Kapwing Blog

As a first-time startup founder, I didn’t realize that entrepreneurs were supposed to send regular email updates to their investors after raising money. For two months after we closed our seed round in June 2018, I didn’t send investor updates, and our investors didn’t ask me for them; I went back to growing the business, and they went back to their funds. Thankfully, another founder in my coworking space (the great Deon Nicholas) told me that investors and advisors expect a monthly update. »

Product Hunt has been an amazing launch platform for our image and video editing startup, Kapwing. We got to >300K monthly-active users last year with little marketing spend due partially to Product Hunt exposure. In this article, I’ll describe how Product Hunt (PH) works and share what strategies we’ve learned from fifteen PH launches in 2018. Disclaimer: This is absolutely not official advice (hence the title), and it’s not representative of everyone’s experience. »

Recently, a founder asked to chat with me about SEO. During our call, the founder - whose startup is backed by a top-tier VC - said to me “I assume that you acquired your first users through paid marketing.” Really? Is this an assumption nowadays? Since we’ve raised money, I’ve advised several founders who are fundraising for the first time. Many of them have told me that they need capital to pay for ads before they’ve even launched their product. »

How do you organize your startup’s website? It depends on the stage your company is in. We have redesigned our landing page more than seven times since launching in September 2017, and we’re about to do another. I wanted to share takeaways from my startup journey for other first-time founders organizing their website. Background My co-founder (Eric) and I are both web developers. For the first seven months of Kapwing, we bootstrapped, building the product ourselves and getting traction out of our savings. »

November 27, 2018 – Today, Wistia and Kapwing publish a co-authored report on “Video Usage At Startups”. In the last several months, Kapwing surveyed 132 startup founders about their use of video for business purposes and partnered with Wistia to publish the insights. The report details their insights: Video marketing is a popular medium among small companies: More than 85% of founders have made at least one video for business purposes. »

My cofounder and I have grown a $20,000+ MRR business in a year with trivial (<$1000) marketing spend. We’re 25-year-old product managers, not marketing gurus, but we are lucky to have discovered the power of SEO early on. Link building is the foundation of SEO, and we’ve learned a lot about getting people to link to your website along the way. In this post, I’ll describe the “press stunt” growth tactic and how it has helped our startup grow. »

Last July, I left my dream job at Google to work on a startup full-time. Since then, many of my entrepreneurial friends have asked me about the decision to leave a good corporate job for the risky unknown. In this article, I’ll give my advice to first-time founders who are torn between their startup dreams and their comfortable day job. Background After two years as an Associate Product Manager at Google, I left my job to work with other ex-APM, Eric Lu, on a startup. »

My dad was born an entrepreneur. When he was 7, he sold lemons and avocados from the tree in the backyard on the side of the street. When he was 11, he got a job as a paperboy that required him to wake up at 4am before middle school. In high school, he and his brother moved junk in the family truck, and during college he made money playing for two local bands. »