SEVEN TOOLS FOR EARLY STAGE STARTUPS. Or, "how I operate at @GalvanickCo" [long post; click to view in its entirety] 1. Shortcuts This is both a hack and a mindset. Whenever I noticed myself typing out the same block of text repeatedly, I created a shortcut that would enable me to, in a few keystrokes, insert that same text. On a Mac (OS X), this is simple; go to System Preferences>>Keyboard>>Text: Then, simply click the “+” button in the lower left corner of the window, and type in the text you want to type under “replace”, AND then the text you want that to be replaced with under “with.” For example: “Can you send me a few paragraphs about what Galvanick does?” “Sure,” I say. And type out “ *pitch ” which then inserts the following text into email/text/DM/etc: Galvanick helps companies secure their industrial systems and networks against cyber threats. The Galvanick platform aggregates telemetry from across your industrial environment, then contextualizes and surfaces only critical malicious behavior to your operations and security teams, enabling companies to identify threats sooner and respond faster, minimizing cyber risk to industrial infrastructure. I have shortcuts for my Calendly, a public data room, and even a short message when I need to move a conversation from another platform (e.g. Signal, Linkedin) to e-mail. They might come across as callous, but much of my job so far is communicating. And the most efficient way to do that is to push towards a single place to handle tasks. Some use a 3x5 card. I started to use my email inbox. Which leads to: 2. @Superhuman This is not paid advertising. I wish it was. (I’ll settle for (1) a small allocation in the next round or (2) swag or (3) knowing that I’m paying it forward) Using an advanced e-mail client was one of the definitive things that led to Galvanick being where it is today (e.g. still alive). But don’t take my word for it, read this tweet-thread by my longtime friend Harvey Multani, which captures why: xitter.cf/harveymultani/st… Once I got it into my head that inbox procrastination would kill the company, I decided to do something about it. That something? Superhuman. It has many benefits, but one of the best is that it enables users to create “snippets” to — just like the shortcuts above — rapidly triage. I do it 20-30 times per day, ON AVERAGE. There’s a popular “Instant intro” shortcut that comes pre-loaded, but you can make your own. I use them for following up with folks, for scheduling meetings, sending out updates to folks, really any email I’m going to send more than once. 3. @Calendly It made processing invitations to connect much, much easier, taking the steps required to go from intro to call from ~5 down to 1. There are other calendar tools as well but @Calendly is my gold standard for simplicity. Using the text shortcut hack, any time I want to set a meeting with someone I type “ *calendar ” and it replaces it with the URL string for my personal Calendly link. There’s a pro version I might explore soon, but for now, the free tier is good enough (Calendly folks if this tweet goes viral, and you are reading this and want to hook me up with a free year of Pro that would be great). 4. Note taking. I still use pen and paper. This is not great, since I try to take calls while walking. For key customer or investor conversations, I sit at my laptop. The most important thing here is that after a call is finished, I try to go back to our database (see below) and enter in the important information. 5. @X, plus @hypefury This seems obvious, but talking publicly was unnatural after nearly eight years as a [redacted] in the military, an intermission in Silicon Valley, then my four years on the National Security Council. The last thing I wanted to do was talk publicly about stuff. But one day, @HarveyMultani sat me down and explained that nobody was going to tell the @GalvanickCo story better than I would. And that meant building an audience, and going publicly. Twitter has been amazing for us, with fully 1/3 of all of our early capital coming through this platform, along with a significant percentage of customer leads, and potential team members. That said, Twitter requires discipline. I use a tweet-scheduling tool called Hypefury, which helps me write over compressed periods, then it schedules the tweets to come out over time. 6. @airtable Starting something new requires an insane amount of data retention and processing. How do you keep methodical track of a personal network, potential customers, potential investors, potential teammates? With the help of my good friend @buildingMadrid, we created an ur-database that atomizes down into (people) and (companies) and enables us to attach attributes to them. Investor? Customer? Potential teammate?What phase is the relationship at? Who introduced us? Who might they introduce us to in the future? What did we discuss with them on the last call? xitter.cf/joshuasteinman/s… 7. @journeyio This has been our ace in the hole. Journey is an amazing tool that has helped us quickly, cleanly, and asynchronously communicate complex information to large numbers of people. @bweitz1 and the team are building something special, and we will forever be customers of theirs. Want to see how we use Journey? Go to the @GalvanickCo profile and check out the link, which leads to a “Welcome to Galvanick,” Journey, which I send to folks who ask, “so, what does your company do?” and of course, I have a shortcut for the link (“*galvanickintro”), so I don’t have to remember it. Closing thoughts. None of these things are a replacement for doing the hard work. But they aremechanisms to enable you to work faster, learn faster, and move faster. With that said, there may be great tools out there I haven’t come across, or paid much attention to. Founders and operators: would love to hear from you below in the comments about how you manage your workflows, and if there are certain tools that have dramatically increased your performance.

New "Welcome to Galvanick" @journeyio just dropped, using the new 2.0 product, which is fantastic: galvanick.journey.io/p/2023W… Journey helps us communicate complex multi-media information, asynchronously (video + text + survey + whatever). Has been sales + marketing game changer.

Startup Founder 101 short course on building funnels for sales and marketing: HOW I USE @JOURNEYIO to help @GalvanickCo with sales and marketing: 1/6