From the Investors
Maia Heymann of Converge Venture Partners discusses when startup CEOs should consider establishing a board of directors and the unintentional signals when they don’t in “Board-Up!”
Chamath Palihapitiya of Social Capital uses data on spending behavior to get to the bottom of Tesla’s pre-order figures, speculating that Tesla’s iPhone moment may have arrived in “Hey Jerkwater: Do Your Math on TSLA”
Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures looks at Google Trends search keyword activity to confirm his beliefs that we are moving on from mobile to social, video is being played out, and Google is betting on AI in “Trends”
Simon Rothman of Greylock Partners writes a follow-up to his recent post, arguing that companies will have to change their tactics now that access to capital is more limited in “The Steroid Era of Startups is Over”
Hunter Walk of Homebrew shares some insights from their recent annual meeting about what they know and don’t know three years into the lifecycle of a new fund in “1096 Days of Homebrew”
Ivy Nguyen of NewGen Capital takes on concerns about Chinese investors in “Beware the Foreign Investor Boogeyman”
Boris Wertz of Version One expands on two parts of Amazon’s Annual Letter to Shareholders – the way the company looks at risks and the way they make decisions in “Learning From Jeff Bezos: Big Winners Pay For So Many Experiments”
From the Operators
Ellen Pao of Project Include launches a new group effort to accelerate diversity and inclusion solutions in the tech industry in “Introducing Project Include”
Donna Dubinsky of Numenta passes along some of the wisdom she gained from her mentor, boss, and friend in “Ten Lessons From Bill Campbell”
Ben Thompson of Stratechery analyzes the business model of the iPhone, concluding that it’s success may never be matched in “Everything as a Service”
Dave Nevogt of Hubstaff explains why he doesn’t care about building a unicorn and offers a guide for entrepreneurs from his experience starting, buying, and selling businesses in “Don’t Build a Unicorn”
Latif Nanji of Roadmunk talks about his desire to create a company with a culture-first mandate in “Why I Took My Team to Costa Rica For a Month”
Philip Lester of Dreamten outlines the mistakes that possibly led to the shutdown of SpruceMail in “Three Lessons From a Failed SaaS Startup”
How To Leverage Data From Your Most Profitable Customers To Find More Just Like Them (read more)
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