Insights
What we’ve learned building companies.
Lessons from the businesses we’ve built with founders, and the ones that taught us the most.
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Solo founder or cofounder – what’s better?I’ve been a co-founder and/or co-owner of 9 businesses (hard to believe even for me, but it’s true). I sold out of the first and third, failed on the fourth, was kicked out of the seventh, and I’m now happily working on the 9th. Here’s what I’ve learned, and what I recommend to founders today. Lessons learned from being a solo founder and having 9 different co-founders over 20 years.Read the post →
This guy raised $400K for his first startup, aged 41.You probably don’t know this guy. His name is Richard Hannaford and he just closed $400K-worth of funding for his first startup, at the age of 41. Here’s the story. I met Rich through a mutual friend, Dan (who has a pretty cool off-road EV startup of his own actually). Anyway, Dan vouched for Rich as a great guy, who’d hacked together a tool to make his own job easier in the automotive space.Read the post →
Everything you need to know about launching a B2C app.This was originally a Twitter thread by app developer and viral marketing afficionado, Nikita Bier. We’ve shared it so many times to founders in our portfolio that we thought we’d post it here too. Nikita Bier makes apps that grow really fast. He founded Gas app (acquired by Discord), the TBH app (acquired by Meta), and used to build new products at Facebook.Read the post →
How to avoid a startup train-wreck.In the last 2 years we’ve helped kick off 11 startups, 6 of which have raised funding, 7 of which are generating revenue, and 2 of which are profitable (amazing!). I want to share how our founders are doing it. If you’ve read around this website, you may know DQventures’s focus: to support working professionals who would dearly love to launch their own venture but can’t escape the need to earn a salary.Read the post →
8 ways to guarantee you raise a Series A.According to the founder of Match, if you can demonstrate the following 8 characteristics, your startup has a very strong chance of closing a Series A funding round. They’re not the obvious ones, so perhaps you haven’t considered them. I’ve known Peng Ong by reputation for almost a decade and met his co-founder at Monk’s Hill Ventures, Kuo-Yi Lim, several times.Read the post →
Do you REALLY want VC funding?Startup founders, do you really want to raise money from a VC? I spoke with a founder this week who deeply regretted taking money from a strategic investor. It seemed like the perfect deal, but the investor took a board seat and now is causing all kinds of problems (sadly too sensitive to share). This isn’t the first time I’ve encountered this. A few years ago I had coffee with a fintech founder in Singapore.Read the post →
9 tips for struggling CEOs by Eric Partaker.Eric Partaker has advised over 100 CEOs over the last 3 years, from pre-revenue startups to 9-figure scale-ups worth billions of dollars. When asked to list 9 of the most common challenges and recommendations he came across, here’s what he came up with: How CEOs overcome their greatest challenges 01.Read the post →
Why listening is a startup founder’s superpower.We know the excitement and anticipation that come with launching your first venture, but before you jump into designing your product, take a breath. One of the most common errors we see first-time founders make is not speaking to their customers early and thoroughly enough. They build their solution based primarily on gut-feel, then only once it’s built do they try to get someone to use it.Read the post →
Update: July 2023Hi everyone – after our last quarterly update we received several introductions to potential DQ founders, for which we’re extremely grateful. To date, referrals have been our number-one source of founders. In fact, one of the people you introduced last quarter is now part-way through our founder programme, so special thanks to Alex for that!Read the post →
How to build high-performing teams.According to the acclaimed psychologist and author, Erin Meyer: Your performance, both good and bad, and that of your colleagues is infectious. As well as publishing books in her own right, Meyer co-authored a best-selling book called “No Rules Rules” with Netflix founder, Reed Hastings. You may not know that, prior to founding Netflix, Hastings took his first company, Pure Software, public in 1995.Read the post →
How to price SaaS and build a moat in the age of AI.If you’re building a SaaS startup you’ve probably considered the odds that your business will be disrupted by the next wave of generative-AI startups.Read the post →
Practical tips for user interviews.It’s hard for founders to speak regularly enough to users, and almost impossible to overdo it. What’s more, you should be interviewing users throughout the life of both your startup and the customer’s interaction with your product, including those who’ve left.Read the post →