From the Investors
David Skok of Matrix Partners covers how to measure customer happiness and actively manage your business to reduce churn in “Managing Customer Success to Reduce Churn”
Mahesh Vellanki of Redpoint Ventures examines two businesses that were historically very similar, GrubHub and Just-Eat, and how they evolved and took very different paths in “What GrubHub’s Failures Tell Us About Building Startups”
Sarah Tavel of Greylock Partners elaborates on the second level of her Hierarchy of Engagement in “How To Create a Sticky Product Like Facebook and Evernote”
Blake Robbins of Ludlow Ventures shares his journey to becoming a VC at the age of 22 in “Tweets, Awkward Suits, and Hustle”
Satya Patel of Homebrew revisits their fund’s deal funnel data and walks through how they source investment opportunities in “Homebrew Year 3: The Path to Investment”
Will Porteous of RRE Ventures looks at what is necessary, beyond great content, to build a major media business today and what RRE looks for when investing in “How We Think About New Media Companies”
From the Operators
Mike Davidson, formerly of Twitter, reflects on his years working and living in the Bay Area and the lessons he learned from the experience in “Three Years in San Francisco”
Myk Pono of MYXYS discusses what Linkedin could have done (and still can do) to accelerate growth and eat from Salesforce’s plate in “LinkedIn Blew It”
Zach Holman, formerly of GitHub, offers a critique of founders and VCs who are preventing employees from making money from their stock options in “The New 10-Year Vesting Schedule”
Jon Westenberg of Creatomic argues that business plans are vital documents for most early-stage and lean companies in “Yes, You Should Write a Fucking Business Plan”
Frederique Dame of Uber talks about how cultivating happiness put her on her top-flight career trajectory in “Harnessing Happiness to Build Your Career – Advice From an Uber Product Leader”
Kyle Samani of WorkingOnHisNextAdventure explains why blogging is one of the highest ROI tactics that founders can employ to accelerate growth across the company in “Why Founders Should Blog”
As Venture Turns, Let’s Keep An Eye On Scale (read more)
The venture capital slowdown is here. But is it time to panic? No.
Editor-in-Chief Alex Wilhelm helps us keep the venture market in perspective.
