Hi there, 👋

We curated some great articles for you today. To highlight one of them, Jason Lemkin from SaaStr states that things might get really serious around May 15-30. Spoiler alert: it will get harder on day 70, and you and your team might feel overwhelmed. For now, we aren't feeling that vibe yet.

We recently attended one of the best organised digital conferences yet; Bits & Pretzels Virtual Founders Breakfast. Besides to a top-notch speaker line-up, we even got breakfast packages (including pretzels and bratwurst) delivered. While joining the event from home, there was a real conference spirit going on.

At our studio, we also transformed a lot of our office events. Because we are very keen on our people and culture, and our teams already use video calls daily, organizing virtual events such as weekly Friday drinks felt quite natural from the start. Next to that, we started hosting fun activities throughout the week, such as our virtual easter brunch. Similarly to the Bits & Pretzels conference we delivered delicious lunch packages to the Builders team and enjoyed the contents (virtually) together. Previously we also hosted virtual game nights and a special bingo edition with floral prizes which all were a lot of fun.

We are curious if you organize similar virtual events with your team and if so, what did you do? — Inspire us at [email protected].

Venture news 📣

IPS. Hooray! A big milestone was reached earlier this month when our cloud-hosting venture IPS turned 10. What once started from a passion for technology is grown into a thriving cloud hosting company that offers intelligent solutions to thousands of clients and amazing partners. The IPS marketing team shared some throwbacks on their Instagram.

Influentials. Another celebratory moment came from Influentials this week, who launched their TikTok channel integration. Influentials is the very first influencer platform in the Benelux to offer TikTok influencer marketing campaigns. While this feature was on the roadmap for some time, TikTok’s numbers have recently skyrocketed in favour of influencer marketing since everyone at home seeks distraction from the abundant Corona news with funny and creative videos.

What we’re following 👀

A reminder that a business plan is not a strategy.

The key startup survival strategy in a pandemic is to take action with compassion.

How to compare the startup studio model to the accelerator model.

SaaStr shares how you and your team might feel around May.

Fellow studio High Alpha talks about innovating in a time of crisis in this upcoming webinar.

How Bits & Pretzels organized a gigantic live event within only 14 days.

Come build with us 🧑‍💻

While we are working remotely, we’re still looking for bright minds to join our studio team or one of our ventures.

Digital Product Designer at Builders

Full-Stack Developer at Builders

Front-End Developer at Builders

Back-End Developer at Builders

Cloud Engineer at IPS

Thanks for reading! We're working on exciting things, and more updates will follow soon. Be strong and cut yourself some slack in May.

Speak soon,

Michael van Lier

Managing Director at Builders