In an interview with David Weekly of Drone.VC, Kaitlin Pike of Mattermark looks at the market and the rationale behind a drone-focused syndicate in “The Data on Drones: Why David Weekly’s New Drone.VC Syndicate Might Have Wings.” See the bottom of the article for information on the top twelve drone startups in Mattermark.
From the Investors
Tomasz Tunguz of Redpoint Ventures analyzes the factors that go into optimizing your seed round for a big Series A in “The Optimal Seed Round Construction to Maximize Series A Success”
Angel Investor Gil Penchina speaks with This Week in Startups about the networking and deal-making of Silicon Valley in “Angel Investor Gil Penchina Breaks Into Deals, Scares VCs”
Brad Feld of Foundry Group notices that the strong CEOs in his portfolio own whatever happens on their team in “Take Responsibility for Your Company’s Actions”
Adam Goulburn of Lux Capital sees an opportunity in the intersection of personal health records and mobile tech in “Where Will the Dominant Digital Health Platform Come From?”
Jeff Bussgang of Flybridge Capital Partners ranks the strength of seven types of introductions—finding something even lower than LinkedIn messages—in “Getting Introductions to Investors – The Ranking Algorithm”
From the Operators
In an unprecedented move, Elon Musk of Tesla Motors sheds his patents to the industry, inviting competition and innovation in “All Our Patent Are Belong to You”
Tristan Walker of Bevel sits down with PandoDaily at Southland to discuss race and resolution in Silicon Valley — “The Tech World Has Implicit Racial Biases. Here’s How to Overcome Them.”
Rob May of Backupify identifies trends in the cloud computing industry and presents the vision of his company in “The State of Backupify: An Open Letter to Our Customers”
Josh Pigford of Baremetrics looks at an unlikely source of conversion revenue—a blog post on HN—in “How Hacker News Generated $1,500 in Monthly Recurring Revenue”
Snapchat explains the result of legal proceedings and the “old news” of privacy policy updates in “Our Agreement with the Maryland Attorney General.” And for a little background information, here’s their post on May 8th: “Our Agreement with the FTC.”