Laneways - Launchvic

How to motivate teams, writing "clickable' emails and inside "The Machine" deciding Google's VC investments.

See below for a range of short training videos from LaunchVic.

FOR FOUNDERS + TEAMS

• The simple tool that revives employee motivation (15 mins)

Are you ready to scale the motivation pyramid? Former head of product at Pintrest Jack Chou shares his advice for keeping employees engaged. Spoiler: Success alone won’t do the trick. “Once a team can say, ‘Yeah, I like working with these people. I get to make decisions that are pertinent to what I'm doing, we’re hitting our numbers, and I understand why these numbers translate to what we’re trying to do as a company over 5 to 10 years,’ then people really have a clear and motivating path,” Chou says.

• 3 subject line formulas to get people clicking your emails (4 mins)

Marketing is a cheap and cost effective way to market your business, often let down by poorly written subject lines. Copywriter Cynthia Marinakos details her three formulas that get people clicking: Personalising, writing a How To Guide and asking a direct question. Keep those subject lines under 30 characters and you’re golden!

• 5 things to do when you feel overwhelmed by your workload (6 mins)

All day emails, calls, meetings. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed in the modern-day workplace, and in startup land it can be even worse. Clinical psychologist Alice Boyes says the key is to create systems that help manage your day. “A classic catch-22 in psychology is that people wait for their emotions to change before changing their behavior. However, changing your behavior is probably the best and fastest way to change your emotions,” she contends.

• How to find (and use) powerful customer testimonials (8 mins)

Customer endorsements can be a powerful marketing tool, but what’s the best way to ask for them? And how do you best utilise them? Host of Hack the Entrepreneur Jon Nastor outlines his tips for getting rave reviews and turning them into more sales. “A customer testimonial doesn’t always have to be a glowing review of the entire product. If it serves up one specific benefit with feeling and focus, it’s doing its job—boosting conversions with social proof,” he writes.

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FOR INVESTORS

• Inside Google's Venture Capital Machine (3 mins)

This shouldn’t come as a surprise, but Axios’ Dan Primack has learned of a number crunching ‘Machine’ Google Ventures uses to sort deals. It begs the question: Is the ‘human element’ in VC a help or a hindrance? Some of ‘The Machine’s” data inputs include: previous investors, past rounds industry sector and the delta between prior valuation and current valuation.

• A really simple guide to how to become a successful VC in 5 years (3 mins)

Good investing decisions can often be crunched down into a simple maths equation. So, can being a good VC be summed up in one simple 500 word article? Leo Polovets, General Partner at Susa Ventures, reckons there are three key skills to master as a VC, and even suggests creating a ‘fantasy portfolio’ to help build your skills without having skin in the game.

• Europe isn't exempt from the gender funding gap (5 mins)

Diversity in the venture capital is a global issue, and it’s having an impact on deal flow beyond the US and Australia. Founder of Mol Ventures Eva De Mol crunches the numbers and finds that 11 per cent of VC funding in Europe went into Female-led companies in 2017.

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LAUNCHVIC NEWS

• Round 9 is open and all about supporting experts-in-residence for coworking spaces. LaunchVic is seeking applications from coworking spaces seeking to provide access to experienced startup professionals to their resident startups and the broader Victorian startup ecosystem. Melbourne's 'Above all human' is also on again. Bringing together all kinds of people for a day of insights and innovation from the world’s most pioneering minds, this is not one to miss. Happening on August 29, you can get yourself a ticket here.