From the Investors
Albert Wenger of Union Square Ventures details multiple scenarios and outcomes for founders and investors that find themselves in the ‘post money trap’ in “Beware the Post Money Trap”
David Skok of Matrix Partners shares the results from a survey of 342 B2B SaaS inside sales metrics including group structure, ramp times, retention, quotas, compensation and more in “Bridge Group 2015 SaaS Inside Sales Survey Report”
Greg Beaufait of Dundee VC explains why he sees 15-20% month-over-month monthly recurring revenue as the ‘one (SaaS) metric that trumps all others’ in “The Magic SaaS MRR Metric”
Brittany Laughlin of Union Square Ventures cites two reasons ‘to strive for diversity on your team’ and how companies are approaching diversity in “Lessons from the USV Diversity Summit”
Keith Rabois of Khosla Ventures gives the ‘real reasons’ why large private companies are avoiding the IPO route in “What Are Some of the Main Reasons that Tech Companies Haven’t Tended to IPO Much Over the Last Few Years?”
Diane Mulcahy of Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation provides her thoughts on why VC funds that take longer than fourteen years or longer to liquidate fully is bad for LPs in “The New Reality of the 14-Year Venture Capital Fund”
Mark Suster of Upfront Ventures sees a career path for entrepreneurs looking to be a CEO to find and lead a ‘VC fixer upper’ in “Some Career Advice for Aspiring Tech CEOs”
Jeff Carter of West Loop Ventures contemplates the risks investors are taking in today’s funding ecosystem and recommends they be ‘extra disciplined when investing’ in “Risk and Investing”
Jonathan Friedman of LionBird Ventures lays out a strategy for founders with convertible notes to ‘make it attractive for a VC to invest before the next round’ in “The ‘Common Plus’ Shares Opportunity”
From the Operators
Adam Pisoni of Responsive.org for the First Round Review offers his guidance and tactics for founders looking to ‘build a new template’ for their organization as it grows in “The One Thing Every Leader Needs to Learn: How to Scale Change”
Mike Volpe of HubSpot interviews Tomasz Tunguz of Redpoint Ventures about his reasons for blogging and the two pieces of advice he’d give to growth-focused founders in “Tomasz Tunguz, Redpoint Ventures” (podcast)
Startup Blogger Andrew Chen advises founders to focus on the inputs, not outputs in growth projections, to avoid the assumption of hockey stick metrics in “The Most Common Mistake When Forecasting Growth for New Products (and How to Fix It)”
Laura Klein of Users Know writes a letter to engineers to help explain why their job is to ‘improve the product for their users’ in “Your Job Is Not To Write Code”
Jason Cohen of WP Engine argues that ‘delegation isn’t team-building’ and will not lead to greatness or scale in “Scaling By ‘Delegation’ Isn’t Good Enough”
Tristan Pollock of 500 Startups lists ‘poor risk management, serving no purpose, not building a movement, quantity vs. quality’, and ten more reasons why marketplaces may fail in “14 Marketplace Mistakes That Are Killing Your Startup”