Midsummer Mastermind

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Last week I shared this beautiful beachfront villa in Costa Rica with 7 other founders.

It was the 4th BDE Mastermind that I’ve hosted. If you have no idea what that means you’re probably not alone. Simply put — I curate and invite a handful of A1 founders to a remote location where we can deep dive on strategy, share tactics, build stuff, and help each other succeed.

We also surf, do yoga, hit the beach, rent a boat, and have a whole lot of fun.

This cohort included a few founders who had already successfully exited their previous startups, and others who ranged from seed stage to Series B. Because I’m a giver, I’ll share my top 10 takeaways I had from the week…

We discussed tons of different growth tactics and best practices, but by far the biggest outlier for everyone’s business was their overwhelming customer obsession.

Each company had their own flavor of it. Shopgenie had a 60 second first reply time for all customer support escalations and knew all of their customers by name. Siro shared customer wins with their team every week during all hands.

It was a very simple reminder that the only thing that actually matters is serving your customers better than anyone else.

Most founders had a well-defined company manifesto that clearly communicated its purpose, goals, and emphasized the importance of their work.

Others also had operating principles that are shared with all incoming employees and frequently referenced on an ongoing basis. The purpose is to codify what the company values, how decisions are made, and their core principles.

There were a few Max from Superpower shared that I really resonated with:

Most companies, beehiiv included, do rolling product releases (i.e. the feature is released as soon as it’s ready). This ensures that the product is always improving and we are constantly delivering additional value to users.

Kieran from Shopgenie experimented with a scheduled product release event that was hosted via a live webinar. Nearly 2,000 customers and prospects attended, and he drove nearly $1M in new ARR from the live event.

That got me thinking… look out for something later this year 👀.

Valerio from Workfully shared how IRL events completely transformed his business. They hosts highly curated, invite-only events in the major cities they operate in.

He shared his entire funnel and playbook, which is now responsible for 70% of their revenue 🤯. I think a lot of digitally native companies underestimate the power of IRL connections to drive new revenue opportunities.

Maybe you haven’t logged into Facebook since your date uploaded your prom photos a decade ago, but for certain demographics the Facebook Group ecosystem is thriving.

Whether it’s a new acquisition channel, or an additional touch point for customer support… it’s possible to connect directly with your ICP by becoming an authoritative figure in these groups.

Popl has built a massively effective viral loop that drives ~70% of their growth. When an existing user shares their contact information with someone new, they’re prompted to quickly set up an account to unlock everything.

Identifying opportunities to create viral loops natively within your product can be a force multiplier. Duolingo does this well with streak milestones, as does Eight Sleep with their sleep scores.

Fourthwall is a Shopify alternative for creators who want to sell merch without all of the hassle. They built a proprietary system to identify high value users during signup (i.e. large creators), and they roll out the red carpet for them to increase conversion.

Not every signup is created equal. If you can separate the signal from the noise and identify higher quality users during onboarding, you could improve your activation and compound revenue over time.

This was actually a recurring theme from the last mastermind I hosted in February too. Lots of SaaS founders launch lightweight tools that are free to use to capture leads.

Hugh from Lua built a free software product for his ICP that generated thousands of leads. That became his target customer list, which he converted to new revenue, and eventually led to their acquisition.

Will from Fourthwall shared their entire SEO strategy, which is responsible for ~30% of their signups. beehiiv has also invested a ton into SEO which has continued to compound over the past 24 months.

A few founders also used some newer tools to track how their sites and content are ranking in LLMs as well. Graphite and Athena were the two most popular (full disclosure: I haven’t used either personally).

I’ve written extensively about how we run all hands at beehiiv. As a remote first company, I think the format and effectiveness of these meetings are critical.

It was really cool to see how other founders ran theirs.

Most teams prepare a slide deck and routinely share revenue, core metrics, and highlight employees who exemplify their values. Others have “rituals” around their company purpose and operating principles that are reiterated each week.

None of these may feel groundbreaking in isolation, but seeing each of these playbooks up close triggered so many new ideas for me.

I always return home from these masterminds feeling inspired with a laundry list of things to test at beehiiv.

I don’t have a specific date scheduled for the next one, but I know for sure I’ll be hosting another. If you’re interested, submit this quick form and I’ll reach out when I have more details.

Until next time ✌🌴.

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WFH is just one step closer to WFY (work from yacht). We’ll get there one day Hubert 🫡.

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