Vagesh Garg’s Post

I recently downloaded the Medial started by Niket Raj Dwivedi, Prateek Kaien and Harsh Dwivedi which is a social media platform that differs from other apps such as Instagram. It's more like Reddit, but it's focused on specific topics such as startups, technology, finance, and other areas that can help you learn something new every day. On this platform, individuals can validate their start-up ideas, and experts from top companies share their experiences and learnings with those who want to start a career in that field. You can discuss various technical and financial topics with others and ask for people's opinions. Moreover, you can build a great network with top industry experts and startup founders. Recently, I have noticed many startup founders posting vacant job roles in their companies. The best part is that this app does not have any ads.

😯 Often founders are shocked to find out they spend 50% of their time on people-related matters. Launched today, Scaling Through Chaos from Index Ventures is our latest guide to help founders scale teams faster and smarter: scalingthroughchaos.com When we analyzed 200,000 career profiles across 200 startups, we found that there is order hiding beneath the chaos. So we gathered insights around how to find, hire, retain, organize and lead the right people to turn your business into an outlier success. You’ll find original case studies, fresh frameworks, and unheard stories about the inner workings of pioneering startups in and beyond the Index Ventures portfolio, including from: - Assaf Rappaport, CEO & Co-Founder, Wiz - Jason Citron, CEO & Co-Founder, Discord - Nadia Singer, Chief People Officer, Figma - Alexis Lê-Quôc, CTO & Founder, Datadog - Kate Ryder, CEO & Founder, Maven Clinic - Hanno Renner, CEO & Co-Founder, Personio - Job Van Der Voort, CEO & Co-Founder, Remote - Michael Manapat, Chief Product & Technology Officer, Notion - Surabhi Gupta, SVP Engineering, Robinhood - Kipp Bodnar, Chief Marketing Officer, HubSpot Excited to speak more about it at Start Summit on Thursday! #scalingthroughchaos

"What makes this place magical?" During a hiring interview yesterday, a candidate posed this thought-provoking question. I couldn't resist sharing my candid response here: It's the people. All our teammates are not only experts in their own fields but also incredibly entrepreneurial. - Ian, our marketing lead, built and sold a renowned fintech newsletter, Fintech Today. - Toby, our sales lead, not only has extensive sales experience in startups, but also owns an event space rental business on the side. - Bea, our founding engineer, after leaving her tech lead role at Airbnb, founded Libraria last year in her first venture harnessing GenAI for social impact. - Will, our cofounder and CEO, bootstrapped Product Life newsletter to six-figure ARR while product managing at top tech companies. - Alex, our cofounder and CTO, was the first hire at Flixed and also bootstrapped his own indie websites, still attracting thousands of daily organic visits. - James, our Chief of Staff, cofounded a successful startup accelerator Envision Accelerator for underrepresented founders, ran multiple cohorts, and at one point, even paused college to do it full-time. As I recounted to the candidate, I'm continually amazed that although we didn't specifically hire for entrepreneurship, we've attracted passionate individuals who are excited about creating something remarkable. Greenlite is truly a magical place. #Culture #Talent #Startup #DreamTeam

Timing is difficult ⏱️ It can positively or negatively impact just about every aspect of life. Unfortunately, the timing was just not quite right for me and StartEngine. I want to extend a big thank you to StartEngine for bringing me in as the Director of Funding Growth. A new company, industry and so much more was a lot to learn in my short time there, but I am incredibly thankful for that time. I can honestly say I learned so much from the amazing team I was a part of, and I am excited to see what comes next. Before I joined StartEngine, I had been successfully running my own company, M(dash)L, LLC., a digital marketing consultancy, for the better part of 3 years. I enjoyed working for myself, with companies, and on projects I wanted to align myself with. I never knew if I would work for myself forever or continue chasing different full-time opportunities… Am I at a crossroads? You bet 👍 This is not my first rodeo. I’ve taken the risk on startup life before, and it will not be the last time. It’s exciting. It’s challenging. I love it. I know what I’m signing up for. That being said, moving from company to company is not easy. So, I’m currently looking to do the following  👉 Stay Positive 👉 Explore what full-time opportunities exist in and out of my network 👉 Reevaluate self-employment and contract opportunities in and out of my network 👉 Enjoy when I can, Endure when I must That last one is the most important…IYKYK As we all head into 2025, please let me know of any opportunities that could be a fit! Thanks all and happy early new year 🙌 #opentowork #lookingforajob #digitalmarketing #marketingjob #jobsearch 

Since starting in product marketing in 2008, I've been with seven startups and noticed a universal challenge: finding the right marketing team. It's a tough puzzle that costs time and resources, possibly affecting a startup's success. I'm tackling this by creating a platform for founders to consult with marketing experts. It starts with a free one-hour session to address their concerns, with further help available if needed. This isn't just about hiring; it's about understanding marketing deeply before making a move. I'm excited about this journey and would genuinely appreciate your thoughts and feedback. How do you see this solving the marketing hiring puzzle for startups? #StartupHiring #MarketingSolutions #FeedbackWelcome

How a team of 40 made more than $200 million with zero Funding Not many AI companies are profitable. Many AI companies run at losses, but Midjourney is Valued at $10 billion with revenue per employee remarkably high So, how can a bootstrapped company like Midjourney be profitable so soon? Midjourney shares profits with its employees and gives a slice of its revenues to Discord, which has helped the AI startup scale. Community Focus: By integrating into Discord, they accessed a ready-made community. This approach fostered organic growth and word-of-mouth marketing, eliminating the need for big marketing budgets. At ATLRD, we’ve adopted similar principles. Sure, funding has its pros beyond capital, like PR and mentorship. But at ALTRD, our focus is on building a sustainable, profitable business from the ground up. As a productized service company, we secure projects before significant investment, unlike product companies that often face high upfront costs. Midjourney's journey is evidence of staying on top of the game. It is a powerful example of how bootstrapping, combined with a smart strategy, can lead to exceptional outcomes. Now tell me, which other bootstrapped companies inspire you? P.S - The media attached is generated via midjourney

It’s been 8 months since I joined Socialoop and the growth has been astounding. Here’s a little recap: 1. October to January Our goal: drive traffic to our website offer and begin closing lower ticket deals. Deals closed: 1 Frankly, this period was hard: - No one knew us - we had just entered the UK market - Many of our sales processes were still unvalidated Undeterred, we still pushed. 2. January to March Things begin to speed up. We fixed up our processes And managed to book daily meetings by sending free design work to prospective clients to differentiate ourselves. This got our foot in the door and deals began rolling in for us. 3. March - Present Finally working off some momentum, we began to make some big changes. - We raised our prices  - Built a team to outsource our design & development work to - Integrated operations & SOPs into the company Because of this, we managed to sign 6 clients and renewed contracts for our existing retainers. Flashforward to today, I realize we have doubled the team size and client roster and are on the way to doing the same with our rev. In the end, there’s nothing glamorous about startup life. It's a long, slow, and dispassionate grind. And in the moment you can feel like you’re getting ABSOLUTELY nowhere. But in those times, it’s important to zoom out and really see how far you’ve come, and how much further you will go if things continue this way. Keep building!

UPDATE: For anybody who hasn't received the link: https://bit.ly/3Td9IRt 💸 How Much Salary and Equity Typically Does to Marketing? 💸 Insights for seed & series A startups. Marketing is one of the first 10 hires for a startup. The market for early-stage marketers is highly competitive due to: ▪️ Aggressive growth expectations ▪️ Constrained supply of qualified marketers You could outsource the role for $1,000 a month to social media companies in Latin America, but those three Insta posts a week will be generic and won't bring in the needed customers. If you have the funding, it is better to pay more and hire someone experienced who works full time on marketing. Founders are often unsure of what is the fair value for marketers, both in terms of salary and equity. There are differences in salary and equity expectations between the Seed and Series A stages. Also, compensations vary across locations. I found a resource online created by MKT1 which shares salary and equity benchmarks for the Bay Area & NYC. It also allows you to calculate the 'value' of the equity offer you're making. Simply comment 'STARTUPMKT' and I'll send the resource your way. Make sure to send a connection request if we aren't connected first. #seed #SeriesA #equity #marketing #salaries #startups #founder

3 Proven Frameworks For Market Validation You need a huge market to be relevant for VC investments. Thus, most pitch decks show astronomical TAMs. It's easy to get caught up in market sizing, but the reality is: Most successful startups expand from a highly targeted niche. ➡ Facebook started with Harvard students ➡ Amazon started as an online bookstore ➡ Slack began as an internal gaming dev tool One of the most common problems for early-stage founders is going too wide and not narrowing down target customers: - Harder to validate user assumptions - Blurred targeting and messaging - Inferior conversion & increased CAC - Bottom-up calculations often more accurate At the beginning, you want to validate: The Problem, The User, The Solution Use these 3 frameworks for user validation: 𝟭. 𝗜𝗖𝗣 (𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗳𝗶𝗹𝗲) Profile of most valuable (B2B) customers, i.e. companies that benefit most from your product - incl. firmographics etc. 𝟮. 𝗕𝘂𝘆𝗲𝗿 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗼𝗻𝗮𝘀 Semi-fictional representation of the ideal customer/user, based on market research and real data. 𝟯. 𝗝𝗼𝗯𝘀-𝗧𝗼-𝗕𝗲-𝗗𝗼𝗻𝗲 Framework for defining, capturing, and organizing customer needs as job statements. Khosla Ventures recommends to calculate markets bottom-up for better results. These frameworks support you. Help fellow founders by sharing. #venturecapital #targetmarkets #startups #founders

8 years in startups I’ve worked with founders with all different types of experience levels and backgrounds - from first-time founders fresh out of university to repeat founders with 8 figure exits. Here’s what consistently stands out with the founders who know what they’re doing: 1️⃣ Intensely focused on what matters: First-time founders can get hung up on perfecting websites or fleshing out long-term visions. Great founders zero in on product, sales, and when the time is right fundraising. Everything else just needs to be good enough. 2️⃣ Building teams of A-players: Early-stage teams don’t have the luxury of carrying B-players. The best founders know how to attract top talent, convincing them to make the leap and join an unproven company for less money but higher potential upside. 3️⃣ Crystal clear on what and who: Ask a repeat founder what they’re working on, and they’ll break it down in two sentences and clearly explain why their ICP needs it. First-time founders often dive into jargon, leaving you with 20 questions. 4️⃣ Customer obsessed: The best founders are laser-focused on the smallest possible customer base that’ll get them to the next round. I recently chatted with a founder whose ICP was just 50 companies - Midwest Fortune 500s hiring for AI roles and using Workday. He only needed 5 of them to reach seed. That’s my take. What would you add?