Startup Growth Lessons #2

Welcome to the first edition of Startup Growth Lessons for 2024, brought to you by the team at Stella Startups.

ICYMI, we launched this newsletter last year and our first edition featured Butter Insurance’s ingenious outdoor advertising campaign. How did they do it?!

In this edition, you’ll find a behind-the-scenes look at energy tech startup, Aquila’s, slick new website. 👇️

Plus, our review of the GOAT of Webflow tools that solves a whole lot of pain for startups, and some tip-top reads that might just change the way you think about a few things (e.g. B2B sales).

Enough said? Let’s get stuck into some marketing magic! ✨ 

There’s more than meets the eye to this new website 👀 

When you need a new website, it’s tempting to jump straight into planning pages and fleshing out sections thinking this is what your audience wants to know.

Do they though? Who are your audience? How do you want them to perceive your brand? What do they want to know, and how do you actually keep them on your site long enough to read it?

We don’t mean to sound like Jodie Foster in the latest True Detective, but now you’re asking the right questions! Questions that will set you on track to a cracking new website, like energy tech Aquila’s.

Pssst… Aquila is hiring so if you know any firmware systems engineers, pass it on!

Growth Tool Review 🛠️ 

AI and MarTech are evolving FAST so we’re reviewing one tool for you in each edition. Unless stated otherwise, these are not sponsored.

This week’s tool is… Relume

WHAT IS IT? 👇️ 

The ultimate toolkit for designing and building Webflow sites. Relume started as a web development agency, and has evolved into a SaaS product with a massive library of 1k+ pre-made Webflow components you can copy into your own site, ready to edit, and a corresponding Figma library so you can make an easy transition from design to build.

Now, they’ve launched an AI-powered sitemap and wireframe builder letting you lay your entire site’s foundations with one simple prompt.

WHO IS IT FOR? 💁‍♀️ 

Anyone wanting to build a website - particularly in Webflow - fast.

Even if you can’t use Webflow yourself (it has a steeper learning curve), Relume’s AI sitemap builder is a great place to start when briefing a web designer or developer. It will help you quickly visualise the project’s scope and the AI-generated wireframes will likely give you ideas for key sections of each page.

WHAT DID WE TEST? 🧪 

Gemma (that’s me!) has been a big fan of Relume’s components library for a while now, using it to build the Stella Startups and Overnight Success websites, but this was my first spin with the new AI tools.

My dog groomer didn’t have a website so for this test, I tried building a sitemap and wireframes for them. This is what I received in about 5 minutes, using a two-sentence prompt.

THE VERDICT 🤯 

You know when you’re exclaiming out loud whilst using a product for the first time that it’s getting something right!

I was impressed by not just the speed at which these tools allowed me to finish what usually takes hours, but how well they predicted relevant page sections with such little instruction.

Obviously, a dog salon is a relatively simple business model with many examples for AI to reference, so the result might not be as accurate and robust for a more complex or innovative business. However, I still think it would save anyone a lot of time, and at the very least get your creative juices flowing!

PRICING 💰️ 

• Relume has a free plan with limited functionality, but enough to give you an idea of how it works and to try out their AI site builder tools on one project.

• You can get a 7 day free trial of the Starter plan (with limitations on accessing the Pro Figma Kit); after the trial it’s $38 USD/month with upgrade options for teams.

• If you’re not constantly changing your website’s structure or creating new pages, you should only need to pay for the tool during your initial build. So a monthly plan will likely work best for most early-stage startups, with the option to re-subscribe and upgrade if needed.

COMPETITORS 🥷 

The number of website builders - especially AI powered - is growing daily so you could say the broader competitive set for Relume is large. However, if we just look at Webflow-native component libraries and AI tools, Relume is leading the way.

• Superflow offers a much smaller component library at a lower price point, minus AI functionality or anything to support the rest of the site build process.

• AI site builders like Teleport can whip you up an entirely designed website in 30 seconds from a single ChatGPT prompt. However, they use their own platform (not Webflow), and don’t offer AI-powered tools to generate sitemaps and wireframes, allowing less upfront customisation and meaning they don’t follow a best-practice web build process.

Good reads to level up your growth game 👀 

• The JOLT Effect - Why does it seem easier for some startups to conquer the tricky territory of B2B sales more than others? Quite possibly because they’ve read this book - even this summary is gold!
  

• DataDistillr failure - We all know failure happens and we might as well learn from it. That’s why this founder’s reflections are well worth your eyeballs.

This newsletter is from the team at Stella Startups 👋

We help Australian startups steer their marketing and begin building their brands, until they outgrow us. This includes assessing where you’re at and what you need (our Audit), brand positioning, strategic messaging (our Tell service), and targeted marketing plans (our Sell and Scale services).

We’re transparent about what we offer and even have pricing on our website where we can. If you’d like help, book some time to chat (we don’t bite!).

See you next time,
Gemma & Bridget

P.S. This newsletter is our very own growth experiment, so we’d love to hear your thoughts. Was it useful for you? Reply to this email with your feedback! 🙏