From the Investors
Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures dispels the myth of third-party validation in later rounds in “On Getting an Outside Lead”
Sam Altman of Y Combinator sees an inverse relationship between “hot seed rounds” and successful investments in “Black Swan Seed Rounds”
Christoph Janz of Point Nine Capital identifies four ways that people talk about A/B testing: procrastinative, naive, opinionated, and disillusioned – “A/B Testing is Like Sex at High School”
Charlie O’Donnell of Brooklyn Bridge Ventures pens a letter to a startup at the cusp of a new chapter in “Step Up”
Jeffrey Carter of Hyde Park Angels explores the relationships necessary to being a successful solopreneur in “The Sharing Experience Supercharged”
Boris Wertz of Version One Ventures turns to Google, Amazon, and Salesforce for how to give acquihires the proper latitude in “How to Keep Founders Around After an Acquisition”
Ali Hamed of CoVenture explains why IRR will attract more investors than MOIC in “Lesson #7 of 99: MOIC and IRR are Different Things. And it Matters.”
Phil Carter of Trinity Ventures targets millennials, moms, and multinationals for mobile commerce customers in “The Most Important M’s in M-Commerce”
From the Operators
Nabeel Qureshi of GoCardless took notes for the rest of the class in “Notes from Startup School Europe (London)”
Michael Overell of RecruitLoop makes the case for diversity in startups in “Monoculture Sucks”
Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt opens the door for community collaboration in “The Product Hunt Community Scares Me, in a Good Way” (via Draft)
Matt Monahan of War and Porn tells a story about getting what you ask for in “How I ‘Sold’ $1M of ‘Art’”
Sal Matteis of Milkster builds on a talk by Chris Dixon about the secret to great ideas in “Great Ideas Often Look Like Bad Ideas”
From the Community
Issie Lapowsky of Wired interviews three female founders about “fundraising while female” in “This is What Tech’s Ugly Gender Problem Really Looks Like”
The Editors of SF Tech Beat travel north and feel like they’re back in the 90’s — “The Rise of a Tech Metropolis: From Seattle to San Francisco”
Justin Kan of Twitch sits down with Rothenberg Ventures on Wednesday for a discussion and a Q&A. Space is limited, so sign up here.