From the Investors
Nicholas Chirls of Notation Capital writes about what founders should expect from “seed” investors when raising their first institutional round of capital in “The Current State of ‘Seed’ Investing”
Rob Go of NextView Ventures discusses the healthy return to more modest seed rounds in “The Trend Back Towards Smaller Seed Rounds”
Angel Investor Will Herman covers the history of convertible notes, from initially being simple and fast instruments to what have now become complex and expensive documents, and explains the terms he looks for in “Convertible Notes – An Angel Investor’s Overview”
Adam Marcus of OpenView Venture Partners summarizes why VCs should do their business diligence before issuing term sheets in “Here’s Why We Only Did Three Deals Last Year”
Chris Dixon of Andreessen Horowitz talks about how the revenues and profits of consumer tech companies depend heavily on external technologies that are outside of their control in “The Internet Economy”
Ash Egan of Converge VP digs into sourcing, the VC “conversion funnel,” and the power in building a network in “A VC’s Metric-Driven Reflection on Bostec”
Nicole Glaros of Techstars reminds us that taking the player stance instead of the victim stance can be a step towards fixing the diversity in tech problem in “Why the Diversity Conversation is So Hard for Me”
From the Operators
Tawheed Kader of ToutApp explains his reasoning for focusing his company’s business strategy on pursuing profitability and why that is going to be great for their customers as well as the broader sales software industry in “Growth at All Costs vs Profitability”
Andy Rachleff of Wealthfront walks through why industry observers should evaluate innovations based on their rate of adoption rather than their magnitude of adoption in “What Analysts Get Wrong About Innovation”
Michael Troiano of Actifio shares his take on the secret to a16z’s success in “What’s So Special About Andreessen Horowitz?”
Tracy Lawrence of Chewse shows how a rejection from an investor led her to realize that she wanted to build a “love company” with a culture of authenticity and compassion in “The Investor Rejection That Transformed My Company”
Mark Woodward of Invoca outlines the lessons he applied to raising Invoca’s most recent round and how he would advise others to approach fundraising in a tough VC climate in “What I Learned About Raising VC Funding In A Volatile Market”
Dave Gerhardt of Drift suggests that hearing directly from your customers can be even better than having amazing data in “Want to Grow Faster? Spend More Time Talking to Your Customers”
VCs Spark High Times for American Cannabis (read more)
Legal weed is going to be a big deal, and investors are already placing bets to take advantage of its growth.
Mattermark Contributor Jason Rowley reports.
