If your marketing plan doesn’t include TikTok, YouTube Shorts, or Instagram Reels, can you really call it a marketing plan?

Video content is essential for driving early engagement. That’s why growth expert Jonathan Martinez (formerly of Postmates, Uber and Chime) shares four tactics for getting started:

• Leverage marketplaces for creators
• Make short videos
• Build lasting relationships with makers
• Cross-fertilize your videos

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“If you go into 2023 without a video content plan for your startup, you are missing an important resource for building brand awareness and reaching more consumers,” Martinez writes.

Check out his recent series of five articles to find more growth marketing tactics and strategies you can implement yourself:

Thank you so much for reading TC+ this week,

Walter Thompson
Editorial Manager, australiabusinessblog.com+
@your protagonist

How to manage third-party cybersecurity risks that are too expensive to ignore

Image Credits: Alexander Zubkov (Opens in a new window) /Getty Images

Every early-stage startup relies on third-party vendors to handle some aspects of their operations: no one wants to build a shopping cart, credit card processing, or ID verification app from scratch.

But with third-party data breaches becoming a regular occurrence, teams need to make managing that risk part of their day-to-day operations, writes Jon Siegler, co-founder and chief product officer of LogicGate.

“No matter how well you clean things up, the reputational damage to your organization will continue to cost you lost business later,” he writes.

After a Record Year 2022, 8 Investors Explain Why It’s ‘Only Day 1’ for Africa’s Startup Ecosystem

Image Credits: Natalya Ivanova (Opens in a new window) /Getty Images

Despite the recession, Africa had a record year in 2022: 1,100 investors invested $6.5 billion in the region’s startups, Tage Kene-Okafor reports.

To learn more about “what drove such volumes as the rest of the world curbed the collective enthusiasm of 2021,” he interviewed eight investors:

• Kola Aina, General Partner, Ventures Platform
• Zachariah George, Managing Partner, Launch Africa Ventures
• Olumide Soyombo, co-founder, Voltron Capital
• Stephen Deng, co-founder and managing partner, DFS Lab
• Karima El Hakim, Country Director, Plug and Play Egypt
• Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, founder of Future Africa
• Maya Horgan Famodu, Founder and Partner, Ingressive Capital
• Kyane Kassiri, partner, RaliCap

Dear Sophie: Will published articles improve my chances of getting an O-1A or H-1B visa?

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/australiabusinessblog.com

Dear Sophia,

I am the founder and CEO of a startup in Istanbul and I have heard that articles in publications about an entrepreneur or a startup can be a big plus when applying for an O-1A or H-1B visa.

Is that true? Which publications are valid? Should they be tier-1 or in English? Thank you for your help!

— Tenacious in Turkey

Pitch Deck Teardown: Spinach.io’s $6M seed deck

Image Credits: Spinach.io (Opens in a new window)

Before the pandemic, tech teams usually started their days with face-to-face stand-up meetings so members could coordinate their efforts and monitor each other’s progress.

Once those sessions were conducted remotely, Spinach.io developed a service that integrates with project management tools, such as Jira and Slack, as well as online meeting tools, such as Google Meet and Zoom.

“What we were trying to do here is really solve a very specific use case for technical teams following the Scrum Agile development process,” said co-founder and CEO Matan Talmi.

Last August, Spinach.io raised a $6 million seed round; here’s the pitch deck they used:

• Cover slide
• Team slide
• Problem slide
• Mission slide
• Product slide
• Traction slide
• Customers slide
• Investors are slipping
• Sliding plan for 18 months
• Thank you dia

Think about your business model as part of a VC pitch

Image Credits: Andrii Yalanskyi / 500px (Opens in a new window) /Getty Images

No one needs an MBA to build a credible business plan, but if you want an investor’s attention, you have to show that you have a solid understanding of the fundamentals.

Haje Jan Kamps shares a framework for developing a plan slide for a pitch deck that focuses on five aspects:

• Price of the goods sold
• Customer acquisition costs
• Lifetime value
• R&D costs
• Price model

Breaking down those numbers and presenting them appropriately can greatly benefit the way you tell your startup’s story to investors,” he writes.