From the Investors
Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz tears up the floorboards of the budgeting process and finds termites underneath in “How to Ruin Your Company with One Bad Process” — “Local incentives, if not properly managed, will sharply motivate human behavior and defeat the global goals.”
Boris Wertz of Version One Ventures isn’t fooled by the abundance of “‘easy’ early-stage money floating around right now” in “What Every Entrepreneur Should Know About Financing Right Now”
Mark Suster of Upfront Ventures defines “shelfware” and tells companies how to avoid churn in a downturn in “Here’s Why a Booming Tech Market May Fool You into Thinking You’re Successful”
Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital is drawn to technologies that enable intention, creativity, and choice in “Intention and the Choices We Make Every Day”
Benedict Evans of Andreessen Horowitz brings into focus the magnitude of the internet’s growth as a result of smartphones in “Mobile Leverage”
Hunter Walk of Homebrew Ventures recommends top-down forecasting that focuses on milestones for early-stage startups in “Sunny Whether: Two Types of Forecasting Models for Running Your Startup”
Guy Turner of Hyde Park Venture Partners favors the bottom-up approach to forecasting in “Great Startup CEOs See the Future… And How to Do It“
Mike Collett of Promus Ventures wants founders to listen up and avoid their peers’ mistakes in “There’s a Hole in That Road: 10 Common Pitfalls for Startups”
Roy Bahat of Bloomberg Beta teaches fundraising founders how to craft the perfect forward intro email in “Introductions and the ‘Forward Intro Email’”
David Weekly of Drove.VC pens a breakup letter to a product he believes has lost its focus — “Dear Foursquare”
From the Operators
Tom Hughes of Zafgen dates some bankers and shows some skin in “Lessons From an IPO”
Jerome Ng of VenueSpot describes the hustle, the uncertainty, and the struggle of the first 500 days in “500 Days in.”
Greg Brockman of Stripe lays out three advantages to a global market that embraces cryptocurrencies in “Bitcoin: the Stripe Perspective“