In your own words, what does your company do?
FounderBlocks is an accelerator program for digital startups that provides guidance and support throughout the entire process, from planning to product launch and beyond. The program consists of five blocks, including an execution workshop, customer waitlist building and validation, financing (optional), building the minimum viable product, gaining customers, scaling, and growing the startup. FounderBlocks emphasizes a value-focused attitude and provides numerous benefits, including access to a battle-tested tech stack, guidance on efficient outreach and pitch preparation, and partnerships with companies that offer savings.
📈 Monthly revenue: $56,000
📈 ~% Net profit: we don’t do profit payouts. All money goes to the great people working with us!
📈 Funding: None
📈 Initial cost/investment to start the company: $560.00
📈 Number of team members: ~20 (some part-time)
📈 Number of founders: 1 original, ~20 now
📈 Started: 2017, July
How does the company make money?
💰 Execution Workshop: A one-day hands-on session to help startups create a bulletproof plan. 1,678.88
💰 Validation: Assistance in building and testing marketing funnels to help startups avoid wasting time and gain insights for product development. $5,598.88
💰 Financing: Help generate investor appointments within 30 days, offering guidance on efficient outreach and pitch preparation.
💰 Building the Product: Help in developing an efficient MVP, using a battle-tested tech stack for startups to address potential problems before they happen.
💰 Gain Customers, Scale & Grow: Guidance on which marketing funnels work best, how to get customers reproducibly, and how to scale up the startup.
3 strategies that have worked to attract and retain customers?
✅ MVP Calculator: Many agencies charge for development estimations, we built a tool that gives good ones for free and people love it!
✅ Democracy: We retain customers (and employees) by living a TRUE democratic concept where everyone can participate in decisions and nobody feels like they are unable to control where we’re going.
✅ Build a science-based sales process: try out a channel, and collect enough data to (in)validate it. Don’t do half-baked experiments – ideally, experiments work OR invalidate a sales/marketing channel clearly.
3 things that you’ve learned about hiring and retaining great talent?
✅ Have a strong culture! People worldwide apply to work with us because we are genuinely democratic and make humans matter in work. This also ups all our happiness 😊
✅ Know what you’re hiring for many Startups hire on unclear requirements. We’ve failed at this multiple times. – If you can’t specify a role really well, hire an A-game founder or external service which promises results.
✅ Interview based on real situations: for our interviews, CVs don’t matter. We ask/put people in real-life situations allowing us to see what values they adhere to and how they actually behave in those. This applies to both values and skills.