We tried a simple idea that far exceeded our expectations

Dear readers,

One thing the editorial team does a lot of is experiment with content ideas. Some of them work, but many don’t.

A few weeks ago, we hacked together a list of startups that are raising funds.

We used a few simple tools for this: a form to collect submissions, a spreadsheet to sort them, and a data visualization tool to display them. No coding needed.

Based on a project we dropped, we knew that our latest try would get traction from readers. But would it attract subscribers? It turns out that the answer was yes.

Getting readers’ interest, however, wasn’t the problem. Instead, it was getting startups to submit entries – that was why we didn’t continue with the previous attempt. So we needed to solve the problem this time around.

We know startups are constantly seeking investors, so they just needed to know that this avenue is available. So we promoted the submission form once a week in our popular daily newsletter. That seemed to do the trick.

We also continued with our regular programming last week.

In the realm of ecommerce (which we cover in our weekly newsletter, The Checkout), we wrote about a startup that’s trying to replicate the Pinduoduo model in India, and we asked whether mega sales events will outlive their usefulness.

We also put the spotlight on Grab and looked at how it built its lead in the food delivery war. The super app has also seen a sudden spurt of interest from Indonesian investors, and we explored why that’s the case.

Finally, we covered how Indonesia stole the mega-funding spotlight from Singapore last year, and how co-living startup Hmlet is looking to bounce back from Covid-19.

In general, we’ve gotten pretty good at using analytics to shape our editorial decisions, but this can still feel like a crapshoot at times.

We’re certainly looking to improve how we use analytics and user feedback. (I recently signed up for a course that hopefully will help me with this.)

I’m hopeful these efforts will lead to better products for you.