FundersClub Weekly Newsletter - February 11, 2016
FundersClub Portfolio News
Represent.com, Los Angeles-based social commerce startup, is being acquired by CustomInk, a leading player in the online custom apparel space in "CustomInk Acquires Represent, A Custom Merchandise Marketplace for Influencers".
Teespring is expanding its executive leadership team, bringing on Douglas Myers as Vice President, Global Operations, underscoring the company's leadership and growing investment in on-demand manufacturing excellence in "Teespring Expands Executive Team With Hire Of Douglas Myers As Vice President, Global Operations".
Simplex, an Israeli bitcoin startup focused on enabling bitcoin purchases with credit cards, has closed a $7M Series A funding round in "Simplex Raises $7 Million for Credit Card Bitcoin Buying Service".
Danny Cabrera, the Co-founder and CEO of BioBots, hopes this new technology can become a huge stepping stone in the advancement of modern health and medicine in "Danny Cabrera on BioBots and the Future of 3D Bioprinting".
Placemeter has created a map that makes it possible to track pedestrian movement in real-time for a busy intersection at Union Square in "Watch New Yorkers Hurry Across Union Square in Real-Time".
FundersClub is hiring for a Head of Product.
Investor Thoughts
Mark Suster of Upfront Ventures explains how the startup industry is not crashing, but rather just experiencing a resetting of valuations, timescales, winners/losers, capital sources and the relative emphasis of growth rates vs. burn rates in "The Resetting of the Startup Industry".
Brad Feld of Foundry Group comments on Mark Suster's article and notes how important it is for founders to work with their investors to make sure that everyone is aligned for the upside case, rather than focused on protecting their capital in the downside case in "Founders – Use Your Down Round To Clean Up Your Cap Table".
Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital highlights how one of the biggest mistakes investors make is to 'impute intelligence to the market and look to it to tell them what's going on and what to do about it' in "What Does The Market Know?".
Jonathan Hsu of Social Capital shares their free "8-ball" framework for startups to measure growth accounting, cohort behavior and distribution of product-market fit in “Diligence at Social Capital, Epilogue: Introducing the 8-ball and ‘GaaP for Startups’”
Mahesh Vellanki of Redpoint Ventures examines NTM revenue multiples over a 5 year period for all key Internet categories as well as high growth SaaS to see which sectors are doing best in the current market in "Putting The Collapse In Tech Valuations Into Context".
Nino Marakovic of Sapphire Ventures provides greater transparency about how VCs think about valuations so that entrepreneurs can successfully navigate today’s volatile private markets in "Bridging The Valuation Disequilibrium".
Founder and Operator Thoughts
Cristian Parrino of Chef2video discusses gender diversity in the tech ecosystem, and the participation and accountability that it requires across organizations in startups, venture capital, and the Women in Tech movement to achieve a set of shared goals in "The Gender Diversity Startup Manifesto".
Paul Berry of RebelMouse details 'the four scenarios when the best leaders should break the rules, and how to rally the people who will lead the charge' in "Starting Fires on Purpose — When and How Leaders Need to Break the Rules".
Product Hunt asks dozens of investors what they look for when making investment decisions, and lists the best advice from 13 different investors in "What Investors Look for in Startups & Founders".
Troy Sultan of Resource releases the third post in a weekly series documenting his company’s journey through 500 Startups Batch 16, and summarizes ~25 hours of lectures and workshops, covering topics from pricing and positioning to marketing metrics, content marketing, viral growth and more in "[500] Week 3: Marketing Hell Week".
Kimber Lockhart of Box discusses how engineering leads creating a sense of urgency on teams can easily be confused with 'hurrying with speed' in "Don’t Create a Sense of Urgency, Foster a Sense of Purpose".
Jon Westenberg offers his framework to actually and practically invest in yourself in a way that is going to pay real dividends by being a better person, a better creator, a better developer or a better business owner tomorrow in "How To Invest in Yourself".
In Other News
FundersClub sends their deepest condolences for the destruction and loss of life caused by the massive earthquake in Taiwan.
Twitter reported its fourth-quarter earnings, and even with a decline in Monthly Active Users in Q4, saw an increase during January and are 'confident that, with disciplined execution, this growth trend will continue over time' in "Twitter’s User Growth Goes Nowhere As It Meets Revenue Expectations Of $710M".
Did You Know?
Did you know that that it can take a photon 40,000 years to travel from the core of the sun to the surface, but only 8 minutes to travel the rest of the way to earth?