From the Investors
Dimitri Dadiomov of NextView Ventures shares his analysis of the entrepreneurial activity of Harvard MBAs from 2008 – 2014 in “Should We Take Harvard MBAs Seriously as Startup Founders?” [New Data]” (presentation)
Roberto Bonanzinga of Balderton Capital details frequent mistakes made by funders and founders during board meetings and adds his ‘tips for success’ in “Board Meetings: Helpful or Useless?“
Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures tells his story of who helped him discover his passion for VC and recommends you ‘surround yourself with people who care about you’ in “Finding Your Passion“
Jeff Carter of West Loop Ventures outlines the qualities and actions he believes make a good early stage investor in “Are You the Right Investor?“
Brad Feld of Foundry Group reflects on the beginning of his journey of selling Feld Technologies to Sage Alerting Systems and ends with a cliffhanger in “The Agony and Ecstasy of Selling My First Company”
Ezra Galston of Chicago Ventures thinks about the impact public market companies have on VC perceptions of market trends in “The Popular Market Delusions”
Mike Brown, Jr. of Bowery Capital highlights four points on SaaS channel partnerships Matt Bachman has learned since founding Acquia in “Building Channel Programs as a SaaS Founder”
Greg Sands of Costanoa Venture Capital encourages entrepreneurs to take a ‘learning approach to selling, in order to build a solid foundation’ in “The Four Stages of the Learning Curve for Young Startups”
Boris Wertz of Version One Ventures questions, ‘how you can hook a customer in the first 10 minutes’ vs. rely on ‘reactive tactics’ in “Customer Success is Important, But Sometimes It’s Just Too Late”
From the Operators
Josh Pigford of Baremetrics offers B2B companies the inside scoop of how Baremetrics approaches the timing and goals of user engagement emails in “The 17 Emails We Send to Engage Customers, Reduce Churn & Increase Revenue“
Trevor Gilbert of Prismatic sees companies building products to satisfy their own problems, but miss the ‘True Market’ opportunity driven by their customers in “The False Market Fit“
Ben Erez of Life360 cites examples of how hard building a startup can be for founders working in markets they don’t love in “The Perils of Founder/ Space Incompatibility”
Sean Byrnes formerly of Flurry helps founders understand what it means to be ‘data driven’ and how to implement that mindset at a startup in “Efficient Analytics for Startups” (video)
Julie Zhuo of Facebook advises product builders to stay away from excuses when building a product and focus on what is good for the users in “All the Things that Don’t Matter”