Founder’s Dance with George Levin #2

Welcome to Founder’s Dance with George Levin

I love my newsletter, and I appreciate you for reading it. It gives me a structure for my weekly observations, and I'm happy to spend an evening putting it all together for you.

Startup Hacks

Two years ago, I pitched Hints to a founder of a unicorn company as a potential investor. He declined, explaining that he doesn’t invest in products requiring users to change their habits. People are busy and overloaded; they want solutions that don't add extra work. However, what should we do if our product still requires some effort from clients to work effectively?

To address this, it’s important to deliver some value immediately, even before asking users to invest effort. For example, Gong.io, a sales intelligence tool, requires significant time and effort to fully integrate and master. However, from day one, it provides clients with recordings of all sales calls, broken into sharable clips highlighting good and bad sales pitches.

I spoke with a Gong client who has been paying over $10,000 monthly for about a year, yet they still haven’t fully figured out how to use the platform effectively. When I asked why they continue to pay, he said that the feature with sharable clips is so engaging that he spends hours using it, forwarding clips from the calls and his recommendations to the team.

Essentially, they pay 100% of the cost for just 10% of the value, but they accept the long integration and learning process because they receive this value immediately.

We’ve adopted a similar approach with our new product, CRMchat.ai, a mini-CRM for Telegram. While it may take time for clients to fully utilize the product, we’ve built an integration that allows them to sync their Telegram folders with existing tools like Notion, Google Sheets, and HubSpot.

This way, even as the team learns the product, management can see the chat pipeline in their familiar CRM interface from day one, gaining insights into who their team is talking to and at what stage.

Product Spotlight

While walking on Court Street in my favorite Cobble Hill this week, I thought about a product to share with you. Walking, I saw several food delivery guys speeding by on green bikes with the Whizz logo.

Whizz is an e-bike subscription startup founded by Alex Mironov, Artem Serbovka, Ksenia Proka, and Mike Peregudov. I’ve been following their success for a while. Two years ago, I played basketball with Alex Mironov, and we had a typical founders' talk, complaining about the challenges of fundraising and lack of time. Fast-forward two years, and they’ve closed a $12 million round, and I now see their bikes 2-3 times a day (no exaggeration).

What I like about their model is that they sell the "picks and shovels" during the gold rush. The food and restaurant delivery market is growing rapidly and is highly competitive. Whizz sells bikes to these companies on a subscription basis. I wish them all the best and will keep watching their success!

Founder Friends

This week, I had a call with Artem Vysotsky, who launched a new product called Free Tool Builder. I loved the idea. There's an old SEO trick where you find high-performing keywords and generate content around them to drive traffic to your site. The downside is a low conversion rate due to low engagement—people don't like reading long articles after searching for something. Instead of driving traffic to a boring article, you can direct them to a valuable free tool. Free Tool Builder streamlines this process; Artem and his team help identify good keywords and build free tools using their platform.

For example, if you’re a real estate agency, you could create interactive maps showing pollution or crime levels in different neighborhoods. Or, if you’re a recruiting agency, you might build interview simulators to help prepare candidates for job interviews. See how it can work.

Money Moves

I'm a strong believer in financial discipline, not just for your company but for personal finances too.

I follow three main rules:

1. Don't increase your expenses when your income grows. For example, after selling my previous startup, Getintent, my lifestyle didn’t change. Interestingly, I started spending less because I had tangible savings for the first time and didn’t want them to disappear.

2. Invest as much of your money as possible. Your investment risk can vary depending on your age and other factors. However, simply setting aside a percentage of your income every month can help you avoid overspending on unnecessary things. Investing is highly efficient, even with small amounts. For example, if you invest $250 monthly into your brokerage account and buy an S&P 500 ETF, you could end up with $550K in 30 years.

3. Track all your finances. I’ve been doing this for the last seven years using a simple Excel spreadsheet. Over time, I've semi-automated it by consolidating CSV files from my credit and debit cards and categorizing expenses. While many apps can do this, I still prefer Excel because it offers more flexibility with the data.

   
   Reviewing my cash flow and balance sheet every month helps me stay on top of my finances. Most importantly, it lets me know my runway, which gives me peace of mind and a sense of security.

Culture Corner

Pixar's "Inside Out 2" was my favorite piece of content this week. It's a brilliant animation that shows how we're made up of different emotions and sub-personalities and the importance of giving all of them a voice instead of suppressing them or seeing ourselves as just one personality.

It's a light and straightforward story, and I found many parallels with the Internal Family Systems (IFS) concept.

The IFS model is a therapeutic approach that views the mind as composed of different "parts," each with its perspectives, feelings, and roles. For instance, it helped me identify my inner critic, understand its role, and agree on how it can help me instead of punishing me for mistakes.

I can recommend this book on the IFS.

Life Snippets

I spent a few days in Berlin this week, meeting with some close friends and new clients. It was a very spontaneous trip. I didn't have much free time because I was working regular hours, but having dinners with friends I hadn't seen in person for years was very fulfilling. My next stop is Oslo, where I will meet my brother and co-founder.

Mind Bender

I love watching videos of happy older people who advise the younger generation. These videos make me happy, and I find them very helpful. This week, YouTube's recommendation engine showed me this channel—lots of peaceful videos with tons of advice.

The key advice, often between the lines, is to slow down and enjoy the process. It's easier said than done, but I try to follow it. Being rushed and multitasking never brings joy, only anxiety and stress. Doing things slowly and with full attention can make even a tedious task joyful.

Have a great week ahead!

Speak soon,

George,

September 1, 2024. Berlin.