From the Investors
Tomasz Tunguz of Redpoint Ventures concludes that as revenue and team size grow for SaaS companies, the number of new customer salespeople decrease and upsells salespeople increase in “How Much Should Your Startup Spend on Customer Account Expansion?“
Jessica Livingston of Y Combinator launches Founder Female Stories, a collection of interviews highlighting the backgrounds, startup journeys and perspectives of forty female YC founders in “What We Learned from 40 Female YC Founders“
Mark Suster of Upfront Ventures gives his perspective of Uber’s recent situation, thoughts on competitive business practices and user privacy in “In Defense of Uber: An Objective Opinion“
Josh Breinlinger of SigmaWest outlines key attributes of service-based marketplaces, noting massive cost savings as their biggest advantage in “Marketplaces Are Eating Firms (Unedited)“
Jason Lemkin of Storm Ventures explains how and why ‘every single employee that can materially influence revenue (should) have a variable revenue component’ in “Your Variable Comp Plans for ’15. You Probably Need More of Them.“
Ben Weiner of Jumpseed Ventures outlines lessons learned becoming an investor and the importance of getting back to founders with conclusive feedback even if the answer is still no in “How I Became the First Investor in ‘The Most Promising Startup in the World’ (and Almost Blew It)“
Michael Copeland and Jeff Jordan of Andreessen Horowitz discuss increased online holiday shopping leading to challenges in managing logistics and consumer experiences in “Ecommerce and the Holiday Shopping Collision” (audio)
Angela Tran Kingyens of Version One Ventures shares how to ‘ask the right questions’ and ‘go for the low hanging fruit’ in understanding your startup’s data in “How to Start Making Sense of Your Data“
Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures counters Re/code’s decision to remove comments from their site, providing metrics pointing to comments being ‘alive and well on the web and mobile’ in “Comments Are Dead, Long Live Comments“
Charlie O’Donnell of Brooklyn Bridge Ventures believes early employees should evaluate how their salary effects a startup’s finances and opt for taking more equity vs. cash in “What Salary Means“
Chris Moore of Redpoint Ventures details the key qualities he looks for in (preferably first-time) founders before investing in “What It Takes: Qualities of a Successful Founding CEO“
From the Operators
Joseph Walla of HelloSign confronts DocuSign for blatantly copying HelloSign’s design in “DocuSign, with $230 Million in Funding, Why Are You Copying Us?“
Ben Huh of Cheezburger shares how he overcame the struggle of being an entrepreneur by embracing his own fears and launches his ‘redemption’ Cheezburger app in “Rewriting Cheezburger Saved My Life“
Jason Freedman of 42Floors advises founders on how to mitigate complete startup failure in the scenario of not raising a Series A in “Surviving the Series A Crunch“
Sara Haider of Secret says, ‘this isn’t Uber’s problem to solve’ and encourages everyone in the tech industry to ‘lead by example to change this culture’ in “Hey Silicon Valley, We Are All Uber“
Jordan Cooper of Wildcard talks about the sensationalism created around failure and its impact on risk tolerance in “The Dopamine Squirt You Got From Fab’s Failure“
Todd Schneider of Genius uses data to analyze startup hype and funding announcements in “The TechCrunch Bubble Index: Parsing Headlines to Quantify Startup Hype“
Jonas Downey of Basecamp makes the case for a design process that startups with writing before diving into sketches, wireframes or prototypes in “Writing-first Design“
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