“Let us know how I can be helpful” – Every VC
While most investors genuinely want to support, it’s often unclear how they can help. So, we wrote a manual for portfolio founders to serve as a working doc of specific things we can help with – product, hiring, fundraising, recruiting, press, etc. – and tips on how to best leverage Ryan and Vedika at Weekend Fund.
Here are the areas we can be most helpful in:
Ryan and Vedika have a background in product management.
Ryan started his career in tech in marketing before moving into product management at the age of 22. He went on to become the first PM of a mobile gaming startup that grew 10x in headcount before starting Product Hunt, a firehose of inspiration and ideas for product people (he’s seen a lot 😅).
Prior to joining Weekend Fund, Vedika was the first PM at a developer API company and helped take their product to market as the team grew 10x.
We love diving into product strategy or jamming on tactical details with founders.
Ryan has spent the majority of his professional career building community (even before Product Hunt on a smaller scale). While community has become a buzzword, relatively few people have experience building community at meaningful scale.
We love chatting with founders about how they can build community to increase WoM, increase defensibility, and build something that people really want to be a part of. This isn’t limited to consumer startups – B2B companies can also benefit from a community strategy.
We’re always eager to dip into our network to help find the right hire, but we can also help promoting open roles on Twitter. A few examples: here, here, and here. This has been an effective way to increase top of the funnel given our reach within the tech community.
We write small checks so it’s in our best interest to help founders fill their round with strategic, helpful investors. When it’s time to raise a Series A, we like to get very involved in making intros and supporting the founder as much as they want. Ryan has built a pretty good network through his work at Product Hunt over the years, so that helps.
If you’re currently raising or planning to raise soon, we’d be thrilled to introduce you to investors we work with and believe will be a good fit. We prefer to work off a shared spreadsheet together so we can be efficient and stay in sync during the process.
We're also eager to help with the deck. We’re big fans of using Loom or Bubbles for this type of feedback. Async is more efficient for everyone.
Chasing press is usually a waste of time for many companies but it can be helpful for recruiting, user acquisition, and brand-building. If you’re planning to break news, we’re happy to connect you with journalists in our network that might be interested in your story.
Transparently, if we don’t believe there’s a “story” to be told, we’ll let you know and may not make introductions. It’s unproductive for all of us to force a piece.
We love sharing announcements and launches from the portfolio. Examples here, here, and here.
If you’ve been featured or have something new to announce, please let us know.
We’ve helped a number of B2B portfolio companies connect with other WF portfolio founders that might benefit from their services or have some strategic alignment. E.g. We introduced Doug from MainStreet to several WF founders so he can help them save money (win-win).
Of course we’ll only reach out if it makes sense for both parties. The last thing we want to do is “spam” founders’ inbox.
Every six weeks, we host 4-6 person feedback session with fellow WF portfolio founders over video. Our goal is to bring a diversity of experts (engineers, designers, marketers, salespeople, etc.) together to help each other.
There’s no formal prep required for these sessions but everyone should bring forth 1 or 2 specific challenges they’d like feedback on. Of course, everything is off the record. We take confidentiality very serious.
WF portfolio founders have access to some pretty useful deals, including up to $100K in free AWS credits.
Ryan has been through the high highs and the low lows of entrepreneurship with Product Hunt. He’s also advised portfolio founders on how to navigate firing an early teammate, how to manage a cofounder breakup, and other challenging situations. If you’re going through something difficult with your company, we’re here for you.
If you’d like to chat about something urgently, please email us with the prefix “urgent” in the subject line so that we know it’s time-sensitive.
