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Maxim Zavadskiy
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Solid product! Even more beautiful then when I saw it a month ago. You guys move at the speed of light!
DeckLinks
Making B2B sales more human, together
Maxim Zavadskiy
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How to Sell to the Likes of Universal, SAP, and Siemens
Insights from 5 years of running a B2B startup
Why did you open this article? Perhaps the topic of sales was relevant. I would imagine that the BIG names got your attention. The big names play into my credibility. If I sold to them, I must know what I am doing.
This is, in fact, one of the biggest insights about how to sell. Get BIG logos. These companies are not just companies, they are...
Maxim Zavadskiy
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Sell First. Then Build. Then Hire. And Only Then Raise Money.
10 entrepreneurship principles I learned over the past 5 years
This article acts as a shorthand for the main entrepreneurship principles I follow. Here is a quick overview of what I’ve done over the past 5 years:
> Founded a startup, pivoted twice over the course of 5 years. Hired and fired dozens of people. Had a co-founder who ended up stealing money from me. Attracted clients like...
Maxim Zavadskiy
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Why Focus Is Overrated For Entrepreneurs
(by Dima Syrotkin – posted with his permission)
Do you work on several projects at the same time? You can’t be a serious person! In the startup world, the discrimination against people who do more than one thing is huge.
I personally had an experience when someone was offering me an executive position in a profitable “once-a-startup” company with a ton of equity on the condition I would drop...
Maxim Zavadskiy
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How to Stop Selling Projects and Become A SaaS
Our journey from a “clever consulting framework” firm to fully automating business coaching
A year ago, investors didn’t want to even consider my startup Panda Training. Peers I was meeting in the founder club LaunchClub were telling me that the biggest problem was our business model. Indeed, our revenue was skyrocketing on some months only to dry up only completely on some other months in an...
Maxim Zavadskiy
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How to Attract Clients as a Newly Launched Business
Lessons from launching an enterprise SaaS startup, consumer platform startup, and event business.
You launched, congrats! Now you need to attract the first clients to use your product or service. I’ve had the experience of doing it for an enterprise SaaS startup, consumer platform startup, and event business. Let me share with you my secrets on how to attract your first clients.
Be clear...
Maxim Zavadskiy
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Launch Now: If Your Idea Has Potential, It Will Be Obvious
Paul Graham famously said that you should launch when you can serve at least 1 user. Why such a low bar? Let me explain.
My experience of spending €200.000 on a failed startup by raising money, hiring people, and building a product no one wanted (you can read more here) taught me that product/market fit is a central concept in a startup journey.
Even if you are familiar with it intimately, I...
Maxim Zavadskiy
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Storytime: Leadership lessons from the Power Plant CEO who met Margaret Thatcher
Viktor Polivaniy has led the Zaporizhzhia thermal power station in Ukraine (former USSR) as CEO for 20 years. The power plant was the highest performing power station in the world, attracting visitors from the UK, the USA, and Japan.
The UK representatives invited Viktor for a visit in England. For the occasion, he was staying at the house of Lord Marshall of Goring, who was then a leader in...
Maxim Zavadskiy
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Storytime: "How I found a CTO by almost taking over a 3M business and almost buying another startup"
After a huge rollercoaster of events: *don't panic.* Sometimes crazy things happen. Maybe they are good, maybe they are bad. You don't know so hold your horses and just do your best moment to moment
https://www.growthclub.online/post/how-i-found-a-cto-by-almost-taking-over-a-3m-business-and-almost-buying-another-startup
Maxim Zavadskiy
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Watch (or rewatch) PR workshop: Getting Your Business Media Attention
Missed our latest workshop with Lori (founder of Elssus) about getting media attention on your business? No worries, we've got your back! Watch (or rewatch) it here:
https://www.growthclub.online/pr-workshop-for-startups
Maxim Zavadskiy
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How we grew sales 10x by spending $0 on a sales army
You might have read our previous article "Don’t raise money. Don’t hire. Don’t build. Sell." There is a bunch of caveats to that advice. Hiring is not categorically bad. Once you have built a running engine with a semblance of a product-market fit, it does make sense to scale it. But how do you do that?
We looked at the cases of two startups to see how they solved their issue in efficient (and...
Maxim Zavadskiy
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PR Workshop for Startups this Friday
Getting your business media attention takes time and effort but the rewards are worth it, especially for Startups.
Do you want to learn how to do PR properly for your startup? Join us on February 12th (12pm ET, 6pm CET, 4am (+1 day) Sydney) for the PR workshop by our friend Lori, founder of Elssus, a multi-disciplined communications consulting firm. As always, limited amount of free tickets -...
Maxim Zavadskiy
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Hosting a PR Workshop! (Feb 12)
Getting your business media attention takes time and effort but the rewards are worth it.
Do you want to learn how to do PR properly for your startup? Join us on February 12th (12pm ET/6pm CET/4am (+1 day) Sydney) for the PR workshop by our friend Lori, founder of Elssus, a multi-disciplined communications consulting firm.
As always, limited amount of free tickets -...
Maxim Zavadskiy
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Learning from having money stolen from you by a co-founder
My co-founder tells the story of how his prior co-founder stole money from him, how this affected him and how he overcame it.
https://www.founder-tales.com/post/my-co-founder-stole-money-from-me-here-is-what-i-learned
Maxim Zavadskiy
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Don't Raise. Don't Hire. Don't Build. Sell.
How my co-founder spent €200.000 on a failed startup by raising money, hiring people, and building a product no one wanted. https://entrepreneurshandbook.co/dont-raise-money-don-t-hire-don-t-build-sell-6272d055e775
Maxim Zavadskiy
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How useful startup books are?
If you look at Stripe's CEO (Patrick Collison) collection of favorite books you won't find almost any startup books 📚. Why? We put some of our ideas here: https://www.growthclub.online/post/startup-books-are-useless
Forums are outdated. We collected here online startup communities that are not just-a-forum-type. This generally means they are of much better quality, have more thought-out structure, and some interesting features like video-calls, deal packs, events.
Comradery
Database of not-just-a-forum startup communities