From Medium Writer to Entrepreneurship Handbook Founder

Starting a business or a startup can be an exciting and rewarding experience, but it does come with its fair share of challenges. One of the biggest hurdles is deciding which direction to take. 

With so much online information, knowing where to begin can be difficult.

It's essential to do your research and have a solid plan in place before diving in. 

1. Start by identifying your niche and target audience. 

2. Determine what sets your business apart and what value you can offer. 

3. Conduct market research to understand your competition and identify any gaps in the market that you can fill.

4. Develop a business plan once you understand your business idea and target market.

Many entrepreneurs need help figuring out the next steps even after having a solid business plan.

This is where Entrepreneurship Handbook comes in handy by providing valuable insights and guidance to help navigate the business landscape. 

Dave Schools, the creative mind behind the Entrepreneurship Handbook (EH), wanted to create a community that showcases cool startups, entrepreneurship processes, tech innovations, and design theory. 

Entrepreneurship Handbook comes packed with practical advice from experts and novices alike. But remember, starting a business or a startup is a journey, and having a business plan and a support system is crucial. 

So, don't hesitate to reach out and ask for help. You never know who might be willing to lend a hand.

The Genesis of Entrepreneurship Handbook

Who is Dave Schools? What is the Entrepreneurship Handbook (EH)? And how can it help entrepreneurs in their journey to success? 

Let us venture to the beginning.

Dave Schools serves as the VP of Multiproduct Growth at Hopin. He is also a published author and a startup marketing leader who has founded an app named Party Qs. With a strong record of entrepreneurial successes, we spoke with Dave about his marketing and growth background and the EH newsletter.

“Growth is very fun,” said Dave during the interview. “I started in Marketing. Our Marketing Team [Hopin] scaled from 45 folks, and it all disappeared. After the pandemic, we calmed down. We were over 1,000 individuals at one point and went down to 300. We had five business units needing support: Hopin Events (our original), StreamYard, Streamable, Topi, and Jamm.”

In August, Hopin sold the events platform to RingCentral. Hopin achieved unicorn status during the COVID-19 pandemic and raised more than $1 billion in funding. At Hopin, Dave oversees growth strategies of multiple products, public relations, and corporate brand management. 

Outside of his full-time work at Hopin, Dave is also the co-founder and CEO of Party Qs, a fast-growing icebreaker questions mobile app (number 1 on Google Search) with over 2,000 hand-curated conversation starter questions for any social setting.

Dave's extensive knowledge and passion for startups and marketing made him realize the need for a community to support others in the same process. In 2015, he started writing stories about unique startups, entrepreneurship, tech innovations, and design theory. 

“So, the Entrepreneurship Handbook has always been where I record my journey and personal learnings. Everything I encountered through running my own LLC, S Corp, App Company, and now being part of Hopin, a venture-backed hypergrowth startup.”

A Medium of Inspiration

The Entrepreneurship Handbook is not just a guide; it's a top Medium publication dedicated to helping readers succeed in entrepreneurship.

“I was watching Ev Williams, one of the co-founders of Twitter, with what his next project was going to be. And it was the platform Medium. I was early and waiting for Medium to open its doors. I created a publication—a repository for all my writing and learning about starting a business and launching a startup. Since I was early, and because I protected the quality of the editorial direction of the publication, it attracted writers, and I had some viral stories go off.”

What is Medium?

Medium is a popular online publishing platform that allows writers and publishers to share their content with a large audience. It was founded in 2012 by Evan Williams, one of the co-founders of Twitter. 

The platform has gained immense popularity over the years thanks to its unique approach to content creation and sharing. 

With its user-friendly interface and powerful publishing tools, Medium has become the go-to platform for writers, bloggers, and publishers who want to share their ideas and stories with a broader audience. 

It's not just a platform for self-promotion or advertising but a community of readers and writers who value thoughtful, well-written articles and engaging stories. 

The editorial team curates and highlights the best content to millions of readers, making it an ideal place to showcase one's writing skills and gain exposure.

Medium has become a platform that offers a vast readership and provides writers and publishers with the necessary tools to create high-quality and engaging content, a community that values their work, and a chance to get noticed by a broader audience.

Medium x Entrepreneurship Handbook

Entrepreneurship Handbook is a Medium publication that aims to assist readers in succeeding in entrepreneurship. The publication has earned a large following due to its high-quality content, which includes practical advice, inspirational stories, and expert insights on startups.  

EH has become a top-tier Medium publication, prioritizing valuable content for its readers. The publication strongly emphasizes quality over quantity, and its editors strive to ensure that every article published on the platform is well-researched, informative, and captivating.

Entrepreneurship Handbook doesn't shy away from the gritty realities of startup life. 

It tackles the dark side of the hustle - the crushing failures, self-doubt, and mental health challenges - without sugar coating or turning a blind eye. This honesty offers invaluable guidance for entrepreneurs navigating the emotional rollercoaster of building a business.  

The publication explores new content creation and monetization strategies to attract even more readers. The large following of the publication has created an avenue of partnership with Medium.

“We have a contract with Medium directly. We get paid to publish. There are many great writers on Medium. We scout and hunt for top voices in the startup and entrepreneurship space.”

Entrepreneurship Handbook Buzzes to beehiiv

If you want to write and publish your work, Medium is a great platform to get started. By sharing your articles on Medium, you can reach a wider audience and get discovered by well-known outlets. 

Many past articles from Entrepreneurship Handbook on Medium have been republished by popular media outlets, which helped Dave gain more exposure and established him as an authority in entrepreneurship. 

“We have 230,000 followers and publish hundreds of fantastic writers on the platform. Medium is a wonderful community of readers and writers.”

We asked Dave, with a robust history on Medium, why he would gravitate towards beehiiv.

“Medium doesn’t specialize in email growth and growing your publication from an email perspective. It’s great for its platform, but for off-platform growth, we wanted to take on and expand the Entrepreneurship Handbook. beehiiv worked seamlessly and is a great companion to our Medium publication. Medium has email functionality built into the platform. It works great, but there’s not much data they deliver or key metrics. There aren’t a lot of opportunities for growing your subscriber list.”

After trying various platforms like MailChimp and MailerLite, Dave found they all had limited features and capabilities compared to beehiiv.

“beehiiv makes it seamless and marries well with blog publishing. This email newsletter-sending process is like no other platform. I also looked at Substack, but beehiiv was advanced with built-in growth. beehiiv is my growth engine.” 

Since starting on beehiiv, Entrepreneurship Handbook has scaled up to 8,000 active subscribers, continuously growing by several hundred a month. 

Monetizing on beehiiv

As we dive deeper into Dave's mindset, we see that he has a strong desire to turn his passion into a profitable venture. 

This is another opportunity where beehiiv thrives - offering a range of tools and resources to help individuals monetize their newsletter and turn it into a sustainable income stream.

From ad placements to affiliate marketing, beehiiv provides various ways for Dave to generate revenue from his content. “We do boosts. We do word-of-mouth. We are active on social media. We are experimenting with our premium subscription, which we started in June.”   

Additionally, beehiiv offers valuable data insights and analytics to help Dave optimize his newsletter and reach his target audience more effectively. With beehiiv's support, Dave can focus on creating high-quality content while achieving his financial goals.

“A lot of Entrepreneurship Handbook growth strategy is based on what beehiiv features. We write current events, commentary, and hot stories happening now in our newsletter. Whereas on Medium, we write our evergreen content, people telling their stories from whether it’s years ago or in the moment.”

Leveraging Multiple Platforms

EH is a platform that understands how challenging entrepreneurship can be and aims to provide insights and strategies that can be immediately applied to help readers succeed. 

The platform is dedicated to empowering and assisting entrepreneurs to achieve their goals. They recognize that success is not a one-size-fits-all solution and strive to provide diverse perspectives and strategies that can be tailored to meet the unique needs of each reader. 

Dave has contributed to popular business publications like The Hustle, CNBC, and Inc.com. He shares his insights and experiences with readers, which helps extendEntrepreneurship Handbook's reach.

Entrepreneurship Handbook leverages multiple platforms to reach its target audience and provide valuable information. Besides its platform on Medium, Entrepreneurship Handbook also uses various other platforms to reach its target audience and provide helpful information. 

Entrepreneurship Handbook has a strong presence on social media platforms like X (Formerly Twitter), Instagram, and Facebook. Through these channels, they share informative articles and motivational quotes and engage with their followers to understand their unique needs and challenges. 

Entrepreneurship Handbook on Apple Podcasts

Entrepreneurship Handbook created a podcast to diversify and leverage its target audience. Entrepreneurship Handbook podcast is an excellent resource if you're an entrepreneur seeking practical advice and inspiration.

This podcast originated from Dave's Medium publication, Entrepreneurship Handbook, and has since become a go-to audio for entrepreneurs. 

The podcast features interviews with entrepreneurs from various industries, such as tech, finance, and healthcare. Each episode offers insights and practical takeaways you can apply to your business.

One of the best things about Entrepreneurship Handbook podcast is that it's available in an audio format, so you can listen to it anytime, anywhere, whether commuting to work, working out at the gym, or relaxing at home.

 “We also have a podcast where we invited Williams and Nathan Barry, the CEO of CovertKit. We also had Tyler [Denk], the CEO of beehiiv.”

Tune into Entrepreneurship Handbook podcast for inspiration and practical advice for your business growth. 

Streamable: A Powerful Tool for Creators

During the interview, Dave mentioned a powerful tool that could help beehiiv and other platforms display videos. Streamable is an innovative video hosting platform that has become one of Hopin's essential products.

It provides a user-friendly solution for creators to upload, trim, and quickly edit their videos. With its easy-to-use interface, Streamable is an excellent alternative to other video hosting platforms like YouTube.

A wonderful feature of Streamable is its unbranded player, which creators can embed in their websites. This provides a more native experience for the audience, as the player blends seamlessly with the website design. 

This feature is handy for businesses and organizations that want to maintain a consistent brand image across all their digital platforms.

Streamable is a powerful and versatile video hosting platform offering many features for creators and businesses. Its ease of use, embedded link feature, and unbranded player make it an excellent choice for anyone looking to share their videos online.

Formula for Content Creation

In speaking with Dave, we were keen to learn about the magic formula that has enabled him to achieve impressive results in every venture he participates in. 

Dave was kind enough to share some of his insights and strategies with us, which we found both enlightening and inspiring. His marketing approach is innovative and practical, and we can see why he has become such a respected figure in the industry.

“We have a formula that we use to safeguard the editorial quality of our pieces. We use inspirational stories plus practical takeaways. In our industry with founders, startups, and entrepreneurs, we ask them to tell their stories in an authentic, genuine, first-person-based voice. Startups are a rollercoaster. Every startup story is unique. We give practical takeaways that readers can implement in their journeys.”

Once content has been created, how often does EH publish? What works for one company doesn’t mean it works for every company. 

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all strategy.

What works for EH is publishing three times a week. “Sundays, we publish a podcast episode with a recap, high-level notes, and takeaways. We do a roundup of the best articles published the previous week. We highlight a writer, and we do news commentary. On Thursdays, we do a deep dive into a company, a founder, an idea I’m obsessed with and find interesting.”

The Journey So Far

Entrepreneurship Handbook has been an invaluable resource for aspiring entrepreneurs and business owners. Dave began writing the Handbook to document his journey but soon realized he could use it to share his insights and experiences with others. 

As fate would have it, his writing led him to new opportunities and valuable connections that he never could have anticipated.

One of those connections was with Johnny Boufarhat, the founder of Hopin, a virtual events platform that has seen explosive growth in recent years. Dave had the opportunity to meet Johnny through his writing and creation of Entrepreneurship Handbook, and they hit it off.

This eventually led Dave to join Hopin's team, where he works as the VP of Multiproduct Growth. He enjoys the fast-paced environment and the opportunity to work with a talented and passionate group of individuals. “Now, I have a team of two running Entrepreneurship Handbook while I am focused full-time at Hopin.”

A Growth Mindset Manifesto 

In the Entrepreneurship Handbook community, Dave highlights the significance of adopting a growth mindset beyond practical tips. 

He stresses the importance of entrepreneurs embracing challenges, viewing failures as opportunities for learning, and consistently pushing themselves beyond their comfort zones. 

This is because having a growth mindset helps entrepreneurs build resilience, adaptability, and the capacity to thrive in an ever-changing business landscape. 

By fostering a culture of lifelong learning, entrepreneurs can stay ahead of the curve and remain relevant even in the face of disruptive market forces.

Complex Concepts into Simplicity: Entrepreneurship Handbook

Dave Schools and Entrepreneurship Handbook are beacons for those who wish to navigate the challenging sea of entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship Handbook is not just a guide; it's a compass that directs you toward success, helping you avoid common pitfalls and empowering you to make informed decisions. It is a treasure trove of wisdom that encourages you to think differently, challenge norms, and embrace innovation.

Dave's entrepreneurial journey exemplifies that success is not a destination but a journey filled with learning, unlearning, and relearning. His ability to translate complex concepts into easily digestible content sets him apart, making Entrepreneurship Handbook an essential resource for aspiring and established entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurship Handbook offers a much-needed antidote to the sterile, one-dimensional portrayals of entrepreneurship. They celebrate the human experience in the entrepreneurial journey, fostering a supportive community and equipping aspiring founders with the tools, heart, and mindset to navigate the uncharted waters of building a dream.

So, whether you're just starting your entrepreneurial journey or looking for ways to level up, Entrepreneurship Handbook could be the catalyst you need to propel your business forward.

After all, the entrepreneurship journey might be challenging, but it can also be gratifying with the right tools and mindset.

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