From the Investors
Mark Cranney of Andreessen Horowitz discusses why putting in place a strong sales, forecasting, and deal qualification process is a must-have for successfully scaling your company in “Control, or Be Controlled: Sales Forecasting Done Right”
Maxwell Wessel of Sapphire Ventures highlights how substantial and long the discovery period of a startup’s life tends to be for entrepreneurs in “The Discovery Phase of Starting Up”
Mark Suster of Upfront Ventures writes about why startups should take team dynamics more seriously and why it forms an important part of his investment decision in “The Importance of Teams and Why the Best Leaders Cultivate Them”
Rob McDonald of The Brandery outlines some cautionary terms and types of investors to avoid in “Red Flags That an Investor May Not Be a Fit For Your Startup”
Alex Taussig of Lightspeed Venture Partners explores the opportunities available to technology and media companies over the next five years as semi-autonomous cars become mainstream in “What Will Humans Do When Cars Drive Themselves?”
Hunter Walk of Homebrew takes a look at questions regarding what communication with bots should feel like and the ethical parameters surrounding their use in “What Happens When Bots Learn to Lie?”
From the Operators
Ooshma Garg of Gobble details her company’s complicated years-long path to what might look like simple success from the outside in “How Building a Startup is Like a Real-Life Game of Snakes and Ladders”
Zvi Schreiber of Freightos walks through the advantages of a SaaS application as an onboarding tool for marketplaces in “How SaaS is Bringing B2B Marketplaces Back”
Kevin Dykes of RetentionGrid offers guidelines from his experience of going through the M&A process in “Eight Lessons from Five Failed Acquisitions in One Startup”
Amrit Richmond of CMYK Ventures looks at what triggers purchasing decisions and how to create a brand that leads to long-term customer relationships in “Why People Buy Things and How to Make Consumers Fall in Love with Your Products”
Francisco Homem De Mello of Qulture.Rocks shares his take about when a startup has to face the tough decision of picking one competitive strategy over another in “Are You Amazon, or Are you Zappos?”
Derek Flanzraich of Greatist dives into the lessons learned in year five of his startup and why it was the year that both he and his company matured the most in “41 Lessons Learned after Five Years as a Startup Founder”
What The Heck Actually Happened In U.S. VC During The First Quarter? (read more)
Calm down, venture capital in the U.S. had a fine Q1 and reports to the contrary are tempestuous.
Mattermark’s Alex Wilhelm reports.
