From the Investors
Jay Acunzo of NextView Ventures and Danielle Morrill, co-founder and CEO of Mattermark, discuss her company’s origin story, including how they created an addicting, ubiquitous newsletter read by VCs and entrepreneurs everywhere in “Mattermark’s Clever Origin Story & Why Their CEO Loves Arguing with VCs” (podcast)
Chris McCann of Greylock Partners publishes the first essay of notes for the CS183C class at Stanford in “Reid Hoffman, John Lilly, Chris Yeh, and Allen Blue’s CS183C Technology-enabled Blitzscaling – Class 1 Notes Essay”
Jonathan Hsu of Social Capital dives into how his team assesses product-market fit by plotting not just Monthly Active Users but churn, ‘resurrection’, new users and retention in “Diligence at Social Capital Part 1: Accounting for User Growth”
Jeff Jordan, Anu Hariharan, Frank Chen of Andreessen Horowitzoutline more of the most common (and often most confusing) startup metrics and terms to help founders prepare for pitch meetings in “16 More Startup Metrics”
Sam Altman of Y Combinator shares his views on the government’s impact on the bubble, San Francisco’s housing boom, and more in “Y Combinator President Sam Altman: I’m an Optimist, But I’m Not Optimistic About Government” (video)
Naval Ravikant of AngelList answers questions from the Product Hunt community and reveals his thoughts on how he chooses a company to invest in, his low points as a founder, and more in “Is Naval Ravikant the Nicest Guy in Tech?”
From the Operators
Noah Lorang of Basecamp offers the story of how they transitioned to Basecamp.com and what they learned in the process in “How We Lost (and Found) Millions by Not A/B Testing”
Maya Prohovnik of Underdog breaks down the ‘learn to code’ movement and how to start the path of learning to code in “Before You Learn to Code, Ask Yourself Why”
Madeline Reddington of FounderDating chats with Gary Stewart formerly of Odesk about the 1099 vs. W2 debate, company culture, opportunities in the on-demand economy and more in “The On-Demand Economy and What We’re Missing”
CloudPeeps looks at the companies leading in remote work and what you can learn from them to become better, more productive, and happy working remotely in “The Top 10 Companies Winning at Remote Work Culture and Their Secrets”
Emerson Malca of CollegeFeed sheds light on the financial sacrifices he took on building his startups, which calls ‘an entrepreneur’s opportunity’ in “The Entrepreneur’s Financial Sacrifice”
Guest Contributors Welcome
As our community grows, we recognize that many of you write high quality content, and we’d love to feature it on our blog and in the Mattermark Daily. If you’re an investor or founder that keeps up a blog with your thoughts, experiences, strategies, analysis, etc on funding, building a startup, private market trends, and other relevant topics, send me a note. I’d be happy to consider featuring your content. Email me nick@10.147.21.165