Editor’s Morning Note: What the hell did we do this year? Some stuff!
This is the final post from the Editorial team at Mattermark this year. And since the world apparently isn’t working Monday, it’s our last post until Tuesday.
Regardless, it’s the perfect moment to take a quick look back at what the heck we did this year.
After all, who doesn’t want to spend their waking moments reviewing 2016, especially in the morning?
Images And Words
We kicked things off this year in early January, announcing that we were taking the blog in a new direction. We set into writing, hitting, oddly enough, the PC market, VC activity in bitcoin, 2015 tech IPO performance a few times, public cloud growth, and LinkedIn earnings.
Mattermark wrote a long, soporific I, II, III, III.5, IV, IV.5, IV.75, and V part series on the changing value of ARR. We spent far too much time looking at not just every IPO we could get our hands on, but also the ever-shifting cohort performance of the 2015 and 2016 crops. We even took a whack at what’s coming in 2017.
Also out each quarter: A venture capital roundup detailing what went on in the first, second, third, and (soon) fourth quarters.
Mattermark also interviewed our favorite employee of the London Stock Exchange, the CEO of Blendle, Menlo Ventures’ Matt Murphy, Y Combinator graduate True Bill, Egnyte’s Vineet Jain, and venture tween Josh Felser.
We worked on Uber’s revenue results just, you know, a time or two, but nothing excessive—no sir. That and Lyft. Of course, Snap’s impending IPO was worthy of a few looks as well.
Jason Rowley, our most prolific contributor, spent the year peeling back the world of venture capital, delving into where venture activity was highest in the United States, writing guides to venture terms, detailing how much money will actually harm your company, and discovering what percent of startups die. He capped off the year with a four-part series on Chicago—one, two, three, four—that is worth reading in its entirety. Jason also broke some Google news to boot.
(Jason has a newsletter you should read.)
Mostly behind the scenes, Holden Page helped keep the tempo and deleted my various comma-based crimes against humanity. We even got him to write once this year, which was a treat.
Speaking of delectable sweets, Owen Thomas, previously of Valleywag and now of the Chronicle, wrote a trio of pieces for Mattermark, including a look at technology cycles, a history of tech bullshit, and a collection of stories from the implosion of the dotcom boom.
Also part of our collective this year was Sonya Mann, who, just to pick her most recent stuff, wrote about late-stage investing, cognitive biases among venture capitalists, fashion tech, the impact of women venture capitalists on results, trend-following among the monied set, and where the next PayPal Mafia may be lurking.
(Sonya has a newsletter you should read.)
Max Cherney not only wrote some of our best stuff, but he also broke the story that one of the best-known weed startups had lost its CEO. Max also wrote about why Twitter shouldn’t sell, how pot startups are tapping public markets, and the changing valuation marks that mutual funds assign to unicorns.
Ron Miller, an old friend of mine and a TechCrunch regular, dropped in to help us unspool the cloud wars, learn how hard it is to price IPOs, and, my favorite, figure out why Oracle is working to replace “legacy incomes” with profits derived from cloud-centric revenue.
Our own Danielle Morrill wrote twice, including a look at what was going on in venture capital, and how to not die, a critically important narrative that was born at the end of Winter, and somehow fell off before Spring.
Another member of the TechCrunch family, Ryan Lawler, showed up to cover flat rounds being the new up. That was a delight.
Adam Marx helped the group expand its coverage into the musical realm, most recently publishing a look at the failed Spotify-SoundCloud tie-up. His work is worth your time.
Keeping on, Anshu Sharma, the best breakfast date in Silicon Valley, wrote about why unicorns were healthy back when the idea wasn’t in vogue, took a swing at Brexit for us, and riffed on the Nutanix IPO.
Twitter gremlin and general delight Ed Zitron wrote a few pieces for Mattermark on the subject of PR for startups. Ed is his own question and answer, so it was good to have him around and on our pages.
We also had a host of other interesting contributors, including Barrett Daniels, Laura Behrens Wu, Eileen Carey, Chris Nicholson, Frida Polli, Michelle Tandler, Scott Hirleman, John Doherty, Ashvin Bachireddy, Chris Vaughn, Kris Duggan, Nic Brisbourne, Alex Mittal, Mattermark’s Kevin Liu, Micah Rosenbloom, Max Wessel, Trish Costello, Mike Belsito, and Brett Bivens.
That’s a quick overview, and it doesn’t include nearly every Morning Note that we published every Monday through Friday. But hey, who needs to count everything?
It was a good year. A learning year. Here’s to 2017.