From the Investors
First Round Capital dives into their portfolio data from the last ten years, tests various assumptions, and surfaces ‘10 lessons’ they want to share with the startup industry in “10 Year Project”
David Cohen of Techstars advises founders to think about starting a business as a minimum of ‘5 years and likely 10+ years’ commitment, before taking funding in “Giving Up the Ghost Early”
Angel Investor Scott Sage shares his experiences and techniques with the goal of helping future companies plan and execute their internationalization efforts in “The Internationalization of Startups”
Jeffrey Carter of West Loop Ventures explores Compass’s report on startup hubs and points out the highs and lows of the Chicago startup scene in “Chicago; Startup City”
Rob Go of NextView Ventures interviews multiple people from ‘trendy’ consumer companies to better understand the raw skills and characteristics of consumer marketers in “What Makes a Great Consumer Startup Marketer?”
From the Operators
Sandi MacPherson of Quibb explains the 50/50 Pledge and how it will ‘amplify the voices of women in tech’ in “Why Aren’t There More Women on Stage?”
Zac Townsend of Standard Treasury looks to support the founder community by publishing their 47 slide Series A pitch deck in “Standard Treasury’s Series A Pitch Deck”
Raffi Krikorian of Uber and Dave Loftesness outlines the role of a VP of Engineering and why they can be called ‘an engineering-whisperer’ in “What Does a VP of Engineering Do, Again?”
Neil Ernst of the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University highlights the state of the practice and current thinking regarding technical debt and guides the development of a ‘technical debt timeline’ in “A Field Study of Technical Debt”
Rinat Korbet and Yaniv Feldman of Geektime provides a report on the status of Israeli venture capital firms and startups in 2015 in “Has the Startup Nation Become the Scaleup Nation?”
Author Venkatesh Rao launches his first ‘Netflix for blogs’ series about the ‘eating’ part of Marc Andreessen’s quote, ‘software is eating the world’ in “Breaking Smart: Season 1”
From Mattermark
Sam DeBrule of Mattermark explores the current state of the On-Demand economy, Homejoy’s recent shutdown, and the fastest growing startups in the space in “What Kind of Shape is the On-Demand Economy In?”
In case you missed it, yesterday we released an 8 page overview of the drone startup ecosystem. You’ll discover the 5 most active investors, fastest growing U.S. drone startups, and total funding metrics. Get it here