From the Investors
Greg Beaufait of Dundee Venture Capital attributes 90% of last year’s blog traffic to the Mattermark Daily for context of the power of distribution channels in “Distribution Rules Content”
Mark Suster of Upfront Ventures outlines their ‘VC platform’ strategy for supporting their portfolio and welcomes Kerry Bennett as Head of Marketing in “Do VC Platforms Make Sense?”
Guy Turner of Hyde Park Venture Partners explains why founders and VCs should expect lower valuations and smaller rounds in 2016 in “Pricing to Perfection is so 2015”
Josh Nussbaum of Metamorphic Ventures examines the idea that it’sdifficult to invest in and build truly great companies as competition increases before a sustainable competitive advantage can be built in “Efficient Startup Hypothesis”
Kanyi Maqubela of Collaborative Fund encourages founders convincing an investor that their company warrants an investment, to consider being more creative about building momentum in “Momentum-hunting”
Brad Feld of Foundry Group reflects on their initial vision, the end results of the FG Angels project, and why they’re not going to continue in “Ending Our FG Angels Experiment”
From the Operators
Ivan Kirigin of YesGraph explores ideas of how a company picks a goal that will move the needle as a team in “Growth Teams Must Have Aggressive Parallel Execution”
Bjorn Dawson of Grobo details what he observed while being immersed in the Hong Kong startup ecosystem for two months in “Hong Kong – The Birth of a Startup Community”
Mike Volpe formerly of HubSpot calls out pixie dust as a negative addition to board plans and identifies tests to make sure your plan is pixie dust free in “The Pixie Dust in Your Revenue Plan”
Brian Chesky of Airbnb offers brief guidance on how to stay inspired and not lose your creativity in “Don’t Edit Your Imagination”
Elizabeth Yin formerly of LaunchBit lists ‘fundraising crap’ founders have to deal with before, during, and after raising capital in “Calling It How It Is… That Time I Raised $1M for My Startup”
Notable Guest Posts
Who Are Some of the VCs You Should Pitch When You Fundraise? by Sunil Rajaraman of The Bold Italic
The Biggest Decision Your Self-Service SaaS Needs to Make by Steli Efti of Close.io
Terrifying Truths of Entrepreneurship: Read before you leap by David Campbell of Clickdesk
Where Seed VCs Should (But Often Don’t) Look for the Next Consumer Startup Unicorns by David Beisel of NextView Ventures
Sizing The Fintech Opportunity by Pascal Bouvier
Want to be a Mattermark guest writer? Email Nick@Mattermark.com