From the Investors
Aaron Levie of Box and Keith Rabois of Khosla Ventures discuss robots, viral adoption of products, and the future of enterprise startups in “Founder Call with Keith Rabois” (audio)
Josh Constine of TechCrunch and Rich Wong and Vas Natarjan of Accel Partners cover their new focus on API-centric companies, calling them the ‘current picks and shovels’ in “Accel Bets Big On Startup-To-Startup APIs”
Stefano Zorzi of Founders.as outlines alternative tech investment vehicles that he thinks may be a better fit for tech companies, than traditional VC in “Reflections On Horse Breeding, Investing and (Making) Money”
Nabeel Hyatt and Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital use Periscope to broadcast their conversation about the live video market, Apple Watch, and state of seed and late stage valuations in “Yesterday, Bijan and I Took Live Video for a Test Drive With…”
Charles Hudson of SoftTech VC contemplates the reasons why it may be hard for mobile-first companies to unbundle the ‘core system of record for a business vertical’ in “Competing With B2B Systems of Record With a Mobile-First Approach – Disrupting Salesforce”
Leo Polovets of Susa Ventures explains why data is valuable and outlines ways in which data creates competitive advantages in “The Value of Data, Part 1: Using Data as a Competitive Advantage”
Jo Tango of Kepha Partners describes why he believes making ‘partner’ at a firm is about ‘making money and fitting in’ in “Dear VC Associate…. Here’s How You Get Promoted”
Brian Sheng of Fresh VC reviews the company and product information for the on-demand economy and marketplace startups in the upcoming YC batch in “Fresh Insights: YC W15 Marketplace / On-Demand Cheat Sheet”
Susan Su of 500 Startups offers seven lessons founders of marketplace startups can learn from GrabTaxi’s marketplace growth in Southeast Asia in “Case Study: GrabTaxi’s Growth Hacks”
From the Operators
Daniel Winnike and Jeffrey Vetter of Fenwick & West LLP release their annual report that analyzes key aspects of IPOs for 140 tech and life sciences companies in “Technology and LIfe Sciences IPO Survey – 2014, Full Year”
Randall Lucas of SimpleVerity expands on Danielle Morrill’s post with his thoughts on VC teams, pattern matching, and deal types in “Danielle Morrill is Mostly Right About VC Deal Sourcing – Here’s How She’s Wrong”
Bobby Pinero of Intercom.io guides founders in understanding ‘the most common [SaaS metrics] requests’ he’s seen from VCs when raising a round in “SaaS Metrics for Fundraising”
Phil Freo of Close.io dives into specific ways a small engineering team can fix an entire class of bugs, ‘design for the bigger picture’, and be successful in “Solve Multiple Problems at Once”
William Mougayar of Startup Management looks at large private companies and details how they ‘cast nets over the markets they don’t have’, in order to expand in “Focus Your Startup Marketing on the Mind, Not the Product”
Sean Byrnes formerly of Flurry emphasizes why he believes it’s important for founders to have both Coaches and Cheerleaders on their team in “Coaches vs. Cheerleaders”