If your marketing plan doesn’t include TikTok, YouTube Shorts or Instagram Reels, well, can you really call it a marketing plan?
Video content is vital for driving early engagement, which is why growth expert Jonathan Martinez (formerly of Postmates, Uber and Chime) shares four tactics for getting started:
- Leverage creator marketplaces.
- Produce short-form videos.
- Build lasting creator relationships.
- Cross-pollinate your videos.
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“If you’re entering 2023 without a video content plan for your startup, you will be missing out on a significant resource for creating brand awareness and reaching more consumers,” writes Martinez.
To find more growth marketing tactics and strategies you can implement on your own, check out his recent five-article series:
- Setting up a landing page.
- Launching a paid acquisition channel.
- Booting up an email marketing campaign.
- A/B test growth experimentation.
- Deciding which metrics matter most for your startup.
Thanks very much for reading TC+ this week,
Walter Thompson
Editorial Manager, TechCrunch+
@yourprotagonist
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Netflix, Box, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Sequoia Capital, Elad Gil — just some of the 250+ heavy hitters leading 200+ sessions designed to deliver the insights that fuel startup growth and sharpen your edge. Don’t miss the 20th anniversary of TechCrunch, and a chance to learn from the top voices in tech. Grab your ticket before Sept 26 to save up to $668.
San Francisco | October 27-29, 2025 REGISTER NOW4 video content tips for your startup’s growth marketing
How to manage third-party cybersecurity risks that are too costly to ignore
Every early-stage startup relies on third-party vendors to handle some aspects of their operations: No one wants to build a shopping cart, credit card processing or ID verification app from scratch.
But now that third-party data breaches are a regular occurrence, teams need to make managing that risk a part of their day-to-day operations, writes Jon Siegler, co-founder and chief product officer of LogicGate.
“No matter how well you clean things up, the reputational hit to your organization will continue to cost you in lost business down the road,” he writes.
How to manage third-party cybersecurity risks that are too costly to ignore
After a record 2022, 8 investors explain why it’s ‘still just Day 1’ for Africa’s startup ecosystem
Despite the downturn, Africa had a record year in 2022: 1,100 investors poured $6.5 billion into the region’s startups, reports Tage Kene-Okafor.
To learn more about “what drove such volumes when the rest of the world was reining back the collective enthusiasm of 2021,” he interviewed eight investors:
- Kola Aina, general partner, Ventures Platform
- Zachariah George, managing partner, Launch Africa Ventures
- Olumide Soyombo, co-founder, Voltron Capital
- Stephen Deng, co-founder and managing partner, DFS Lab
- Karima El Hakim, country director, Plug and Play Egypt
- Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, founding partner, Future Africa
- Maya Horgan Famodu, founder and partner, Ingressive Capital
- Kyane Kassiri, partner, RaliCap
After a record 2022, 8 investors explain why it’s ‘still just Day 1’ for Africa’s startup ecosystem
Dear Sophie: Will published articles boost my odds of getting an O-1A or H-1B visa?
Dear Sophie,
I’m the founder and CEO of a startup in Istanbul, and I’ve heard that articles in publications about an entrepreneur or a startup can be a big plus when applying for an O-1A or H-1B visa.
Is that true? Which publications are valid? Should they be tier-1 or in English? Thank you for your help!
— Tenacious in Turkey
Dear Sophie: Will published articles better my odds of getting an O-1A or H-1B visa?
Pitch Deck Teardown: Spinach.io’s $6M seed deck
Before the pandemic, engineering teams typically started their days with face-to-face standup meetings so members could coordinate efforts and track each others’ progress.
Once those sessions became remote, Spinach.io developed a service that integrates with project management tools like Jira and Slack, as well as online meeting tools like Google Meet and Zoom.
“What we were trying to do here is really solve a very specific use case for engineering teams that follow the Scrum Agile development process,” said co-founder and CEO Matan Talmi.
Last August, Spinach.io raised a $6 million seed round; here’s the pitch deck they used:
- Cover slide
- Team slide
- Problem slide
- Mission slide
- Product slide
- Traction slide
- Customers slide
- Investors slide
- 18-month plan slide
- Thank-you slide
Pitch Deck Teardown: Spinach.io’s $6M seed deck
Think about your business model as part of a VC pitch
No one needs an MBA to craft a credible business plan, but if you want an investor’s attention, you’ll need to demonstrate a solid grasp of the fundamentals.
Haje Jan Kamps shares a framework for developing a plan slide for a pitch deck that focuses on five aspects:
- Cost of goods sold
- Customer acquisition cost
- Lifetime value
- R&D cost
- Pricing model
“Breaking those numbers down and presenting them the right way can greatly benefit how you tell your startup’s story to investors,” he writes.
How to think about your business model as part of a VC pitch