From the Investors
Beezer Clarkson of Sapphire Ventures highlights her predictions on the venture ecosystem from her vantage point as an LP in early-stage VC funds in “Reading the Venture Tea Leaves for 2016”
Jerry Neumann of Neu Venture Capital details a system for investing when you don’t plan on having 500 portfolio companies and want great returns when targeting unicorns will not work in “Betting on the Ponies: Non-Unicorn Investing”
Boris Wertz of Version One Ventures expands on three categories of growing your niche audience to a mainstream business in “Moving from the Niche to the Masses”
Huoy Ming Yeh of CSC Upshot Ventures joins Angel Investor Dave Lerner to discuss CSC Upshot’s $400MM fund, the differences between Chinese and American entrepreneurs, and the ‘great unbundling of VC’ in “Venture Studio – Ep 17” (podcast)
Paul Graham of Y Combinator emphasizes shortness of life and the importance of cutting out crap from both your professional and personal lives in“Life is Short”
From the Operators
Micah Baldwin of AWS Startups dissects the idea that ‘founders make different decisions when money doesn’t matter’ in “It All Changes When the Founder Drives a Porsche”
Chris Savage of Wistia offers a cautionary tale about how they can fail, and it has a number of valuable lessons on what you should look out for in “Why Most Company Side Projects are Destined to Fail”
Khalid Halem of Reboot.io shares the three most common manifestations of cofounder conflict and preventative maintenance tactics to avoid breakups in “How Conflicts Between Cofounders Can Kill Startups”
Serial Entrepreneur, Steve Blank interviews Wayne Sutton of BUILDUP VC and Dave Kashen of Worklife about how a company culture and values need to be designed and engineered just like the product in “Entrepreneurs are Everywhere – Show No. 16: Wayne Sutton and Dave Kashen”
Kellan Elliott-McCrea of Etsy outlines five distinct things people mean when they say ‘technical debt’ in “Towards an Understanding of Technical Debt”
Taylor Singletary of Slack guides engineers through writing product documentation that is actionable, tested, and usable in “Writing Great Documentation”
Relax, The Slowdown In Bitcoin Investment Isn’t As Bad As It Looks
Is bitcoin dying? Investor interest appears to have fallen in the fourth quarter. That said, not every number is what it seems. Mattermark dug into the data to get a grip on how the bitcoin startup ecosystem is faring.
Here’s the post by Alex Wilhelm, Editor in Chief
