From the Investors
Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures agrees with Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital, saying ‘you’ll have to change the [Series A fundraising] story to reflect the [actual] numbers’ in “Numbers Can Ruin A Good Story”
Dave McClure of 500 Startups calls out founders for asking for high caps while declining a ‘minimum 2x clause’ – with a cherry on top tweet from Sam Altman of Y Combinator – in “A Tweetstorm from Dave McClure”
Jason Lemkin of Storm Ventures advises SaaS CEOs to ‘be obsolete by the time they hit $2-$3M ARR’ in “Job #1 Once You Hit Initial Traction – Stop Owning Anything”
Jess Erickson of 500 Startups and Christian Hernandez of White Star Capital discuss the history and goals of his firm, ways the VC industry can change, today’s ‘bubble’ chatter, and more in “Q&A with Christian Hernandez, Managing Partner at White Star Capital”
John Henderson of White Star Capital guides founders in evaluating first-time seed round investors, in order to avoid over-dilution and bad terms in “Don’t Take Seed Money from Someone Who Isn’t Familiar with Seed Investing”
Greg Beaufait of Dundee Venture Capital offers founders his perspective of what to expect when raising venture funding in “On Founders and Raising Venture Capital”
Jo Tango of Kepha Partners encourages founders to ‘seek the truth, demand it, and work with it’ to better understand their investors’ stance in “Your VC Isn’t Enthusiastic. What to do?”
Angel Investor Jason Calacanis provides his step-by-step goals roadmap for building Inside.com, and gives a template for founders to build their own in “Here’s the Roadmap You Need to Create for Your Startup – and Why It’s Important”
From the Operators
Google CFO Patrick Pichette explains his personal thoughts on why he’s going to be leaving Google to ‘just keep going’ and explore the ‘life’ part of ‘work/ life balance’ in “After Nearly 7 Years as CFO”
Mattermark CEO Danielle Morrill uses Mattermark data to compare the first 14 days of Meerkat’s Twitter mentions to other popular consumer products in “Mattermark Lunchtime Data Snack: The First 14 Days of Meerkat vs. TurnTable, Yo, Snapchat & Secret”
Stewart Butterfield of Slack reveals the internal email – verbatim – he sent to Tiny Speck (makers of Slack) employees two weeks before Slack’s ‘Preview Release’ in “We Don’t Sell Saddles Here”
Sam DeBrule lends his guidance in evaluating a potential company to work for by assessing their CEO, the strength of the team, business viability, public appeal, and more in “How to Find a Startup Worth Working For”
Serial Entrepreneur Steve Blank explores the need for innovation at large corporations, why they may need ‘different tools’, and ‘what we know about corporate innovation’ in “Fear of Failure and Lack of Speed In a Large Corporation”