👋 Howdy to the 233 new legends who joined this week! You are now part of a 17,066 person tribe that sharpens their leadership on the weekly.

COMING IN HOT TODAY 🔥 

🍈 Helping creators thrive: We learn from Jen from Passionfroot!
🎙 A new podcast reco: Learning about energy & our future.
🧰 And a new toolkit: Every tool we use in business.

If you’re interested in sponsoring these emails you can see our different partnership options here.

PARTNERS 💫

HOUSEKEEPING 📨

It’s been a super time poor week for me re Open Source CEO. I shared a couple of posts regarding my system around my Content Assistant (post 1, post 2) and my inbox and Athyna’s pipeline exploded with leaders and creators looking for support to grow their brand. So it was a mad sprint to help our sales team with the volume there. We still have a few slots open this year if you are interested.

Official launch date is now scheduled for Thursday December 21st, 2023 12:01 AM PST. You don’t need to remember this … we will email you a reminder. ⏰ 

LEADER OF THE WEEK 🎙

I’m pretty excited for today’s interview. Firstly, because I use Passionfroot and love the product. I use it to book sponsors for this very newsletter and we use it at Athyna for finding and building creator partnership on the marketing side. I would describe Passionfroot as a small giant, in that they are industry leader. I expect them to just be a giant giant in the not too distant future.

And secondly because after reading, I think it’s one of my favourite interviews I have done. I found it really useful, and I think you will too. I won’t rabble on too much though, here I give you the wonderful Jennifer Phan…

Jennifer Phan, Co-Founder and CEO at Passionfroot

Jennifer Phan is the Co-Founder and CEO at Passionfroot. Passionfroot consolidates all aspects of creator-brand collaboration into a single platform. It’s all-in-one platform helps B2B creators and media companies such as Superhuman (World’s largest AI newsletter) find and manage brand partnerships.

With products like Passionfroot Discovery, they help SaaS startups such as Athyna, Notion, Maven and more discover and collaborate with top B2B creators to promote their products.

Jennifer is also Forbes 30 under 30 and an active angel investor.

Tell us about the problem you are trying to solve? Why this?

Before founding Passionfroot, I was working as an early-stage VC investor. In 2020, I started a newsletter and built a community for tech people with immigration backgrounds. I loved how being a creator allowed me to express myself creatively, share what I learned and do things without permission.

Millions of people don’t want a linear career anymore and choose a diversified portfolio of income. Many start their journey while working, and also writing newsletters, hosting podcasts, and creating content on YouTube. In the process, some are building solo businesses as entrepreneurs, using their passion and authenticity to build an audience.

But while it sounds so liberating to work on your own terms as a one person business, it also can be lonely, confusing and tiring - especially when it comes to how you make money.

Brand partnerships is one of the biggest revenue streams for a creator, but at the same time incredibly broken, inefficient, and fragmented. Traditionally, this process involves numerous platforms, scattered communications, and a lack of streamlined workflows.

Creators are the new entrepreneurs. We're building for creators today, and what they will become in the future.

How did you get from zero to one? Who was your first customer?

Before we even started to build anything, we’ve done 100+ user interviews with creators and my co-founder even worked as a COO for a creator to understand their pain points and workflows on a deep level.

In the beginning, we used only Figma design prototypes and hop on calls with potential users. From there, we iterated, showed the prototype to potential users, and got validation and feedback.

Our first version was us building manually storefronts with Webflow for creators and connecting this to our custom-built booking management system.

Our first customer (shout out to Kevin!) found us through a podcast that I was on!

What is your main day to day job as CEO?

I think in the early-stage, all that counts is building and selling. So, I usually split my time across product, marketing, sales, setting the strategic direction and enabling my team can do their best work.

Explain your philosophy around leadership? How do you think about it?

As a leader, I think it’s important to create an environment where everyone feels like they are able to openly challenge, ask questions, raise concerns, test and fail.

One key is to give frequent, candid feedback to magnify the speed and effectiveness of our team. That way everyone can say exactly what they really think, but with positive intent and to help each other succeed. This brings diverging, with everyone available and listening to one another.

I think it’s also important to lead with context not control. At Passionfroot, we want everyone to think like founders. This means, providing all the context and transparency to allow team members to make good decisions. People need to be able to make their own decisions if we want people to own their work. So, as leaders, we define the ‘what’ and ‘when’, but it is up to each employee to define the ‘how’ of any given task.

And lastly, I like our team to place bets & own decisions.

As a team, we want to encourage our team members to place bets and own decisions. This means employees are encouraged to pursue new initiatives to help the company, as long as it does not detract from our top level goals. And when some of those bets don’t pay off we just fix the problems that arise as quickly as possible and discuss what we’ve learned - rapid recovery is the best model.

What is your north star metric inside of your company and why?

Currently, our north star metric is GMV that is processed through Passionfroot. This gives us a good idea of the overall health of the platform in terms of number of transactions, AOV, number of users and overall growth.

How do you set goals?

During the early-stages as a pre-PMF startup, setting up OKRs was not suitable for us. In the beginning, our only goal was to validate hypotheses and get something out fast in order to get feedback. You can set a vision and it’s a great starting point, but the user’s feedback ultimately defines the direction.

Now, we review main financial and product KPIs in our monthly company update and define goals on a monthly as well as weekly level. Writing monthly investor updates also helps us to take a step back, review what we’ve actually achieved and what has and hasn’t worked.

How do you build culture?

Ultimately, the core values you set as a founder dictate the direction your company is headed. My co-founder and I spent time narrowing down the four ideals we wanted our culture to embody. And then… we built our team around them.

We base our hiring, assessing performance and how we work & communicate with each other around our values.

Our first value is, Embrace Passion. Are you passionate about the work you do? We want to hire people with unique perspectives, and a strong drive to help us deliver the best possible product for our customers..

Second is Dare to Grow, which means encouraging a culture where wearing different hats is the norm. We embrace new challenges, make mistakes, receive feedback, and grow into our roles. All while empowering our team to take ownership. Third is Be a Creator. We want to find problem-solvers who approach limited time and resources with creativity, much like the creators we serve.

And finally, Serve the Community. This final value aims to foster a culture that supports and enriches communities with a diverse, inclusive approach. These values are the bedrock of how we operate and communicate.

We know how we work at Passionfrootand we maintain a 'Manual of Me' that captures details like our personality type, when we’re the most productive, and how we prefer to receive feedback.

Recognizing that everyone has different working and communication styles has been instrumental in bringing out the best in each other.

We also acknowledge each other constantly. Even though we work on very different aspects of Passionfroot, we make it a point to champion each other’s success and hard work. This not only makes us feel valued but also creates a safe space to bring more ideas to the table.

We celebrate these successes publicly in our #wins Slack channel, building a sense of community and shared achievement.

Detail your recruitment strategy. How do you hire all-star talent?

I think there are many factors that make for a good hiring process. We approach hiring with the same structured and strategic mindset as fundraising.

Focus is a key element; similarly to fundraising, we run a targeted and tight process, placing hiring as our top priority. Preparation plays a vital role also. Just like a well-prepared fundraising effort, we clearly define our criteria, the profiles we're looking for, and meticulously plan the different steps of the hiring process, including creating a targeted list.

Owning the process is next. Typically, my co-founder serves as the main point of contact from the initial call to the closing, ensuring a seamless experience. Our execution is marked by rigor. We aim for speed and efficiency, documenting feedback for each candidate at every stage, allowing for swift, asynchronous decision-making. We also leverage our network & communities for certain candidates, using warm introductions and tapping into communities and creators to extend beyond our immediate network, such as sponsoring newsletters targeting specific audiences.

Storytelling is a critical skill; as a startup founder, being an effective storyteller is paramount. We treat candidates with the same enthusiasm as investors, sharing our vision, pitch deck, and product demos, discussing competition, and outlining potential growth. Showing social proof is another tactic; we offer candidates the chance to speak with our investors to understand their confidence in Passionfroot.

Understanding their stage is just as important as understanding an investor's focus, as it helps in aligning their aspirations with our goals. Conviction is crucial, especially in the early stages. We seek individuals who share our belief and vision, preferring to hire those with a missionary zeal over mercenaries.

Finally, we adopt an always be hiring approach. We continuously build relationships with potential candidates who might join us later, keeping our eyes open for exceptional talent even when not actively hiring.

Do you run hybrid, on-site or remote and why?

We’re a hybrid team as we want to provide our team both: The ability to connect and work with your team in person (which is especially crucial in the beginning) and the flexibility to work from home or somewhere else if needed. The majority of our team is in Berlin and we try to be 2-3 times per week in the office. We also make sure that people feel connected by having daily stand ups, socials and regular off-sites!

How do you get the best out of yourself personally and professionally?

One mental model that I came across and helped me to build resilience as an entrepreneur who is starting out is the Rule of One Third. It kind of goes back to when you're embarking on a journey and when you're building something up when you're doing something incredibly hard, you're supposed to feel one-third of your time great, one-third of your time okay, and one-third like crap. 

And that shows that you're out of your comfort zone. You are growing, you're learning. And sometimes some days are shitty and then you just show up on those. And then it's just one of those shitty days - and that's okay.

And that's it! You can follow Jennifer on Twitter, LinkedIn, listen to the Creators on Air podcast and check out their website for more information!

BRAIN FOOD 🧠 

Just caught an episode of Packy McCormick’s Age of Miracles podcast this week; The Case For All the Other Energy Sources. The series itself is delving into nuclear. And how it can improve our energy future.

If you’re interested in tech and innovation this show's exploration of the journey from groundbreaking ideas to real-world impact is something I'd recommend.

ASK ME ANYTHING 🗣

I want to be a trusted resource for you. If you think anything I know in relation to brand, culture, global teams, sales and growth would help you unblock a problem in you weeks shoot me a line.

Ask in the comments or reply to this email and I will do my best to answer it in a future edition. 🙌🏼

HOW I CAN HELP 🥳

Here are the options I have for us to work together. If any of them are interesting to you - hit me up!

🌏 Hiring global talent: Check out my startup Athyna.
🧰 Want to outperform the competition: See our suite of tools & resources.
👀 Reach thousands of tech leaders: Advertise with us here.

And that’s it! See you next time. ✌️