Free marketing tools. It sounds amazing, don't get me wrong. But more often than not, "free" in the marketing world means "free for now," or "free until you need to connect it, or send something, or actually use the damn thing." Honestly, this post was originally going to be 30 free marketing tools. That was the goal I set myself. But something happened as I was writing: my research revealed that many of those 30 free marketing tools weren't actually free. They were kinda free. Freeish. The 15 marketing tools in this post aren't freeish. They're free. Forever. And they're awesome. They cover three categories of business growth: increasing brand awareness, increasing sales, and increasing efficiency. And many of them you won't have heard of because their paid competitors have more money - more marketing budget. So they've gone free to stand out. And that's where your business can cash in to grow, succeed, and drive sales. For free. Check it out!

As a founder, it’s important to always keep learning from the latest trends to best practices and so much more. 📚 But when there isn’t enough time to sit and read an article or a book, there’s still a convenient way to learn more about the startup world and the people succeeding in it – podcasts. 🎙 Podcasts have grown tremendously popular in the last few years, and there is a treasure trove of value-added content out there. And with a new year approaching, it's a great time to get some inspiration and fresh perspectives. But how to you get started? With so many options out there, which ones are the best to listen to? You’re in luck: we’ve put together a list of 20 of our favorite podcasts for your listening enjoyment – check it out below! 🤗

For so many startups and even larger tech incumbents, the point at which they hit the shoulder in the S-curve is a mystery, and the author suspects the failure to see it occurs much earlier. The good thing is that identifying the enemy sooner allows you to address it. We focus so much on product-market fit, but once companies have achieved some semblance of it, most should spend much more time on the problem of product-market unfit. In strategic planning, the question in building a forecast is to flush out what the author calls the invisible asymptote: a ceiling that our growth curve would bump its head against if we continued down our current path. It's an important concept to understand for many people in a company, whether a CEO, a product person, or a planner in finance.