FundersClub Weekly Newsletter - April 14, 2016
FundersClub Portfolio News
In a new service launched last week, Zoomcar will now allow its users to lease their own cars on the platform with their Zoomcar Associate Program (ZAP) in "Zoomcar Associate Program Now Allows You to Lease Your Own Car".
Stefan Etienne of TechCrunch reviews the Boosted Board Dual+, an electric skateboard with a top of speed of 22mph, in "Review: Boosted Board Dual+ flourishes in the streets of NYC".
Instacart is expanding its online grocery delivery business in Austin, Texas, announcing that Total Wine & More will be its newest partner in "Instacart Adds Total Wine & More as Austin Delivery Partner".
CloudMedx announces a new version of its analytics platform that is ideal for healthcare organizations looking to deliver higher quality care and increased revenue through unmatched insights into patient risk and improved treatment in "CloudMedx Enhances Its Analytics Platform to Empower Value-Based Healthcare Organizations to Capture Risk and Grow Revenue".
Waggl, an easy way to crowdsource insight from groups of people releases new data revealing a shift in attitudes towards negative feedback from employees in "Waggl Distills The Top 5 Ways For Organizations To Handle Negative Employee Feedback".
Investor Thoughts
Alex Mittal of FundersClub extracts lessons from one of the best basketball players of all time on what it takes to succeed when you're innovating and competing with the best in "3 Lessons From Steph Curry for Startup Founders".
Glenn Solomon and Jeff Richards of GGV Capital discuss VC activity in China and how they plan to invest in "GGV Capital just raised $1.2 billion; here’s where it plans to invest it".
Brad Feld of Foundry Group believes that it is much more important to embrace failure and focus on learning from every investment that fails, as they may present some important lessons in "Do You Regret Failed Investments?".
National Venture Capital Association and Thomson Reuters report data that U.S. firms just closed on more capital commitments than they have since the second quarter of 2006 in "U.S. venture capital firms just gathered up the most money they’ve raised in a decade".
Tomasz Tunguz of Redpoint Ventures highlights the importance of "innovating at the intersection" – collaborating among people with different shared experiences and knowledge to reorder ideas to unlock something new in "All New Ideas Are Combinations Of Old Ideas".
CB Insights reports that HR tech funding recovered in Q1'16 after tapering off in the second half of 2015 in "HR Tech Roars Back As Deal Activity Ties All-Time High".
Founder and Operator Thoughts
Daniel Eckler of Piccsy discusses intuitive designs and says that what we need now, in this era of rapidly progressing technology, is a set of principles to ensure that these powerful, all-consuming objects retain an element of humanity at their core in "A Smarter Future".
Jeff Seibert of Twitter shares the details of acquiring and getting acquired, what he wishes he would have done differently, and what startup leaders should keep top of mind every day as they build toward an uncertain future in "One Founder, Both Sides of the M&A Table — What All Startups Can Learn from His Experience".
Adrian Zumbrunnen of Google acknowledges that sometimes we judge a design outcome, rather than the process, and we judge, without understanding what a design actually tries to accomplish in "Designing with Purpose".
Biz Stone of Twitter and Medium believes that we will forever need web search, but that there’s room for an all together different kind of search in "OutRanked".
John Rampton of Due lists seven to-do tasks that will take a business from "good enough" to "ready to go" in no time at all in "7 Things You Should Do When Launching Your Startup".
Brandon Redlinger of PersistIQ thinks the element that sets the best salespeople apart from the rest is when they have a deep understanding of the human element in sales in "5 Ways Sales Reps Can Build Trust Faster [+Templates]".
In Other News
TechCrunch covers "Everything announced at Facebook’s F8 conference".
JPMorgan Chase & Co., the biggest U.S. lender by assets, posted first-quarter profit that beat Wall Street estimates as the firm slashed bankers’ pay, and trading revenue declined less than most analysts predicted, while the shares rose in "JPMorgan Profit Beats Estimates on Pay Cuts, Trading Results".
Did You Know?
Did you know that Comic Sans owes its existence and creation to the failure Microsoft Bob (a yellow cartoon, Bill Gates-glasses wearing user ‘guide’) because Vincent Connare thought Times New Roman was too serious for his text bubble?