$100M Lessons, Sustainable and Scalable Competitive Advantages, and Startup vs. Incumbent Value

A newsletter for founders & friends (40th edition)

Hey 👋

Welcome to the 40th edition of Re:VITALIZE, a newsletter with tactics, strategies, and stories on building companies plus cool things we’re seeing in the future of work, going out to 3,000+ people each week.

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Top 3 Tweets

🥇 $100M Lessons

Jaime Schmidt @jaimeschmidt

First, I bootstrapped a CPG brand from 0 to $100M+. Then, I became a VC deploying millions of my own capital. Now, I’m exploring funding models for building sustainably in web3. Through it all, I’ve learned what really matters:

🥈 Sustainable and Scalable Competitive Advantages

Rick Zullo @Rick_Zullo

@justingordon212 Our exhaustive list of moats (or what we call “sustainable and scalable competitive advantages”) at @EqualVentures

🥉 Startup vs. Incumbent Value

Elad Gil @eladgil

(1/N) Every tech wave results in a different split of startup vs incumbent value “Value” means: -Market cap -Revenue, profits, margin -The best people join -Societal impact I wrote a new post about will happen to AI companies: blog.eladgil.com/2022/10/ai-sta…

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Resources

• Best examples of "moats" in startups

• 35 impactful questions managers should ask themselves regularly

• Make more impact through these docs

• Actionable tips for breaking into VC

• The journey to 250K newsletter subscribers

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Future of Work Reads

• Rapidly Switching Jobs For More Money, Businesses Hoarding Talent And Cutting The Quiet Quitters May Be The Future Of Work (Forbes)

• Nine remote working trends to look out for in 2022 and 2023 (Unleash)

• The Office of the Future Is Greener, More Social, and Might Even Include Childcare (Time)

• This is how you can prepare to work in the metaverse (Fast Company)

• How does Gen Z see its place in the working world? With trepidation (McKinsey)

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The World of VITALIZE

• VITALIZE portfolio company The Mom Project launched a new custom research report: "Unlocking the Potential of Parents in the Contingent Workforce.”

• Elevate K-12 is hiring salespeople in Chicago

  • Email caroline@vitalize.vc for more info

• Enklu is hiring part-time event staff in Chicago for augmented reality exhibits

  • Email caroline@vitalize.vc for more info

• This week on The VITALIZE Podcast we had Rachel Cossar, Co-Founder and CEO at VITALIZE portfolio company Virtual Sapiens, a machine learning SaaS platform leveraging AI to help client-facing professionals measurably improve their comfort and confidence in order to master communication skills over video.

  • Watch on YouTube

  • Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify

• Open jobs at Vitalize portfolio companies

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Written by Justin Gordon, Director of Marketing at VITALIZE, a venture capital firm and nearly 400+ member angel investing community for everyone investing in U.S.-based B2B software founders in the work revolution. Find us on Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

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