 months 🤩 . I am committing to writing more in the coming weeks (target two articles a week). But I need your help.

Please share what you find valuable in my posts and what you would like to read more about. Reply by clicking here.

Take care and be safe. 👋🏼