Hustle Commons - 2/5

📆 Upcoming Events

• February 26 – Los Angeles – Founder Friends 

Wanna volunteer? Join the events team in your city.

Your first 10 hires will make or break your startup

Most founders hire too early or too late. Both mistakes are expensive and can kill your runway before you find product-market fit. That's why Rippling for Startups put together a free virtual course that's all about nailing these crucial early hires.

On February 18, they are bringing in C.C. Gong from Menlo Ventures to break down how AI is completely changing what those first startup roles look like. They are also inviting David Paffenholz, founder of Juicebox, to share real-time lessons from building his early team while actively solving this problem.

Oh, and C.C.'s also dropping the framework she gives all her portfolio founders to figure out when to pull the trigger on a new hire. Because timing is everything.

It's totally free, taught live, and packed with insights you'd normally pay big money for.

Save your spot now 👉

*this is sponsored.

📰 Today's Edition

Today I'm excited to announce the launch of Hustle Commons!

8 years ago, when we first started this business, the only thing we knew was that we wanted to build a company we wished we had had by our sides as founders. 

Since then, we’ve been building this company like crazy - we’ve backed 600+ companies across multiple funds. We started and have grown our Angel Squad to 2500+ incredible angel investors globally. We run 50 founder and investor events per year. And write content across our 3 newsletters and our social media channels. 

And we are just getting started. 

But it’s clear to me that our Hustle Fund startup ecosystem is a crazy beast and is quite confusing. What are we? A VC firm? A media company? An angel group? It’s weird - I know - we’re weird. 

So, today, we’re spinning out all of our media activities into Hustle Commons. Hustle Commons is a central hub where early stage founders can come and find the resources they need for their startup. It’ll include articles, books, and videos to provide tactical knowledge on entrepreneurial topics. It’ll feature events for founders, investors, and employees of startups. And eventually, it may feature products and services useful for venture businesses.

Why are we doing this? 

Our mission at Hustle Fund is to democratize wealth through startups. And a big part of that to date has been in sharing the knowledge that we’ve learned in our own founder journeys over the years. 

But, that only goes so far. 

We want to bring in other voices from other investors. We want to bring in founders - both in and out of the portfolio - to share their learnings and experiences. Sometimes the advice other people will give may directly conflict with advice I’d give. Sometimes we want to just talk smack about Eric and his minivan (oh wait we already do…). 

But that’s all ok. 

We think it’s important for the startup ecosystem at large to hear a variety of perspectives on how to start and grow a business from those who have done it before. And the appropriate avenue to feature all of this is Hustle Commons. 

There's a lot of work to do here, and we're excited to build this. And more importantly, we’re excited to build this with you. Stay tuned for ways you can get involved and be featured on Hustle Commons. Let’s cook!

-Elizabeth from Hustle Fund

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