The 40 Fastest Growing Startups, Revisited – and 42 More
Today, we revisited the previous list of companies we identified as the fast growing startups poised to raise funding, in May 2015. Out of that list, 9 companies raised funding, 11 now have a Growth Score below 400, and 34 have less employee month over month growth. Using the same criteria, we found 42 companies that are now likely to raise money. (read more)
Read the rest of our analysis on the original list and get the spreadsheet of the 42 companies that are poised to raise funding.
From the Investors
Mark Suster of Upfront Ventures declares that things have ‘gotten out of hand’ in startup culture and openly blames unicorns in “Why I F*^#ing Hate Unicorns and the Culture They Breed”
Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures exclaims that companies are ‘unicorns not because of their valuation, but because they are the kinds of apps that make us say WTF?!’ in “We’ve Got This Whole Unicorn Thing All Wrong!”
Benedict Evans and Chris Dixon and Benedict Evans of Andreessen Horowitz discuss the future of advertising, the chicken-egg issue, and promising forms of advertising in “a16z Podcast: Advertising vs. Micropayments in the Age of Ad Blockers”
Chris McCann of Greylock Partners publishes the second essay of notes for the CS183C class at Stanford, where Sam Altman of Y Combinator shares his thoughts on starting and scaling new ventures in “CS183C Technology-enabled Blitzscaling – Class 2 Notes Essay”. (more notes from Chris Yeh, co-teacher of CS183C)
Semil Shah of Haystack Fund warns that traditional VCs are more cautious about deploying capital and competition for funding will likely increase for top tier companies in “A New Kind of Drought in Silicon Valley”
Chris Michel of Nautilus Ventures notes that board meetings can go badly when the CEO doesn’t own the narrative and offers a standardized template in “Board of Directors Executive Summary”
From the Operators
Andy Sparks of Mattermark shares an internal message on productive communication in “Useful vs. Useless feedback”
Karen Roter Davis of Urban Engines thinks companies need to cultivate a balance of experience, observation, and imagination — versus just one of these elements — in order to be successful over the long haul in “Three Attributes of Company Success”
Ryan Angilly of Ramen offers tactical, scalable best practices that product people can employ to help ensure they’re maximizing their chances of building a successful product in “Creating Successful SaaS Products”
Sam Lessin of The Information believes startups and investors should stop obsessing over product-market fit and focus on continuously finding new users. in “The Case Against Product-Market Fit”
Eric Jorgenson of Evergreen explores the relationship between value creation and value capture, why not all revenue is created equal, and more in “Why Value Capture is the Most Important Business Idea You Haven’t Read Enough About”
Robert Williger of Mapfig provides a roundup on depression, suicide, and choosing to fight on in “There Are Others”
Matt Galligan of Circa explains why we should not be encouraging every person in a startup to work themselves to the bone in “No, I Do Not Subscribe to the Church of the Nonstop Hustle’s Teachings”