From the Investors
John Maeda of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers highlights the rising importance of design in the entrepreneurial ecosystem in “Design In Tech Report 2015”
Gordon Ritter of Emergence Capital outlines six elements shared by ‘industry cloud’ companies he says are ‘disrupting their respective industries’ in “Which Industries Are Uber-Vulnerable for Cloud Disruption?”
Paul Bennetts of AirTree Ventures offers three insights about building a defensible marketplace, organic growth, and valuations he derived after reviewing Etsy’s 200+ page S-1 filing in “Insights from Etsy’s S-1 Filing”
Rog Go of NextView Ventures details his reasons why ‘unicorns are mythical creatures, and the unicorn-ness of companies are equally mythical’ in “Unicorns Don’t Exist”
Leo Polovets of Susa Ventures gives founders some insights about ‘common missteps” investors make during and after a demo day event in “An Open Letter to Demo Day Startups”
Jonathan Friedman of LionBird Ventures describes how he believes ‘gig economy’ companies can motivate and retain large pools of 1099 workers without direct control in “What the Gig Economy Can Learn from the Direct Sales Industry”
Ali Rahimtula of Cue Ball Capital provides his framework for analytical VCs to dissect revenue projects to ascertain how realistic they are in “What a VC Really Thinks About Your Revenue Projections”
Shelly Kapoor Collins of Talk Radio News interviews Christine Tsai of 500 Startups to uncover how she became a VC and her advice for other women looking to be VCs in “Women in Tech: Interview with Venture Capitalist, Christine Tsai”
Brad Feld of Foundry Group looks to help more people receive medical treatments by contributing $1,000 a month to GiveForward’s Community Fund in “Creating Unexpected Joy”
From the Operators
Joel Steiniger, Matt Goldman, and Michael Sacca of Rocketship.fm and Mattermark COO Andy Sparks talk about Mattermark’s sales strategy and culture of their sales team in “The Pipeline Tactics of Mattermark’s Sales Team” (podcast)
Astro Teller of Google[x] shares his perspective of Google[x]’s approach to developing ‘moonshot’ products and why failure is a major part of it in “How to Make Moonshots”
Stewart Butterfield of Slack expands on his five ‘rules of business’ he thinks entrepreneurs should understand in “Rules of Business”
Joe Fernandez of Klout guides founders ‘with a good pitch and fundable business’ in the tactical aspects of closing a round in “How to Close a Round of Funding”
Ricardo dos Santos of 4iNNO summarizes Dr. Saras Sarasvathy’s paper ‘What Makes Entrepreneurs Entrepreneurial’ and explains the Effectuation theory in “Effectuation – The Best Theory of Entrepreneurship You Actually Follow, Whether You’ve Heard of It Or Not”
Jarrod Drysdale of Fellow reveals his plan to ‘fight back against his fear of overcommitment’ and jumpstart more ways to generate income in “Enter Madmen”