Growing ARR 100x in 4 Years, the Secret to Success, and the Importance of Evolving Your Startup’s Culture

A newsletter for founders & friends (34th edition)

Hey 👋

Welcome to the 34th 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.

Did you miss last week’s newsletter about how to build a sticky product, raising a venture fund, and understanding sacrifice? Subscribe below so you never miss another👇

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Top 3 Tweets

🥇 Growing ARR 100x in 4 Years

Jaleh Rezaei @jalehr

As head of marketing at Gusto I shifted us from "growth at all costs" to profitable growth. ARR grew 100x in 4 yrs while CAC <12 mos. Now every company is asked to do the same. I shared how we did it in a recent talk to @ycombinator & @sequoia founders. Here's the summary:

🥈 The Secret to Success

Dr. Julie Gurner @drgurner

Secret to success I'll tell anyone: Find a niche that you are *really* good at, and genuinely enjoy.... - Go all-in on that - Hit it over & over again. It’s a win for you, and it’s a win for anyone you do business with.

🥉 The Importance of Evolving Your Startup’s Culture

Jonathan Lacoste 🛰 @lacostejonathan

@justingordon212 For founders & early employees, totally agree 💯 A mistake I made though was not evolving that culture for next 50-100 hires Work-life balance is very different for single 22-yr old vs parent of 4 we had to evolve & embrace all types of hustle, as long as goals were being hit

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Resources

• Bessemer’s five laws for community-led growth

• How long it took founders to build their MVP

• A useful tool for your next Zoom call

• A 4-Step Pricing Framework to Build Products With Scalable Unit Economics

• Everything to know about growth hacking

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Future of Work Reads

• Week-to-week management could be the solution to employers’ distrust of remote work (Fortune)

• The 10 highest-rated jobs by Gen Z workers, according to Glassdoor (CNBC)

• Adam is getting paid to take today off. Is the four-day week the future of work? (ABC)

• Gen Z want to work in tech, and from an office (Unleash)

• Adobe “Future of Creativity” Study: 165M+ Creators Joined Creator Economy Since 2020 (Enterprise Times)

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The World of VITALIZE

• Our portfolio company, Cloudeagle, is hosting a SAAS Comedy Night on September 13th, the night after SaaStr

• Our friends at Kapor Capital raised a new $126M fund 🎉

• This week on The VITALIZE Podcast we had Zach Hudson (@nosduhz), co-founder of Deft, an ad-free, SEO-free search engine for e-commerce. A VITALIZE portfolio company, they are building the future of e-commerce search by enabling its users to find, research, and buy products all in one place.

  • 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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