Mark Birch, Community Builder

Better Storytelling for Startup Founders Your key to influencing others is turning facts into your unique story

📚 "Facts tell, stories sell." Research says facts are 20x more memorable in stories.

Yet founders pitch with bullet points🙄

Use this story framework: Character (hero) → Conflict (tension) → Resolution (your product saves day) 🙌

LinkedIn How to use the world's largest professional network more effectively

🚪 *Ring ring* Strange man: "Let's connect!"

*Ring ring* "12 minutes to 10x your pipeline?"

My house = LinkedIn IRL 😂 1B+ users but endless strangers selling stuff. Be intentional!

Measuring Community How to avoid meaningless vanity metrics and highlight real business impact

📈 "Community = cost center to cut" says every CFO.

I spent 4 years working on this problem while at AWS.

My answer is the Three Levels of Community Metrics: C1 (business impact), C2 (bridge metrics), C3 (health).

Here is how to use this framework:

Community AI Excerpt from the second edition of Community-in-a-Box

🤖 Community building is pure drudgery. I hired full-time admins, still couldn't keep up.

With AI though, the boring stuff will get managed. This will help people better connect and build bonds through community.

I does the busywork, humans create the magic.

Distractions Tips to fight procrastination and get back your startup focus

🎯 Trading floors taught focus. Startup life = chaos.

Harvard found: 87 interruptions/day, 23 min to refocus.

Real secret: enjoy what you're building. If avoiding critical tasks = founder-market fit red flag.

Whenever I get stuck on something, I find a whiteboard ⬜

Sometimes I have a lot of conflicting ideas in my mind, and a whiteboard helps to get them out of my head.

After an hour or two of furiously scribbling words, shapes & arrows, I can step back and begin to visualize the idea more clearly.

One of the highlights of teaching at NCCU was visiting startups on campus💡

I met a drone entrepreneur, a student startup launching scooters, and an artist doing building cool stuff with paper.

It's an entrepreneurial environment for builders to launch startups🚀

What better way to spend the weekend than checking out startup pitches 😂

I shared some thoughts on the need for community for Taiwanese startups to accelerate their GTM during their final session of an entrepreneurship course.

Thanks for having me, it was a blast meeting the startups!

Loneliness Launching a startup is a lonely journey, but it doesn’t have to be

🏐 Tom Hanks had Wilson. Founders have laptops at 2 AM.

72% of entrepreneurs report mental health struggles. Loneliness = major factor.

Paul Graham said "Low points so low few could bear them alone."

Here's some ideas to fight the loneliness:

Feedback Being more intentional and systematic about gathering constructive feedback

My startup almost died because I ignored friends warnings about outsourcing my engineering.

Adam Grant's solution: Build "Challenge Network" for structured feedback.

I created my own called"The Fifty" - best decision ever to get tangible advice!
foundersinthecloud.com/p/feedback

Values Startup success begins with the foundation you create

💥 "Perfect startup team!" I thought. Same vision, same passion.

Then we started working together.

Epic arguments over dumb stuff.

65% failures = toxic co-founder relationships. Values = conflict resolution systems.

Pirates Build a small band of renegades and your startup will move faster

🏴☠️ "Better to be a pirate than join the navy" - Jobs + 20 rebels built the Mac!

Small teams of misfits > big bureaucracy.

When hiring look for: breadth, lateral thinking, creation history. Create your one-pizza team, max 5 people.

foundersinthecloud.com/p/pirates

So fake 😂 just kidding, but so hard to imagine that it was not always the built up distinct of skyscrapers that it is today.

🦁 I'm super excited to be back in Cape Town this week 👋

I will be hosting a masterclass on community growth strategies. Then I speak at AWS Community Day South Africa on the topic of "Community as Code"😉

If you have any recs on places to visit or eat, LMK😁

See you soon Cape Town!

Why The journey to finding your vision is never obvious

🔍 I was that annoying kid asking "why" about everything. Bit it's such an important question!

Most founders stumble through ideas without deeper motivation and asking why.

Your big why emerges through customer conversations and 3 AM questioning moments.
foundersinthecloud.com/p/why

Speed is your only competitive advantage Without speed, your startup is destined to die a quick death

⚡ Every second counts. But only if it's purposeful.

Startups are perpetual motion machines. Build → feedback → learn → repeat.

The faster you iterate, the better your odds. But you need to prioritize!

Real advantage = speed toward right outcome.
foundersinthecloud.com/p/speed-comp...

Spent some time tonight at the 9/11 memorial.

People say never forget. I say learn from this moment so we can have a more hopeful and caring future.

How to make faster decisions Startups thrive or die on the speed of decision-making

🎯 Bezos: "Most decisions should be made with 70% of the information you wish you had."

Waiting for 90% = being slow.

Type 1 (irreversible) vs Type 2 (reversible). Most are Type 2 but treat like Type 1.

Slow decisions kill startups faster than wrong ones.
foundersinthecloud.com/p/make-faste...

Tariffs are what will ultimately destroy America.

That is not to minimize the other stuff going on right now.

But the long-termhealth of a nation is based on what people believe to be true about their financial security.

And tariffs are already exposing a hole in that safety net.

This is why I always drive into NYC from NJ.

I can't understand who would willingly want to pay for this miserable service.

If you get your commute covered partially by work, fine. Otherwise, I would be getting in the car.

Taking NJ Transit into NYC.

Such a poor experience compared to transit in Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore.

Expensive, late, rude employees, gross passenger behavior, run down stations.

With systems like BART going out, SEPTA going bankrupt, US public transportation is a disaster.

⏰ 3:59AM wakeup. Cold shower. Espresso IPO (3 cups). 1,000 pushups. Meditate on valuation multiples. Sprint plan in Notion w/ my Japanese fountain pen. Founder mode!!!

LOL, forget the hustle theater—let’s build things that last 💪

Was at Innovation City Cape Town last November for an event.

It was a business matching session.

I was in town to give a talk, and the team invited me to join.

Ended up manning the AWS table, even though I just left AWS 😅

It was all good, made some good connections 😁

Stop burning cash on stale growth tactics👎

🔥 Build communities that sell for you instead

I grew a community from zero to 30K members across 24 cities with major impact!

I'm in Cape Town Sept 18th to share my playbook of Community Flywheel + 11 step process + real metrics💡

trib.co/innocitytalk

This is the real startup mantra

Courtesy of Charles Bukowski

I have finally given up and started using Notion. It actually does not suck as hard as I imagined it would.

Pleasant surprise is the AI assistant actually does a good job helping to create some of the pages I need without doing it by scratch.

How to build a nearly zero-cost startup There are tons of free things for startups, if only you knew about them

💸 "We spent $50 on MVP." - 2024 reality.

Cloud + AI + no-code = launch for almost nothing.

Biggest cost? Your time. Barrier to starting isn't money anymore. It's having courage to begin.
foundersinthecloud.com/p/build-near...

Where do startups ideas come from? A framework for ideas from someone that has seen thousands of startups

💡 "Live in future, build what seems interesting" Paul Graham.

Best ideas from noticing, not brainstorming i.e. my HR startup I asked: why do talented people do unfulfilling work? $1.9T productivity waste!

Where do you find your startup ideas from?

foundersinthecloud.com/p/where-do-s...

Unreasonable Startup founders and the journey into obsessive vision and execution

🍣 Never ordered tamago until Jiro Dreams of Sushi. Apprentice made 200+ before Jiro approved.

Progress depends on unreasonable people. Startups are unreasonable by definition, but beware of becoming a toxic culture!
foundersinthecloud.com/p/unreasonable

Transitions The struggles going from corporate to startup life

🔄 Corporate to startup founder? The hardest part is unlearning corporate habits!

Habits that kill startups: Waiting for perfect info, endless meetings, consensus over speed.

Startups are execution machines, so reset your mindset first in the transition:
foundersinthecloud.com/p/transitions