Customer researching
Chris Mole
2017 started a business. 2021 sold it. Now sharing the journey. Founder of Cassidilly & FounderON.
A big week for FounderON . Our new official HQ (in my garden) is in construction. Surely no bigger step in a business than when it moves into its first proper office. Even if it is only 10 metres away from the house (and 5 metres to the hot tub...).
But the office isn't the only big thing happening with FounderON .
Unless you've been living under a rock, or outside of my Linkedin Ads targeting, you'll know that I've been working on a couple of digital courses that launch on the 15th July. Now that people have committed their hard earned cash to the pre-sale (cough, available here, cough) I'm well and truly motivated and working my way through the (much larger than expected) to do list.
On the mentoring side, I'm now at full capacity. Probably why you've not seen my annoying requests for you to book a call etc for a while...
So, it's allowing me to turn my attention to the longer term plan for the business. Building the site itself into an online resource for founders.
What does that actually mean?
Well, I guess the best way to summarise it, is a website that you, as a founder, want to visit everyday. Not just each week when I post my blog on Linkedin and you visit the site to read it. But for you to actually decide to visit FounderON.com unprovoked. In the same way you do with Linkedin for example.
The only way I can achieve that goal, is by making sure there is high quality content, regularly refreshed.
And as much as I would love to think you would come and visit to see what I have to say, really it needs lots of different contributors, giving lots of different opinions.
I've started with a couple of new things which you might have spotted already.
On Monday and Friday now I will be doing a unique post on FounderON. A post being like the ones I do on Linkedin, but on the FounderON site.
The one I did on Monday this week for example - here.
The goal is to give added value to FounderON visitors that they couldn't get on Linkedin, to try and encourage more regular visits, and more page views per session. It also means that FounderON will benefit from the SEO effects of the posts and very slightly reduces my reliance on Linkedin.
I've also started posting a weekly guest blog on Thursday. You can read today's from Jess Brookes here.
These guest blogs allow me to provide different perspectives and therefore far more value to founders, who really want to know that they're not alone in their daily struggles.
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And I've got tonnes of other ideas. But I thought I would follow my own advice and ask the very people I'm trying to attract. What would make you want to visit the FounderON site more regularly?
More blogs?
More guests?
More posts?
I hope so, because that would be the easy option. Scaling up volume is time consuming but not difficult. But I'm not sure if that would be enough of a draw.
I'm thinking there needs to be more of an interactive element to the site.
Maybe go old-school and create a forum for founders to ask questions and share war stories.
Or a Linkedin style feed where you can post yourself, without the confusion of algorithms and engagement pods.
I want to build FounderON into a resource that genuinely helps founders to run their business, clear their mind and encourage new entrepreneurs to take the leap.
The internet doesn't seem to be littered with options.
We have Linkedin of course, but lets be honest, we all have some kind of ulterior motive for posting here.
Maybe there is value in a genuine founder community that is just wanting to share and help.
I'd love to hear your thoughts, ideas and also from any founders that would like to share their own story on FounderON.
And feel free to tell me to lower my aspirations. Maybe FounderON is just a weekly blog, and should stay that way. The entrepreneur in me isn't quite sure though...
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9 个月I’d love some more structured video content. As much as I do read all the blogs in full, it’d be nice to have some quick, digestible (and presumably embedded on the website) video content. Equally, a founder podcast would be cool, if you could bring a unique spin to it. SaaStr was always the best for SaaS founders, but that’s a really ‘we’ve all built unicorns’ approach. In terms of community… I know some that exist for invested companies (typically anonymous seem to work best, as folks can speak freely about investors etc - but this might be less relevant if investment isn’t a priority). With communities I think the most important thing is being able to align to growth stage/funding stage/headcount etc, as the experiences folks have are fairly driven by these things. I love that people go about founding companies in different ways and for different reasons, but the value is in folks who are on similar journeys.