From the Investors
Guy Turner of Hyde Park Venture Partners delivers the results of his survey on what entrepreneurs think of VCs and what VCs think of themselves, bringing some self-awareness and data to the conversation in “Venture Capitalist to Venture Capitalist: We Can Do Better”
Benedict Evans of Andreessen Horowitz foresees a disjointed future in which half of your home IoT devices won’t be connected to the internet—or anything else—in “The Internet of Things”
Naveen Selvadurai of Expa Capital asks Twitter, “What’s the first app you open in the morning?” in “First Things First”
Tomasz Tunguz of Redpoint Ventures analyzes the probabilistic and customer-by-customer methods of RaR and how they can be used in “Quantifying a SaaS Startup’s Revenue at Risk”
Hunter Walk of Homebrew sees an opportunity in his own preference for verified data in “Verified Data Will Prevent ‘Fake It Till You Make It’”
Tren Griffin of Microsoft speaks with the founder of Costco on the customer loyalty “moat” in “A Dozen Things I’ve Learned from James Sinegal”
Semil Shah of Haystack Fund wonders if the fear of not being heard is driving some to blog on Twitter in “A Theory on the Rise of Tweetstorms”
From the Operators
Nathan Kontny of Draft shows how some of the best inventions simplified existing processes in “How to Get Business Ideas – Remove Steps”
Craig Newmark of Craigslist searches his rolodex for the next positive disruptors of society in “Eight Social Good Changemakers to Watch”
People Are Talking About: #YesAllWomen
Mattermark pauses to remember the lives of those lost in Isla Vista, CA over the weekend. The tragedy sparked a conversation on Twitter around #YesAllWomen, and participants around the world flooded social media with sobering stories and “experiences common to virtually all women.” We feel it is worthwhile to once again include a letter from the editors of Model View Culture, shared on Friday, titled, “An Open Letter on Feminism in Tech.”
Re/code reports on Rap Genius’s dismissal of one of its co-founders after his tone-deaf annotations on Elliot Rodger’s manifesto came to light in “Rap Genius Co-Founder Moghadam Fired Over Tasteless Comments on Santa Barbara Shooting”
Charlie O’Donnell of Brooklyn Bridge Ventures wonders about the culture venture capital creates through “party rounds,” and general founder misbehaving, in “Founders. Run. Amok. It Starts with a Term Sheet”
Featured Founder
Robert Park of SocialCheck.me. SocialCheck.me’s mission is to help employers make better hiring decisions through opt-in social network-based reference check surveys and cool data analysis tools.
Mattermark: How did you come up with your startup?
Robert: I was dissatisfied working with false-positive hiring choices where people seemed better than they were.
Mattermark: What is a recent milestone that your team celebrated?
Robert: We created first versions of email interface and API to make it easier to integrate the app into an employer’s workflow.
Mattermark: If someone thanked you in a restaurant for creating your startup, what would you hope they say?
Robert: “It helped me to keep my culture intact as my business grew bigger.”
Mattermark: Tell us about your team.
Robert: There are four of us spread virtually around the globe at various times of the year. We’re all originally from Vancouver, BC, Canada. We mostly enjoy bugging each other when we should be sleeping due to different time zones.