From the Investors
Mark Suster of Upfront Ventures outlines a brief history to put today’s market changes into context and lays out two major trends worth understanding in “Changes in the Venture Capital Funding Environment”
Alex Taussig of Lightspeed Venture Partners notes several key ways VC and PE differ and how PE ownership changes your ability to compete in “What happens when private equity buys your competitor?”
Elizabeth Kraus of MergeLane includes specific tactics for diversity from Brad Feld, Nicole Glaros and David Cohen in “How Techstars, Foundry, Startup Week and MergeLane Walk the Walk on Startup Diversity”
Alex Iskold of Techstars highlights the path you can use to find your product’s ‘magic moment’ to increase customer retention in “What is the Magic Moment for Your Startup?”
Charlie O’Donnell of Brooklyn Bridge Ventures advises entrepreneurs to take the time to find someone that brings out the best in you vs. settling for anyone in “You Don’t Need a Co-Founder”
Elizabeth Yin of 500 Startups describes three ideas that every entrepreneur can practice to make themselves more likable in “The importance of likeability…”
Scott Birnbaum of Red Sea Ventures expands on how startups can build and maintain community in “4 Pillars of Community”
From the Operators
Sunil Rajaraman of The Bold Italic believes there is no straight line between starting and success and tells his lengthy story of building Scripted.com in “The Story of My Addiction”
Leo Widrich of Buffer reflects back on his past five-and-a-half years at Buffer to share several key things that helped keep them going in “These Are Buffer’s Top 10 Lessons from Growing to $10 Million ARR”
Ameet Ranadive of Twitter digs into the concept of differentiators concept and discusses a framework that you can use to pick winning features for your product in “How to Pick Winning Product Features”
Julie Zhuo of Facebook lists the 31 lessons she’s internalized over the years about what it takes to build great products in “Building Products”
Jose Ancer of Silicon Hills Lawyer offers a breakdown of the mental analysis that he might use in assessing a company’s valuation in “Did you get a ‘good’ valuation?”
Julien Smith of Breather shares the simple mechanism his team uses to show gratitude for fellow employees in “Culture Club: how one little bot helps us live our values.”