From the Investors
Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures gives founders a playbook for pitching, finishing with the top dozen rules for powerpoint presentations in “Pitch the Way VCs Think”
Tren Griffin of Microsoft, in his most quotable interview yet, sits down with Jim Barksdale for a series of insights on business in “A Dozen Things I’ve Learned from Jim Barksdale and ‘Barksdaleisms’”
Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures projects ten years into the future of the sharing economy in “My Closing Keynote at the Collaborative, Peer and Sharing Economy Summit”
Tomasz Tunguz of Redpoint Ventures uses Salesforce as an example of how to position your company “either as the leader or against the leader in your industry” in “Salesforce’s Marketing Secret: The Fourth Marketing P”
Mark Cranney of Andreessen Horowitz believes creating new value for customers is the true value of sales in “If SaaS Products Sell Themselves, Why Do We Need Sales?”
Ben Wiener of Jumpspeed Ventures wants you to skin your startup knees so that you’ll never forget why you build, forgive, and sell in “Five Mistakes Every Founder SHOULD Make”
Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital advises founders to deal with conflict directly, respectfully, and immediately in “Be Fearless”
From the Operators
Adam Nash of Wealthfront listens to the titans of tech for who’s making their product an essential piece of a better world in “Leadership Lessons from the Code Conference”
Jeff Weiner of LinkedIn parses his feedback into three groups—One Person’s Opinion, Strong Suggestion, and Mandate—in “Avoiding the Consequences of Casual Feedback”
Marc Barros of Contour gets future founders to focus on the problem, not the idea, in “Generating Startup Ideas”
Kevan Lee of Buffer distills successful blog posts to seven essential elements in “The Anatomy of a Perfect Blog Post: The Data on Headlines, Length, Images and More”
From the Community
Our friends at Wearable World are offering Mattermark Daily readers a special discount for tomorrow’s event, GLAZEDcon 2014. Located at The Regency Center in San Francisco, CA, GLAZEDcon 2014: The Dawn of the Wearable Economy brings the most inspiring and innovative executives in Wearable, IOWT, government, gaming, health and fitness, and lifestyle industries to this year’s conference. GLAZEDCon speakers bring groundbreaking business solutions to life on-stage, illustrating the newest advancements in strategic success. Listen in and learn how to turn your company into an innovation powerhouse. Click here to reserve your tickets using an exclusive discount for Mattermark Daily readers.
People Are Talking About: WWDC 2014
Tim Cook did not pull a black cloth off of a smart watch or unveil a redesign to the Apple TV during Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference today. Instead, Cook directed most of the attention to the newly-released iOS 8 and the latest version of Mac OS X: Yosemite. Two of the more interesting launches were the HealthKit and HomeKit, designed to sync the future “smart home” on one OS (we’ll see if smart windows will still run Windows). Christina Bonnington of Wired provides a comprehensive overview of each feature released in “Apple Debuts OS X Yosemite, iOS 8, and Tons of New Developer Tools”
Turns out more than a few people expected Apple to release a smart watch: Brian Solomon of Forbes reports a $5 drop in share price (0.69%) during today’s trading in “Apple Sinks After WWDC Lacks New ‘iWatch’”
Chris Welch of The Verge reports on the centralization of fitness features and biometric tracking in “Apple HealthKit Announced: A Hub for All Your iOS Fitness Tracking Needs”
The Writers of TechCrunch live-blog the WWDC 2014. It’s just as overwhelming as you might expect.
Mario Aguilar of Gizmodo looks through the sights of today’s releases and sees the existing competition in “Everything Apple Tried to Kill Today at WWDC”
Featured Founder
Maia Bittner of Rocksbox. “RocksBox is a jewelry styling service. Our members receive hand-selected sets of three pieces of jewelry at a time, and can wear that as much as they want before buying or exchanging for a new set.”
Mattermark: What is a recent milestone that your team celebrated?
Maia: We recently closed our seed round: $1.5M from Matrix Partners and Broadway Angels. We’re really excited to be working with both of them – they have amazing experience in startups and ecommerce that’s been really helpful.
Mattermark: If someone were to thank you in a restaurant for creating your startup, what would you hope they say?
Maia: By taking the risk out of trying new things, RocksBox has helped me realize I can wear styles I never thought I’d be able to pull off before! It’s so much less work to look fresh and put-together.
Mattermark: Tell us about your team.
Maia: Our team is 11 people now. We do all of our own fulfillment in house, so most of the team is working on that. We’re much leaner than it seems from the size of our office! Right now we’re hiring a full-stack Rails engineer: someone who thrives in early-stage startups, is excited about the difference we’re making in women’s lives, and likes building slick, functional products.