From the Investors
Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital reveals a small shift in First Round’s investing strategy based on a lesson learned in the dotcom crash, his thoughts on the ‘bubble’, and more in “First Round Q1 LP Letter”
Jay Acunzo of NextView Ventures shares – at length – how and why startups should do content marketing with ‘the right mentality and the right goals’ in “Should Startups Blog? An Essay (with data) to Decide Once and For All”
Hunter Walk of Homebrew explains the three buckets he uses when evaluating a company looking to raise a second seed round in “The Three Types of ‘Second Seed’ Rounds: Too Cold, Too Hot and Just Right”
Leo Polovets of Susa Ventures explores three common claims in VC to better understand if and ‘how VC investment returns are affected by bubbles’ in “Bubbles and Unicorns”
Sam Altman of Y Combinator announces that he’ll be joining the board of two energy startups as the chairman in “Energy”
Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures outlines the factors that ‘go into determining whether your team skews to loyalists vs mercenary’ and what to do about it in “Loyalists vs Mercenaries”
Zal Bilimoria of Andreessen Horowitz highlights examples of subscription-based companies he calls ‘Mass SaaS’ and why he thinks this model will grow in popularity in “Mass SaaS: Thinking about SaaS on the Consumer Side”
From the Operators
Sunil Rajaraman of Scripted offers a basic cost model to help founders understand how much they need to raise to get to the next milestone in “A Fundraising Template Every Entrepreneur Can Use”
Armando Biondi of AdEspresso writes ‘an open letter to entrepreneurs’ in hopes of shedding light on ‘founder depression’ and how to get through it in “This is Scary for Me to Share, But Maybe, Hopefully, It Will Help You”
Ellen Huet of Forbes tells the story of how Kitchit’s team dealt with the pain of losing a cofounder and how they kept the company going “What Happens to a Startup When a Cofounder Dies”
Serial Entrepreneur Sean Parker believes ‘today’s young internet baros should use the talents that made them rich to transform the world of giving’ in “Sean Parker: Philanthropy for Hackers”
Mathilde Collin of Front details her observations from fundraising in both Europe and the U.S. in “The Difference Between Raising Early-Stage Capital in the US vs. Europe”
Serial Entrepreneur Steve Blank lays out the management strategies he uses to help large U.S. companies innovate faster in “Lean Innovation Management – Making Corporate Innovation Work”
From Mattermark
Mattermark Webinar: Interested in our Latest feature release- All Investors? Join our Head of Product, Bryan Tsao, for an overview of the development of our biggest release of the year on July 8th at 11am PST.