From the Investors
Sam Altman of Y Combinator reveals valuation and funding statistics from YC’s portfolio of ~940 startups in “YC Stats”
Maxwell Wessels of Sapphire Ventures tests three market trends to explain why rising private market valuations might be justified in “Two Lies and a Truth About the ‘Bubble’”
Rob Go of NextView Ventures educates angel investors on developing an investment strategy, how to source deals, being selective, and adding value in “Angel Bootcamp, The Blog Post: A Primer on Angel Investing”
Josh Felser of Freestyle Capital declares Seed stage boards as ‘way overrated’ and details common Seed board myths in “The Bored Room”
Ben Einstein of Bolt illustrates the difficulty of making money in the early days of a hardware business in “Will Your Hardware Startup Make Money?”
Angel Investor Tim Ferriss and Naval Ravikant of AngelList discuss startup and investing insights, while opening up about unique ways of living, life-changing books, and developing good habits through trial and error in “The Person I Call Most for Startup Advice” (podcast)
Alex Niehenke of Scale Venture Partners believes a down round can occur to any startup and says, ‘a mindful founder can minimize the risk’ in “How Great Entrepreneurs Avoid A Down Round”
From the Operators
Eoghan McCabe of Intercom announces a new round of funding to fuel Intercom’s mission to make internet business personal in “Intercom Raises a $35M Series C”
Eric Bieller of Speak publishes the tell-all story behind his team’s recent pivot in “How Losing a Co-Founder and Most of Our Team Saved Our Company”
Henry Ward of eShares highlights the problem with companies attempting to ‘mine’ secondary markets, the lack of regulation for private stock exchanges, and more in “Part 1 – The Fallacy of Secondary Markets”
Felecia Hatcher of Feverish Gourmet Pop points out four downsides she’s experienced when managing investor relationships in “4 Things I Didn’t Know About Investors Before I Took Their Money”
Maria Mera of Omniata explains how to identify important application events to track and visualizes a sample game’s core event loop in “Event Design for Successful Metrics – Part 1”
Patrick Woods of Archer Malmo expands on the ‘Foundation, Generation, Evaluation, and Valuation’ phases of choosing a startup name in “A Field Guide to Naming Your Startup”
Editor’s Note
Tomorrow’s Mattermark Daily will be curated by Jay Acunzo of NextView Ventures. Look out for tomorrow’s newsletter to read the great posts he’ll be featuring. Also, if you’d like us to consider any posts to feature, send us an email.
As always, thank you for reading!
– Nick Frost