From the Investors
Jared Friedman of Y Combinator analyzes eight years of YC application data to show how companies and technologies have changed over time in “The Startup Zeitgeist”
Anoushka Vaswani of Matrix Partners dives into customer churn, gross dollar churn, and net dollar churn and identifies benchmarks for each in “Demystifying Churn: Measuring and Benchmarking This Metric”
Samir Kaji of First Republic Bank discusses the contingency funding clause of bank venture debt, concluding that although it hasn’t historically been activated, we may start seeing more aggressive bank behavior in “The Market Reset and Bank Venture Debt”
Fred Destin of Accel explains why smaller boards tend to perform better for early stage startups in “Tiny Startups Need Tiny Boards”
Josh Breinlinger of Jackson Square Ventures outlines a few key tactics to enable learning in online marketplaces in “Teach Your Users”
Monique Woodard of 500 Startups discusses how the lack of diversity in the tech community doesn’t just affect entrepreneurs, but also limits business opportunities in emerging markets with spending power in “Diversity Isn’t A Goal – It’s Good Business”
From the Operators
Brian Rothenberg of Eventbrite fields questions about growth, driving conversions, product instrumentation and more in “Answers To Your Tough Questions About Growth – Learned While Scaling Eventbrite’s $5B+ Growth Engine”
Lane Becker of Code for America delivers a frank interview about the rollercoaster life of an entrepreneur in “Frequently Acquisitions Deliver NO Money To Founders, Early Employees and Investors”
Paul Adams of Intercom gives his take on why bots will not replace humans anytime soon in “Bots Versus Humans”
Matt Hackett of Beme walks through his team’s difficult journey building a social product in “Building A New Social App Today is Insane”
Nate Morris of Visible offers his advice on how to find the right products that fit your needs while keeping your burn rate low in “Picking the Best Products For Your Business”
Jacqueline Ros of Revolar uses her story as an example to show that the key to transitioning into a funded entrepreneur starts with defining yourself accordingly in “From Teacher to CEO: Define Yourself”
Taking Stock of the Cloud Wars (read more)
Microsoft promised its investors that it would hit $20B in commercial cloud run rate in its fiscal 2018. Is it on pace to hit that target?
Mattermark Contributor Ron Miller and Editor-in-Chief Alex Wilhelm report.
