From the Investors
Mark Suster of Upfront Ventures studies the early angel activity that boosted late-stage valuations and forced venture capital to evolve in “The Changing Structure of the VC Industry“
Bill Bing of The Startup Factory puzzles over the broken system and unchanging incentives of LPs in “The More Things Change… (The Mostly Inert State of the Limited Partner)”
Tomasz Tunguz of Redpoint Ventures predicts a strong market for early stage software and consumer investments over the next 12-18 months in “The Coming Wave of Venture Capital and What it Means for Your Startup“
Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures says that his “biggest piece of advice” to entrepreneurs regarding their board is to actively recruit “Independent Directors”
Brad Feld of Foundry Group hosts the “Foundry Women’s Exec Summit”
Startup Guru Steve Blank throws open the doors on the National Science Foundation’s investment in I-Corps for Learning in “Getting Lean in Education – By Getting Out of the Classroom”
Michael Witheiler of Flybridge Capital Partners breaks out hardware crowdfunding figures by industry, sets the floor for success at $211,290, in “Learning from the Crowd: The Hardware Ecosystem“
Bilal Zuberi of Lux Capital differentiates between a sales pitch and an investing pitch by removing the rose-colored lenses in “What is a ‘Pitch?’”
Albert Wenger of Union Square Ventures muses on our stage in the transition from an industrial society to an automated one in “Is it 1880 or 1914?”
Tim Devane of Red Sea Ventures realizes that he doesn’t lose a step by disconnecting for the weekend in “Closing the Computer”
From the Operators
Nate Kontny of Draft points to Benjamin Franklin and Ryan Hoover to demonstrate the importance of wiring in “Now That I’ve Created Something, How Do I Spread It?”
Gabriel Weinberg of DuckDuckGo responds to Ben Horowitz’s post yesterday by pointing to a graveyard of failed startups who never learned that “traction trumps everything” — “An Earlier Budget Mistake that will Ruin Your Company”
Adam Ludwin of Chain builds on the analogy, “If Bitcoin is like Email, then Ethereum is like the web,” in “Explaining Ethereum”
Matt McCabe of Leadify explains how indexing content across sites returns the greatest social media impact in “A Different Approach to Social Media Marketing”
Foursquare previews its reinvention in “A Brand New Foursquare, with a Brand New Logo and Look, is Almost Ready for You”
Oliver Reichenstein of Information Architects reflects on the design process—the painful parts of listening, thinking, imagining—in “Putting Thought Into Things“