From the Investors
Jay Deng of Nouveau Capital responds to Kanyi Maqubela’s post by proposing that waterfalls will one day flow upstream in “Don’t Go Chasing Distribution Waterfalls: The Future of VC Compensation”
Kanyi Maqubela of Collaborative Fund is already onto new ideas, this time foreseeing the fall of firms with the rise of the freelance economy in “Wait, Is the Corporation Actually Over?”
Hunter Walk of Homebrew takes you inside Homebrew’s inaugural LP meeting in “Investors Updating Their Investors”
For the last seven years, Mark Suster of Upfront Ventures has cut his teeth in the venture capital world. Today he shares his thoughts in “Some Reflections on VC Investment Decisions”
Andrew Parker of Spark Capital guesses the genesis of iPad’s name and why tablets (‘pads’) are more like laptops than smartphones (‘tabs’) in “Ubiquitous Computing and iPad Doomsayers”
Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures points software developers to their palm and their pocket in “How Big is the Tablet Market?”
Bruce Booth of Atlas Ventures thinks Y Combinator’s biotech investment is just what the doctor ordered in “Startup Tech Incubator Announces Biotech Experiments”
They say there are only seven types of stories in the world. Rob Go of NextView only hears three: “Three Storylines for VC Pitches”
From the Operators
Tracy Chou of Pinterest addresses the product, the person, and the population in “Why I Care About Diversity in Tech”
Steve Cheney of Estimote explains how iBeacon will create the first API layer of the physical world in “On the New Edge Network and the Future of Local Commerce”
Jeff Weiner of LinkedIn wants executives to avoid the Ron Burgundy syndrome in “Just Because You Said It, Doesn’t Make It So”
Tren Griffin of Microsoft explores brands, margins, and innovation in “A Dozen Things I Have Learned from Jeff Bezos” — “Your margin is my opportunity.”
Jason Cohen of WP Engine understands the dynamic: startups offer innovation, and larger companies offer distribution. But deals between the two (“win-wins”) almost never take place. Here’s Josh’s recommendation for how to beat the odds in “Why Startup Biz Dev Deals Almost Never Get Done”
Ravi Parikh of Heap watches a few companies puff and pop soley through their churn rate in “What Unsustainable Growth Looks Like: Herbalife, Groupon, and More”
Mark Neyer of Electric Cloud extends the analogy of growing up and breaking rules in “If Corporations Are People, Then Startups Are Children”
Mick Hagen of Spatch reflects on what it’s like to be in an accelerator on the other side of the pond in “Techstars London: Founder Diaries” — “It’s all happening.”
Ethan Banks of Carenection crunches underfoot the deceitful seeds of discontent that you have so deliberately sown in “How Not to Recruit Me”
Steli Efti of Close.io doesn’t think you should wait until you have a product to start charging for it, and shows you how he did just that, in “How to Charge Money for Things That Don’t Exist Yet”
Anusha Sethuraman of New Relic helps developers and marketers build something beautiful (and effective) in “How to Create Mobile Ads That Don’t Suck”
Kyle Porter of SalesLoft wants you to empathize your way to victory in “Whoever Cares the Most Wins”
From the Community
AirBnb hosted the OpenAir summit last week. The event featured some of the most prominent startups in the sharing economy as well as high-growth payment companies. Alice Truong of FastCo gives you the synopsis on each panel and presentation in “AirBnb OpenAir Summit 2014”