FWDstart turns 1

🌱 Growing pains: Setbacks and being nimble

An overnight success years in the making — that’s the goal. In our first six months, we were still finding our feet and voice, and growth was just a trickle.

If you had told us back in April that within six months we’d grow by 457%, while improving our open rate and keeping our CTR stable, we’d have taken your arm off. Probably both your arms in fact.

So, how did we get here? Well, it’s been a mix of consistency, agility, and intention.

1️⃣ Consistency

I know it’s clichéd, but the single greatest contributor to both FWDstart’s growth and our content improvement has been simply showing up. Week in and week out.

That being said, consistency alone isn’t enough. You have to be consistently doing the right things. While that might sound obvious, knowing what those “right” things were in the early days was far from straightforward.

✅ Doing the right things. 

Depending on whom you ask, the act of creating can seem either incredibly complex or remarkably simple.

If you asked us which camp we fall into, we’d say it has evolved over time.

Starting a newsletter comes with countless details that can sidetrack you — from website design and email signatures to the perfect shade of green for CTAs or optimising your subscribe page to within an inch of its life.

We fell into many of these traps ourselves. While each element has its place, the time we spent on them didn’t pay off proportionately.

Over time, we learned that the real MVP is our writing. Plain and simple.

Moral of the story? Don’t overthink it.

A beautiful sports car won’t take off without an engine. The engine, in our case, is our writing and presentation of insights.

That’s what we’re doubling down on.

As well as doing the right things consistently, you need to be writing and producing something that people actually want to read — consistently.

🙋‍♀️ Creating something people want.

We’re focused on creating content that our audience values, while staying true to our purpose. There’s a fine line between delivering what’s expected and maintaining authenticity, and it’s one we carefully navigate.

In the early days, we leaned into funding announcements and demo days — it was an effective way to grow, but it lacked the depth we envisioned.

We’ve since realised that our real goal isn’t just to follow the latest news cycle but to also draw attention to the “why” and “how” behind the headlines.

While we are deeply grateful for the work of the founders, investors, and operators who bring these stories to life, our mission is to go beyond just passively covering their achievements.

We want to provide nuanced insights that serve our audience and help advance the ecosystem, making them part of the story rather than just subjects within it.

Our goal for the year ahead is to prioritise depth and authenticity in every piece we publish.

Rather than chasing surface-level metrics, we’re dedicated to striving for meaningful engagement and delivering actionable insights — because, ultimately, we believe that true impact is rooted in quality, not just quantity.

More on how we intend to distinguish ourselves on this front later.

🤝 Meet people where they are. 

LinkedIn has been instrumental in driving our growth and helping us connect with a community that shares our vision.

Just a year ago, we barely used the platform; today, we’re proud to have nearly 11,000 followers across our personal and company pages.

At first, we approached LinkedIn as a tool for our own growth, and it performed reasonably well.

But when we pivoted to genuinely inform, educate, and share insights, engagement took off.

We’ll continue to dig deeper.

2️⃣ Agility

Our initial approach worked for a short period of time. Then it stopped. But we persisted, and it almost killed us.

In those early days, our content was pretty basic, but that was intentional.

The structure of an edition revolved around two handpicked startup funding announcements from the past week and a short curated list of stories that didn’t fit neatly into any category.

The idea was simple: keep it under five minutes to read, and by the end, readers would understand not only who the startup raising funds was, but also what that startup actually did.

Far be it from us to knock PR practitioners, but we’ve often found ourselves scratching our heads more than once after reading the releases distributed in certain quarters.

The plan was two editions a week — definitely running before we could walk. Half the team thought this was a bad idea. Half the team was right.

Eventually, we found our footing, and right before COP28, Jamie had an idea: a mid-week mini-series dedicated entirely to climate tech. So, our deep-dive prototype was born.

Early feedback was positive, and by the start of the year, we were feeling optimistic. Then we hit a brick wall. Growth stagnated, disillusionment set in, and life’s other commitments began to take priority.

So, a few months back, we tore up the playbook and started fresh. We restructured our weekly round-ups to better balance brevity with depth.

Jamie had a strong belief that weekly deep dives would be our real differentiator. Whether that belief was rooted in reality or simply a desire to immerse ourselves in new, and sometimes unfamiliar topics, we’re still not entirely sure. In any case, it gave us permission to research a wide array of topics obsessively and become just a little bit wiser with each passing week.

Condensing those insights into a 1000-1500 word deep-dive, is challenging at times, but we believe it’s one of the most effective ways to offer real insights and valuable takeaways without overwhelming you, our time-pressed reader. It has made us cut-throat in deciding what to include and what to leave out.

While this can sometimes feel limiting, it’s proven invaluable in helping us cut through the noise, which in our region, there is plenty of.

3️⃣ Focus

There’s a temptation to cover as much as possible, but we’ve found that honing in on stories with real impact — stories that resonate deeply with both us and you — has made all the difference.

For example, one of our best-performing deep dives highlighted the remarkable work of Manara, a company helping Palestinians secure jobs with global tech companies.

At first, this story received only modest engagement, but in a serendipitous turn, it eventually took off, reaching readers in ways we hadn’t anticipated and reaffirming the power of storytelling to connect and inspire.

We’ve learned that quality curation matters just as much as the content itself. Curating thoughtfully also means we don’t just follow trends for the sake of visibility; instead, we seek out stories and ideas that align with our values, digging deep to bring out the elements that matter most to our audience. This level of focus helps us sift through noise, avoid overstating minor developments, and instead shine a light on ideas and innovations that push the ecosystem forward.

Equally, refining our voice has been essential.

With each edition, we’re building a tone that’s both approachable and informative, balancing in-depth analysis with conversational storytelling to keep the content digestible and engaging. We’ve found that, by focusing on what we truly believe in and want to explore, we can deliver content that stands out for its authenticity rather than sensationalism.

Brevity and precision are also hallmarks to our approach.

By keeping the content focused, with clear, actionable takeaways and an intentional structure, we ensure that each piece offers real value without overwhelming our readers. We’ve worked hard to find a rhythm that’s both informative and efficient, aiming to create a reading experience that’s as productive and engaging as it is hopefully enjoyable.

💰 Business model: Holes in our pockets

With the direction we’re headed — introducing in-depth long-reads on startups, VC firms, and sovereign wealth funds; actionable guides for founders and VCs; and expert insights — we need time, support, and resources to sustain this.

Along the way, we’ve turned down sponsorship offers, simply because we weren’t comfortable guaranteeing ROI for prospective partners at the time. We stand by that decision.

We’ve reached a scale where we’re confident we can now deliver value to our partners — and then some. So, if you’re interested in reaching our audience, shoot us an email at [email protected], and let’s talk. Or you can just visit our sponsorship page here.

We’re also planning to introduce premium content soon. Watch this space 👀

🔮 Future: What does the next year hold?

As we hinted earlier, our goal is to provide actionable, thought-provoking insights and value you won’t find anywhere else in the region, delivered in a writing style free from the constraints of traditional, legacy media.

We’re not journalists in the traditional sense. We want to position ourselves at the intersection of tech/VC and media.

Expect interviews that aren’t PR-driven, guides based not on personal opinion but on insights from those who’ve done it at the highest level both regionally and globally, in-depth case studies on companies, countries, and trends, and, of course, the same reliable weekly roundup to keep you informed.

From a metrics perspective, we want to triple our audience size. On the revenue front, the goal is to reach a level of modest self-sustenance by this time next year.

It’s an exciting vision — ambitious, bold, and maybe a little naive. But if it weren’t, what would be the point?

🐢 Thank you

We can’t miss the opportunity to say a heartfelt thank you to everyone who has helped FWDstart reach this point.

Thank you to all of you for spending your time with us each week. The fact that over 2,000 of you now read the words we write is both daunting and a privilege in equal measure. It truly means the world.

Thank you to our families and friends for being our guinea pigs in those early editions, for their continued support, and for gradually becoming subject matter experts on a region halfway around the world from them.

Whether this is your first edition or your 83rd, thank you most of all for your time.

It’s the most precious commodity we have, and we’re deeply grateful that you’ve chosen to give it to us for a couple of minutes each week.

Here’s to another unpredictable 12 months ahead!

👋 Message from the team

Thanks for reading this week’s deep-dive! We’ll see you again on Friday for our weekly round-up.

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