Issue 020: The Lessons Steve Jobs Wanted to Pass on (in His Own Words), How to Turn Skeptical Visitors Into Customers, and More

We also talk about the 70/20/10 rule every growing startup needs to follow, and a simple tactic to grow a subscription business.

January 29, 2025 | #020 | Free Version

Hi friend and happy Wednesday!

Welcome to Startup Blitz, a weekly newsletter full of timeless ideas and insights you can use in your online business.

This week, we discuss –

🍎 The lessons Steve Jobs wanted to pass on (in his own words)

🏭 Why startups need a 70/20/10 strategy for product development

🤝 How to instantly build trust & turn skeptical visitors into customers

🪙 A simple tactic to grow your subscription business

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These 7 Types of Evidence Instantly Build Trust And Lead to Sales

When people land on your website, it’s tempting to tell them how amazing your product is.

But here’s the problem – no one believes self-praise. Anyone can claim to be the best. But without proof, visitors will remain sceptical.

That’s why credibility from third-party sources is so powerful. They carry far more weight than anything you could say about yourself.

Andy Crestodina of Orbit Media recently shared 14 types of evidence you can use to instantly build credibility & trust:

Here’s their step-by-step process:

1. Testimonials

When you say it, it’s marketing. When your customers say it, it’s social proof. So add testimonials from your customers with their name, face, job title, company name and logo.

Avoid making a testimonials page because they tend to get skipped. Instead, put them on your most visited pages.

2. Client Logos

For service providers, these are a strong form of evidence. They stand out with colour and prove you’ve been trusted by other brands. The more well-known their brand, the better. But even logos of unknown brands can build confidence.

3. Case Studies/Success Stories

These little stories explain the problem you solve and the impact of the solution. These work for both individual customers and decision-making teams, making them powerful for B2C and B2B.

4. Years in Business, Size of Operation

If yours is an established firm with years of history, put this on your website. Better yet, make it a subhead.

If yours is a national or global firm, make sure that’s obvious to visitors. Don’t wait for them to click on your contact page to show that you have offices everywhere. Make a page block showing your many locations with a map. Add it to every page just above the footer.

5. Number of Happy Clients, Successful Projects, Etc.

Highlight how many projects you’ve completed and how many customers you’ve satisfied. Remember that stories are more persuasive than stats, so explain who you helped, what service you provided, and back it up with proof.

6. Team Credentials

Think about your staff. What credentials do they have? Do they have any certifications, advanced degrees, publications, memberships or patents? Add bio pages showcasing all of those credentials.

7. Charitable Contributions

Charity work is evidence that your brand is ethical and trustworthy. Being charitable can trigger both the halo effect and the reciprocity bias.

Crestodina has seven more tips you can follow to build trust and increase sales. You can read the full article to learn more.

A Simple Tactic to Grow Your Subscription Business

If you run a subscription business, here’s a tactic that can increase increase both your Lifetime Value (LTV) and Return on Ad Spend (ROAS):

Offer discounts for groups.

Think of how Spotify’s family plan works – users get a discount (e.g., 10% off) when they subscribe as a group.

This approach drives growth in two key ways:

✅ Acquisition: Users are incentivized to bring in friends, since the initial users benefit from the discount. So the group discount becomes an acquisition mechanism.

✅ Retention: Individuals within discount groups tend to cancel less frequently, since doing so would make their friends pay more. As a result, retention increases.

So a small discount is turning your customers into a referral engine while keeping them subscribed for longer.

The 70/20/10 Rule Every Growing Startup Needs to Follow

Once you have found product-market in your startup, a new challenge appears: How do you juggle improving your existing product with growing your business?

You could maximize your core product, pouring resources into tinkering and perfecting it. Yet, by doing so, you miss out on seizing new opportunities while competitors creep in. Or you could pursue innovative ideas at the risk of devaluing your revenue engine.

In an interview with First Round, Logistic company Shippo’s founder and CEO Laura Behrens Wu shared how she applies the Three Horizons Framework to manage this balance:

✅ Horizon One: Core Product (70% of resources)

“A Horizon One product is one that’s working really well and is the core part of your business, probably the majority of your revenue. It’s all about optimizing Horizon One and making it work better and building this revenue engine. But you don’t want to take too much risk here because it’s a more mature product.”

🔍 Horizon Two: Forward-Looking Products (20% of resources)

“Horizon Two and Horizon Three products are forward-looking. You don’t have product-market fit in those products just yet. Horizon Two is where you have a good hunch that there’s something there, and it’ll work.”

🚀 Horizon Three: Big Risks (10% of resources)

“Horizon Three products are insane ideas, and you’re just dabbling. You have no idea whether they could be some business line in the future. A Horizon Three idea might mean playing around with how you can implement Generative AI into your product.”

The key is not to get so obsessed with future ideas that you neglect the products driving your revenue today. Find the right balance, and you’ll keep growing without losing your foundation.

📖 Book of the Week: Steve Jobs - The Lessons He Wanted To Pass On

This week, I want to highlight Steve Jobs, the biography written by Walter Isaacson.

In the book, Isaacson shares the key lessons Jobs wanted to pass on. Jobs wrote these insights shortly before his death in 2011.

Here they are:

1. On Building a Real Company:

I hate it when people call themselves “entrepreneurs” when what they’re really trying to do is launch a startup and then sell or go public, so they can cash in and move on.

They’re unwilling to do the work it takes to build a real company, which is the hardest work in business. That’s how you really make a contribution and add to the legacy of those who went before. You build a company that will still stand for something a generation or two from now.

That’s what Walt Disney did, and Hewlett and Packard, and the people who built Intel. They created a company to last, not just to make money.

2. On Building an Enduring Company:

My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products. Everything else was secondary.

Sure, it was great to make a profit, because that was what allowed you to make great products. But the products, not the profits, were the motivation.

Sculley flipped these priorities to where the goal was to make money. It’s a subtle difference, but it ends up meaning everything: the people you hire, who gets promoted, what you discuss in meetings.

3. On Why You Shouldn’t Rely on Market Research:

Some people say, “Give the customers what they want.” But that’s not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do.

I think Henry Ford once said, “If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, ‘A faster horse!’”

People don’t know what they want until you show it to them. That’s why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.

4. On the Intersection of the Humanities and Science:

One reason Apple resonates with people is that there’s a deep current of humanity in our innovation.

I think great artists and great engineers are similar, in that they both have a desire to express themselves. In fact some of the best people working on the original Mac were poets and musicians on the side. In the seventies computers became a way for people to express their creativity.

Great artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were also great at science. Michelangelo knew a lot about how to quarry stone, not just how to be a sculptor.

5. On The Danger of Letting Salespeople Run the Show

I have my own theory about why decline happens at companies like IBM or Microsoft. The company does a great job, innovates and becomes a monopoly or close to it in some field, and then the quality of the product becomes less important.

The company starts valuing the great salesmen, because they’re the ones who can move the needle on revenues, not the product engineers and designers. So the salespeople end up running the company.

When the sales guys run the company, the product guys don’t matter so much, and a lot of them just turn off.

6. On Being Direct With Your Team

I don’t think I run roughshod over people, but if something sucks, I tell people to their face. It’s my job to be honest. I know what I’m talking about, and I usually turn out to be right.

That’s the culture I tried to create. We are brutally honest with each other, and anyone can tell me they think I am full of shit and I can tell them the same. And we’ve had some rip-roaring arguments, where we are yelling at each other, and it’s some of the best times I’ve ever had.

7. On Taking Advantage of the Great Work That Was Created Before You:

What drove me?

I think most creative people want to express appreciation for being able to take advantage of the work that’s been done by others before us.

I didn’t invent the language or mathematics I use. I make little of my own food, none of my own clothes. Everything I do depends on other members of our species and the shoulders that we stand on.

And a lot of us want to contribute something back to our species and to add something to the flow. It’s about trying to express something in the only way that most of us know how —because we can’t write Bob Dylan songs or Tom Stoppard plays.

We try to use the talents we do have to express our deep feelings, to show our appreciation of all the contributions that came before us, and to add something to that flow.

I think most creative people want to express appreciation for being able to take advantage of the work that’s been done by others before us.

That’s what has driven me.

Thanks for reading. I hope you have found at least some of these tips helpful.

Until next week!

Sayed Bin Habib

Co-Founder, Startup Blitz

Follow me on LinkedIn / Website

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