Adventure Fund

Toki is now free. Yup! Happy Friday to you :) If you are an e-commerce brand doing under 1,000 orders a month, you can have a full blown loyalty program AND referral program, totally free. And not just a bare bones program. For loyalty: - Up to 25 reward activities - Over 10 perk rewards - Structuring with VIP tiers, cash back, store credit, gift cards and more - Over 30 onsite components For referrals: - Give, get structures - Onsite referral components - Safelinks Why did we do this, you may ask? E-commerce headwinds are strong. Numerous variables have hit commerce hard in the past year. Having been a brand founder before and bootstrapped to an exit, I am very empathetic to brand founders trying to be conscientious of their bottom-line. It’s important that we as an industry are kind and empathetic to each other, now more than ever. So now, when you download Toki, click on that Essential plan to get loyalty and referrals entirely for free. Forever, or until you grow out of it :) Go ahead and get after it with the link below or DM me if you want a demo or more information before getting started. https://lnkd.in/eUPXRR-8

Liveblocks 2.0 is live on Product Hunt today! Here is a little demo video I recorded for the occasion—showcasing our brand new Text Editor product ✨ Would love your support! https://lnkd.in/e4DqRKpf

Something new is on the horizon. June 12th—save the date. → liveblocks.io/unveil

Today marks 7 Years of SwagUp! The journey has been filled with so many twist and turns, but along the way we set a new standard in an industry that was desperate for innovation. While we've made our fair share of mistakes along the way, I'm incredibly proud of how far we've come We have built an incredible platform/experience, backed by a team that truly cares about our customers. We work with many of the best companies in the world, from top startups innovating in AI, to top Defense companies, to the largest companies that we all know! Our swag has landed in almost every country and in the hands of the world's most notable people. And to think it all started in a converted garage in suburban NJ with a simple idea that startups were looking for a more modern swag solution Now is no time to get complacent, we have so much more to do to continue to set a new standard and to learn from our mistakes - but we'd be remiss not to take a moment to acknowledge the journey and be thankful for it all. Thank you to our team (past and present), our customers, our partners, and and to the community of people who support and root for us!

Adventure Fund General Partner Marty Ringlein indicated at Alloy 2023 that #VentureCapital firms should want to take "many swings of the bat," as it pertains to funding new, potentially lucrative companies — especially ones in emerging spaces. Couldn't join us at Alloy last year? Now's your chance to join us for the upcoming edition of our event in September in Midtown Atlanta — and save on your ticket. Buy an Alloy 2024 ticket today, and get 20% off with the code EARLY2024. We hope to see you there! https://lnkd.in/guRCuuRp #VentureBuilding #DisruptiveInnovation #Innovation #Startups

One of our favorite 🚀 portfolio companies, Vital (YC W20), is growing their engineering team. Come help build the best developer tools for the fastest growing health companies in the world. You'd be joining a great leadership team with impressive revenue growth, and, you'd be getting in early, right before their Series-A!

Closing in on 7 years since starting SwagUp I’ve made plenty of mistakes along the way, but here’s 7 themes that come to mind 1. Gave up control of key functions too early - it’s one thing to delegate, it’s another to abdicate…it’s on the founder to establish the foundation that someone else can carry on, can’t move on until that’s in place 2. Not being deliberate enough about culture - As you get bigger, it’s clear that culture is one of the few things that matter, you need to be intentional about how you uniquely make decisions as an org and ensure consistency 3. Tried to be everything to everyone - Out of fear of being too niche, we tried to maintain our appeal to many different types of personas. Pick 1-2 personas and go deeper than anyone else, many good things come from that 4. Focused on too many different things at once - out of “effeciency” it’s easy to get caught up trying to do many things at once, being scrappy, giving people multiple things to own. It’s the CEOs job to keep things simple by distilling down all of the opportunities to the 1-2 that really matter and putting the team in places to succeed 5. Not being clear which game we were playing - Want to raise money and go big, great go for it, want to bootstrap and focus on incremental growth and profitability, cool…but you can’t do both simultaneously - we tried to run with the best growth stage VC backed companies while being bootstrapped, leading to bad decisions and putting the company at risk unecesarrily 6. Hiring without intention - hiring is incredibly hard and takes a ton of time and effort. We made hiring “easier” by building large talent/HR teams and allowed people to pass the responsibility - this lead to too many, low quality hires - not necessarily because the people were bad, but because we didn’t need the role to begin as the root issue was something else, but hiring feels good and it fills your ego to talk about the size of your team - Related, when you realize you’ve made people mistakes you need to act fast, not wait until something forces your hand 7. Too tied to the past - Everyday is a new day, sunk costs are irrelevant and past data does not guarantee future results. It’s important to be objective about what is going wrong today and what needs to be done today vs holding on to what used to be, the world constantly evolves and you must evolve with it Each year that goes by running this company, I’m amazed with how much I realize I still have to learn and learning is my passion It’s a long game, it’s all about evolving and coming back stronger, it’s still early :) P.S. New profile picture courtesy of Antonio Martinez

Now you too can be an investor in beehiiv and be as obnoxious as I am anytime they Tweet a product update (which is like every week now)!