Pre-Seed Valuations Are Down 📉

Entrepreneurship Handbook
Entrepreneurship Handbook
2 min readSep 15, 2023

--

A better, longer version of this first appeared on beehiiv — Sign up here!

Welcome to EH Weekly, the new newsletter from the team behind Medium’s biggest entrepreneur-focused publication.

You can look forward to insightful lessons, practical takeaways and the hottest news stories delivered to your inbox every week.

In this week’s edition, we discuss:

  • How to avoid ruining your best team players
  • The state of play with pre-seed valuations and funding

Are You Ruining Your Best Team Players?

“It is impossible to be both in charge and continually kind. Fair, yes; kind, no.”

Jan Cavelle, author and entrepreneur, always sought to build the perfect culture at startups. And what better way than to promote the most-loved, people-pleasing employees to management, right? Wrong.

Here’s why:

  • Startups need more than “Don’t worry” — Fast-growing startup managers must develop their leadership skills, motivate their teams, inspire them to do well, challenge them, and set goals. It doesn’t ultimately make people feel good to have a manager say not to worry and to pick up their slack.
  • Anxiety hampers communication skills — For people-pleasers, asserting themselves is downright terrifying as a prospect. But a manager who cannot assert themselves ends up not being heard at all.
  • What makes a great team player doesn’t make a great manager — Never promote to management based on liking someone or how willing, helpful, and kind they are. Choose someone with the skills the job demands and the potential to be a leader in their own right.

👉️ Read more: How to Avoid Ruining Your Best Team Player

Build iconic brands with community growth

Our friend Lloyed Lobo just released his book, From Grassroots to Greatness — 13 Rules To Build Iconic Brands with Community Led Growth. The pre-sale topped Amazon’s new release charts in a number of categories.

After talking to 1,000+ leaders and looking behind the growth of obscure ideas that went on to become enduring companies like Apple, Airbnb, CrossFit, Harley-Davidson and HubSpot, Lloyed distilled his learnings into a comprehensive guide on how to leverage the power of communities to drive long-term sustainable growth……

To read the rest of this email — and be the first to get our latest editions — sign up here.

We appreciate your support,
Team EH

--

--

The Editors of Entrepreneurship Handbook. Medium’s highest quality publication on all things startup. 230k+ followers