Happy New Year, Mattermark Daily readers! Hope 2016 has wonderful things in store for you. For a recap of posts by investors and founders with their 2015 reflections and 2016 predictions, read this tweetstorm.
From the Investors
Paul Graham of Y Combinator opines on social fragmentation and economic inequality with Mark Suster adding his notes on the subject and how it relates to Silicon Valley in “Why I Don’t Celebrate Income Inequality”
Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures writes his list of tech predictions for 2016 (some you may or may not expect) in “What Is Going To Happen in 2016”
Tomasz Tunguz of Redpoint Ventures expands on why the more future-priced a round is, the greater the risk for investors in “The Implications of Raising a High-Priced Round”
Matt Turck of FirstMark Capital defines the network effects of machine learning technology oriented companies and highlights the challenges of pursuing this ‘after the fact’ in “The Power of Data Network Effects”
Aaron Harris of Y Combinator realizes there are many examples of exceptional companies and their strategies for success and advises founders to find their own special sauce in “Exceptionalism”
S.N. Obedith of NewGen Angels provides his annual insights around the investing landscape one of the fastest growing startup ecosystems around, in The state of Angel investing in Africa in 2015.
From the Operators
Rafat Ali of Skift reveals how and why Skift abandoned their follow-on round of investment after deciding bootstrapping was a better way forwardin “How We Got off the Addiction to Venture Capital and Created Our Own Way to Profits”
Henry Ward of eShares outlines his hiring principles and hiring heuristics with the goal of helping other CEOs struggling with hiring in “How To Hire”
Meredith Perry of uBeam reflects on her main challenges and learnings as a startup CEO from 2015 in “Keep On, Keepin’ On”
Tawheed Kader of ToutApp shares his journey through years 4 and 5 of building a SaaS company with $20M+ raised and triple digit revenue growth in “Reflections on Being CEO of a SaaS Business”
Blake Thorne of StatusPage guides you through the why of company side projects and how a coding project got them $117K in new revenue in “Our Engineering as Marketing Experiment”
Jackson Noel of AppCues publishes an in depth post on why you get the most leverage working on product when you improve user onboarding in “Why User Onboarding is the Most Important Part of the Customer Journey by 2.6x”
Funds On The Rise
BlueYard, a Berlin-based firm has raised $120 million to invest in early-stage startups across Europe. Co-founder, Ciarán O’Leary offers a background of how the fund formed and how they will deploy capital in “A New Venture Firm Called BlueYear”
Healthquest Partners, based in Menlo Park, is looking to raise $175 million for its second fund focused on healthcare innovation.
Urban.us is gearing up to close a $10 million fund to continue investing in startups focused on impacting city living. Here are more details.
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Overcoming the Tyranny of “Should”
By Danielle Morrill, CEO and Co-Founder of Mattermark
“Am I doing a good job?”
“Am I doing everything I should be doing?”
I ask my cofounders these questions from time to time. They say yes and give me a hug, and my ego is placated. But later on I still wonder am I really doing a good job? Am I leveraging every moment of time the way Ishould?
Read the rest of Danielle’s blog post on the tyranny of “should”