Firstly, welcome to the 350 new IdeaHub Crew who joined this week! 🎉 You are now part of a 3,340 strong cult helping to ideate and grow their tech startups together.

ICYMI 📚

If you are new here or just plain missed some of our previous sends, here is your quick catch up section.

• How & Why Nearshoring Works Today. Smart startups are going global, and now it's your chance to do the same

• How to build a startup in a weekend. Get your idea off the ground.

• Get Notion free for 6 months. How Notion grew to unicorn status.

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CASE STUDY 🗺️

Tell us about your entrepreneurial journey so far?

I have a funny career, as it’s been very non-typical so far. I was in construction for a decade and bought and sold real estate from a really young age. I purchased my first house at 19, second and 21 and third by 22.

I took off as soon as I was well and spent the next half a decade with a backpack on my back travelling to 40-50 countries along the way. During this time, I swam with sharks, patted lions, and visited the world’s three biggest waterfalls. I explored jungles, forests, deserts, and lots more good stuff.

After coming back home at 26 or so, I spent a brief stint in the fitness industry and then at 28 I founded my first startup, AdventureFit. AdventureFit was a beautiful idea but a horrible business. The tagline was ‘improving the world through travel, exercise, mindfulness and conversation.’

We went to Mexico, South Africa, Iceland, you name it. The product was incredible, and the experience was second to none, but we never really made any money. I probably hung on two years longer than I should have, and after about four years, we would it up.

All of this led me to Athyna, which is the startup I founded and run full-time today. We build remote teams. So I’ve gone up and down and around in circles to get where I am today. Now, I am a happy founder & CEO, I invest and mentor at Startmate back in Australia and I write my newsletter Open Source CEO.

Open Source CEO came out of nowhere really. I didn’t expect to be here but I am loving it and so is the audience, so—so far so good.

What growth initiatives do you have working today?

We are actually pretty boring, boring but interesting if that is possible. Most of our growth has come from cold outbound email. We started outbound on week one at Athyna sending 50 emails per week and have since scaled our outbound machine to 1.2M outbound emails per week.

It’s pretty difficult to actually send that many emails per week to your detailed ICP so we built ~15 sub-brands. We now send ~100k per day per sub-brand. I won’t mention the names of the brands, but they are along the lines of www.wehiredevs.com and so forth.

People say outbound email at scale is dead. It’s not—you just have to be really good at it. It’s about putting the right message, in front of the right person, at the right time. If you get 3/3 right you have a client. 2/3 you have a lead. But 1/3 or god forbid 0/3 and you are spam. Most people are spam.

What trends do you see in the future of work?

The future of work is remote, flexible, and global. Companies are moving away from offices and looking for talent across the globe, while talents are seeking more flexibility and better opportunities. Luckily, we get to be at the forefront of this shift.

Today we enable companies to find the best talent regardless of location and provide talent with access to exciting job opportunities worldwide. This trend will only grow.

Upwork did some studies that predict 73% of all departments worldwide will have some elements of remote work inside of them. It’s an exciting time for us to be honest. Most people are participating in the future of work; while we are out here trying to shape it.

How has your personal brand impacted Athyna?

My personal brand acts as a megaphone for Athyna. It helps attract talent and opens doors for business opportunities and investment.

Talent sees the values and vision we represent and wants to be part of it and on the client and investor side, I am building a massive base of allies, especially through my newsletter, Open Source CEO.

The most interesting thing though is that, at least in my newsletter, is the fact that negative CAC is becoming possible today. Look at Hubspot’s acquisition of The Hustle, they bought a media asset, which makes money plus they get leads and close deals from it.

Smart companies are moving farther and farther away from SEO and traditional media buying and more and more towards creators and owned assets. It’s not hard to see why either.

I ran the math on 13 acquisitions in a recent newsletter deal report and found that newsletter acquisitions had a value per subscriber at a whopping $38 per subscriber. You can buy a good sub for $2. Not a bad deal.

Personal branding in general though is more just building my online reputation. It’s necessary today, and I know that a big part of my job is to tell the story of Athyna and to tell it as far and as wide as possible.

How do you manage writing a fast-growing newsletter as well?

Yeah, it’s a juggling act. But one of my core skills, which is also in the job description of every CEO, is communicating. My newsletter allows me to interview and network with successful leaders, learn the strategies of the best through my deep dive pieces and build a big band of allied along the way.

I think a lot of founders out there are building audiences, followers etc., but not that many are building a base of allies. I really think of it that way. The tagline of the newsletter is ‘helping founders, investors and leaders in tech outperform the competition.’ And the funny thing is, that really goes for me too.

How do you define success? Both personally and professionally

If you ask me, companies exist for two reasons. To add value to the world in some way by creating something new, or improving something that already exists. And adding value to the shareholders. Success, for me, is about making a positive impact on the world and achieving meaningful goals for myself and the team.

Personally, it’s about having a fulfilling life with my family, which at the moment is just my girlfriend and my dog, staying healthy, continuously learning and helping others. I feel like a big part of my future will revolve around helping others be successful.

TWEET WRAP 🐣