From the Investors
Paul Graham of Y Combinator recalls startup ideas that ‘sounded dumb at first’, but grew into large companies and hints that even ‘lame ideas’ shouldn’t be overlooked in “What Microsoft Is This Altair Basic Of?”
Benedict Evans of Andreessen Horowitz believes that just as cheap ‘toy-like’ products can grow into incumbent competitors, expensive new products can do the same by getting cheaper in “In Mobile, Disruption Comes from Above”
Nick Chirls and Alex Lines of Notation Capital announce their $8 million ‘pre-seed venture capital firm’ saying, ‘we don’t consider any project too early’ in “Notation Capital”
Rob Go of NextView Ventures reflects on the strategy NextView Ventures has for early stage companies and how they evaluated recent early investments in “Thoughts on Pre-Seed / Genesis Rounds”
Hunter Walk of Homebrew sees ‘product vision, core team, and potential equity upside’ as three key parts of a startup’s ability to hire top talent in “Hiring Momentum: Underrated Component of Startup Success”
Jason Lemkin of Storm Ventures outlines factors that ‘may explain various burn rates’ for SaaS companies that may impact performance against competitors in “In SaaS, Your Burn Rate is Muchly a Function of Your Chosen Competition”
Jess Erickson of 500 Startups launches their $15 million fund, led by Venture Partner Tim Chae, to invest in South Korean startups in “500 Startups Raises $15M ‘500Kimchi’ Microfund”
Greg Beaufait of Dundee VC guides founders in how to evaluate ‘follow-on capital, growth expectations, and the status of an investor’s portfolio’ in “Due Diligence On Your VC”
Amish Shah of SierraMaya360 advises founders that ‘work and life balance is going to be hard, and if you can’t sacrifice, then don’t start a startup’ in “Your Spouse is a Co-Founder, Too”
From the Operators
Erik Torenberg of Product Hunt looks to kickstart the Startup Support System for founders with anxiety, depression, and burnout, in partnership with 7 Cups of Tea, at the LAUNCH Festival on Monday, March 2nd in “Startups: Let’s Talk About Depression”
Serial Entrepreneur Steve Blank provides an example of a founder trying to navigate a Series B startup and resources to learn about that phase of a company in “Survive the Leap to Hyper-Growth with This Advice from Steve Blank”
William Mougayar of Startup Management explores why the centers and operators of a decentralized system would make less than the collective of users in “With Decentralization, Where is the Money?”
Aaron Bird of Bizible shares his thought process around understanding SaaS Customer Acquisition Costs and hitting ‘initial scale’ in “CAC Strategy is the Key to Scaling Your SaaS Company”
Michelle Wetzler of Keen IO expresses why she stopped blogging for a year and reminds herself of the good writing can do for a community in “How I Went from 60,000 Readers to 1 in One Year”
Ryan Shaul of Transparentrees underscores hard times founders may struggle through, that ‘You Might Not Understand”
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