This is Andrew Gunderman’s weekly newsletter, a place to find his upcoming events, news, and to read about technology, business / startups, economics, and investing.

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👀 Who is Andrew Gunderman?

I am a young entrepreneur who raised venture capital for the first time at 21 and dropped out of college that same year. I sold my first company at 23.

I also host both private and public events for celebrities, professional athletes, influencers, elected government officials, business magnates, and more. Many thousands of people have attended my events all over the country, and I've raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in sponsorship. My events have led to tens of millions of dollars of investments.

I was named on the Inno 25 Under 25 list for 2023. You can find me in Entrepreneur, Forbes, Inno Magazine, and more.

🎉 My Upcoming Events

• The Quarterly Penthouse Series is the premier private event in Chicago aiming to be THE event for the most accomplished people in the city. Featuring professional athletes, celebrities, influencers, business magnates, high ranking and elected government officials, and more. These events feature guests worth billions of dollars and who have millions of social media followers.

  • Early March - For extremely accomplished individuals in any field

• Renowned Chicago is the premier private community for established influencers & content creators in Chicago built by myself and Madison Jade. Our community represents a membership with almost 100 million collective followers on socials.

  • Mid April - For established influencers or content creators making any type of content (30k minimum followers or some major accomplishments)

That’s it for now! If you’re interested in attending an event just respond to this email and let me know. However, all of my events are curated for specific groups of people, so if you’re not in an event’s target group don’t expect an invite.

😀 Things That Startup Advice Gets Wrong

Startup advice is very similar to an ideology or a theology. People worship investors & successful founders and take everything they say as gospel. Some of those individuals have never been founders and attribute the reasons for others’ success, or their own, as reasons that had nothing to do with their success.

It is a remarkably common phenomenon in life to lack self awareness. From the outside, we might look at a figure such as Elon Musk, or another great entrepreneur, and assign a specific reason for their success. Ultimately, however, they are usually extremely good at a small number of things. The individual, if they’re self aware, can usually identify what exactly that thing is that made them successful. For someone like Alex Hormozi, he is incredibly great at marketing. That is his dominant skillset. So, everything in his life will be seen through the lens of marketing. For other entrepreneurs it will be different.

This is important because what we’re good at, and therefore what we focus on, typically changes how we see the world. Great product people will say their company succeeded because they had a great product. Great fundraisers will say their company succeeded because they had a ton of capital. Great hirers will say their company succeeded because they had great talent. And it goes on and on. In reality, companies are very complex and the reason for success was likely a mixture of all of these components AND then some. Unfortunately, any successful founder’s words get taken as gospel and so poor startup advice gets distributed all over the globe. Early stage founders follow it and inevitably fail.

I like the traditional business world far better when I’m looking for advice. It is way less glorious. People don’t often raise millions of dollars on an idea. And the advice is far better. Obviously, venture capital backed businesses and traditional businesses are very different, but the mindset of having strong business fundamentals is something that is shared in most successful businesses, but completely lacks in the startup world. Many startup founders you find who get funded have zero idea of how to distribute their product, zero idea how to build their product, and zero idea of how to even position a product.

The best founders I’ve ever met are obsessed with their customers and solving a problem. This goes into the first major problem I see with most startup advice.

Too Much Focus on Product

In most industries, business model innovation matters far more than product innovation. If you are building a business where you are at the forefront of technological innovation (like you’re building an LLM company) than product is extremely important right now. However, I have so many friends with smaller, mid-sized, and massive companies that have not great products, but fantastic businesses.

Look at your business like it’s a math equation. First, there’s the amount of outreach you’re doing to bring in new customers. That is either one to many or one to one (marketing verus sales). Then, there is the percentage of those people that convert into paying customers. From there, there is the percentage of users that are retained over time, and lastly, there is the percentage of users you are able to up-sell over time.

The only function of your product in this math equation (for repeatable business models) is to increase retention (aka solve a problem well over time). You need to innovate on your product to increase retention, but that is its primary purpose.

Not Realizing The World Is More Complex Than Just Business

Something I hear from the startup world that I think is total bogus is that you should focus entirely on your startup, and nothing else. I agree that focus is extremely important and that you should work extreme hours. However, I don’t believe that you can just forsake everything else in your life to build your company. The primary thing I’m mentioning here is building a network. Over the last year I have built an extensive network of successful entrepreneurs and executives. Some people might consider my effort a waste of time, but I have a ton of leverage now that I’ve never had before. I have a greater understanding of the world and how to build a large company, and I have the connections to raise capital, hire, and do literally anything in my life more effectively.

There is a reason that successful CEOs pay tens of thousands of dollars a month, or more, to build up their networks. Knowing the right people is incredibly important. It increases the quality of advice you receive by 10x, it increases your fundraising potential by 10x, and it raises your team building potential by 10x. Spend some time building a strong network and it will pay you back over the course of your life.

🫠 What I Need Right Now

• Nothing!

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