From the Investors

Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures builds on Mark Suster’s post yesterday, sharing USV’s methodology for early-stage investing in “The Pro-Rata Opportunity”

Steven Sinofsky of Andreessen Horowitz visits Africa to witness firsthand how mobile phones solve the problem of traditional banking in “Disrupting Payments, Africa Style” (via Re/code)

Kanyi Maqubela of Collaborative Fund proposes two exit options for founders to keep in mind while raising seed capital in “Upside Protection vs. Downside Protection”

Jeffrey Carter of Hyde Park Angels discusses valuations, authenticity, and dilution in “Valuation and The Full Ratchet”

Josh Breinlinger of Sigma West considers America’s aging population a market in its prime for investment in “Why I Love the Care Space”

Jay Acunzo of NextView Ventures explains how content marketing solves the same problem as your product, just through a different medium, in “How to Control Content Marketing Better Than Neo Controlled the Matrix”

Manu Kumar of K9 Ventures trusts his gut in “When Vinod Khosla Answered My Question with a Non-Verbal”

Chris DeVore of Techstars believes that all successful founders form their drive “around a hard kernel of insecurity and shame” – “The One Thing You Can’t Teach an Entrepreneur”

From the Operators

Seth Bannon of Amicus owns up to his mistakes—like not setting clear expectations for early employees, or not bringing in an outside board member—in his mea culpa, “Mistakes You Should Never Make”

Dylan Reid of Matter.io looks to Uber, Oscar, Airbnb, and Nest for what factories can learn about innovation in “The Factory OS”

Kirby Frugia of New Relic measures his success on a much longer timeline now that he’s a manager in “How to Make the Leap from Engineer to Manager”

Janet Van Huysse of Twitter now leads Twitter’s diversity initiative “Building a Twitter We Can Be Proud of”

Joel Spolsky of Trello tells the story of Trello, from side-project to raising $10.3M today, in “Trello, Inc.”

John Foreman of MailChimp reconciles big data and privacy in “Why is Big Data Creepy? And What Can We Do?”