👋 Bye!

BYE, BYE, BYE

The best employee offboarding process

Saying goodbye is never easy – but when your first employee says farewell, it can be downright difficult! And that goes double if there’s no employee offboarding process in place.

So, what exactly is an offboarding process? Plainly put, it's the opposite of onboarding. Meaning, instead of the official warm welcome, the offboarding process acts as the formal farewell between your company and your employee. 

And it works to tie up any loose ends that might make the transition harder. Finishing up final projects, documenting any uncaptured knowledge, and the actual send-off included.

Similar to onboarding, this process should be standardized. Otherwise, what might be a seamless experience for one team member, might feel more like a bad breakup for someone else. 

But I get it – why invest in someone who is just going to leave anyway? Because the reality is how you part ways with your employees is just as important as how you onboard them. And it can drastically change how your remaining team members view your company overnight. 

👉 Snag the best offboarding process (from start to finish).

THE FOUNDING STORY

HubSpot just bought what?

HubSpot just acquired a media company (specifically, The Hustle newsletter) for a speculated $27M. But stakeholders dispute this number. This makes HubSpot the first software company to acquire a media company. 

But, as a growing startup ourselves, we’re way more interested in how The Hustle scaled into something acquisition-ready than the details of the deal. So, here’s how The Hustle got here. 

Imagine it's 2014. Soon to be Hustle founder Sam Parr read the CNN founder Ted Turner’s bio. And it inspired a weird but simple idea. He would build a huge newsletter following, then use profits to build new products (AKA create more content). 

Then, in 2015, the idea started taking shape. Per The Hustle, they launched “a dinky little blog." And a few months later, the real dream started when the first daily newsletter was sent.

This newsletter was totally free to users. And it used ads to help keep the content free (a business model that the media company would help popularize in the coming years). 

Fast-forward to 2017. After years of sending a daily news roundup, the Hustle daily email  had bragging rights to 100k subscribers. And by 2019, they hit 1M. (Not to mention their team scaled to roughly 100 people.)

It was finally time to fully see that Day 1 dream come true with the launch of their first paid product (enter Trends). Within a few months, the new paid newsletter hit 10k subscribers. And the daily newsletter skyrocketed to a whopping 1.5M. 

Throughout this journey, tons of companies tried to buy The Hustle (after all, it was a raging success). But Sam said, "sorry, not interested." That is until HubSpot knocked on his door (well, probably dropped him a line). 

Then, it happened. Last week to be exact. Sam announced via his personal Twitter that HubSpot officially owned The Hustle. But with the deal now finalized, what's next for the newsletter? 

Moving forward, the SaaS company promises to keep the company “weird” and "cool” - all while putting way more resources behind it. AKA if you're a subscriber and missed the announcement, you might not have known the difference. 

👉 Get all the deets of the acquisition.

NEW DATA

RIP to the Bay Area

Pre-pandemic, the Bay Area was a start-up country. And it was the top choice for nearly 42% of founders in terms of where to start a business. 

Other cities - like New York and Seattle - dwindled far behind at second best. And a distributed company was only favorable for a mere 6%. 

Only a year later (not to go off on this again), a lot has changed. Now, only about 28% of founders still see the Bay Area as "the place" to launch a venture. But more than 40% (and counting) favor a remote-first firm over a physical HQ.

Meaning, bets are hot that we’ll see more decentralized companies soon - and fewer venture-backed businesses in the Bay Area because of this. (Plus, the recent San Francisco mass exodus seems to back this up.)

👉 See the full study.

THE REAL WINNER

A DE&I playbook for recruiting top talent

If you’ve ever wondered why you don’t get more [insert demographic here] in your pipeline, this one’s for you! 

Backed - the human-centric European VC fund - invested heavily (no pun intended) in increasing opportunities for diverse talent in their industry. And now, they’re sharing their process with all businesses. 

Here are a few of their top DE&I plays: 

• Only put the qualifications that are 100% non-negotiable on your job descriptions. All the extras could lead top candidates to self-select themselves out of the process
• Make all candidates go through the same application process. AKA no special treatment - even for referrals
• Let talent speak for itself. Meaning, remove unconscious biases by making application responses as anonymous as possible
• Ask every candidate a standardized set of questions. No surprise - but this makes it way easier to see who the most qualified candidate is

👉 Get the complete DE&I playbook.

TL:DR

Other news you'll want to know

• Anonymously led fintech startup, Millions, raised $3M in seed… just to give it all away? Yep - that’s their play for building brand awareness. 
• Later asked 4 Black content creators to share their experiences as the influencer marketing space tries to diversity
• No surprise that this year's Super Bowl ad slots cost an eye-watering $5.5M. But the ad slots in the late 1960s were almost (dare we say) affordable
• Zoom announces new features to help companies head back to the office (like a remote receptionist)
• Salesforce says the 9-to-5 grind is dead. And they're predicting 3 new ways to work will pop up in it's place.