Hi founders and fellow VC Friends!
This marks the 52nd Awesome People newsletter. Crazy that it's been over a year (I’ve skipped a few weeks for holidays)!
This Thanksgiving I have a long list of things that I’m thankful for. Towards the top of the list is this awesome community. We’ve made over 1000 connections between awesome people — founders, VCs, and talent. It’s pretty magical.
Thank you for being compassionate, helpful, compassionate, thoughtful, and really damn good at your jobs 🚀.
For Thanksgiving, we're paying it forward with a flipped feature. Who do you need to level up? A part-time social media guru? Freelance UX expert? PR firm?
Fill out this form and I’ll share your opportunities in next week’s newsletter!
Teamwork makes the dreamwork. Or, as Oprah says, to move forward, you have to give back 😍 .
Happy Thanksgiving friends.
You're awesome,
Founder of Awesome People and Awesome People Ventures
If you liked this, ❤️ it below, and if someone forwarded this to you, sign up here 💌
Awesome People Community Board 🚀
Are you a culture builder? Team lead? People person? I know many of you are, so don’t be shy 😉. Icebreaker is interviewing culture builders to define and prioritize their next set of features. If you want to help out and get involved, set up some time with Lisa, their awesome COO and co-founder here. She’s really wonderful (and a huge reason why I invested!).
Teammate Thank You Template 🙌
Last year for Thanksgiving I included a special 30-second thank you template to send to your teammates 🙏. I included it again here since it’s still solid ❤️.
Today is the perfect day to tell a teammate that you're thankful for them. It takes 30 seconds.
Not only is thanking people a nice thing to do, it's high ROI.
Global studies show the #1 reason people leave their jobs is they don't feel appreciated at work.
A Glassdoor study found that 80% of employees would work harder for an appreciative boss.
Adam Grant's Wharton study found that students who were alumni fundraising made 50% more calls after the director of annual giving expressed gratitude for their efforts.
Here's a 30-second starter template
Hi NAME,
Thank you so much for REASON. I really appreciate when you DO A and DO B (be specific). Thanks for being you.
Happy Thanksgiving!
YOUR NAME
Please tweak and expand as you see fit 😀.
Here are 10 reasons to thank a teammate (in no particular order)
Constantly exceeding expectations
Helping you on a specific deliverable
Consistently running productive meetings
Being your work bestie
Making you smile at work
Encouraging hard conversations
Giving honest and constructive feedback
Being a great leader
Having a positive attitude
Giving great advice
Most Recent Awesome People 🙏
Sriram - GTM and growth advisor. Sriram is a well-respected investor and runs growth teams. He scaled Spotify from 5 to 60+ markets, HeadSpin from $0 to $15M ARR in 4 years, and increased Tinder’s international market share to account for > 50% of rev.
AJ - Product advisor and coach. AJ is currently a Director of Product at Facebook and coaches founders on the side. Previously, he sold his start-up to Dropbox and worked at Twitter where he grew Vine to 350M MAUS.
Saminda - CTO coach and advisor. Most recently he was the VP of Apps Engineering at Box and owned the entire user experience for 50M+ users spanning 100K enterprises. You can hire him to help you scale your engineering org.
Want intros to anyone here? Lmk and I’ll connect you!
❤️ ❤️ ❤️