FundersClub Weekly Newsletter - February 16, 2017

FundersClub Portfolio News

Slack now lets you send money in an easy and secure way between PayPal accounts without leaving your Slack conversation in "PayPal introduces 5-word command to send payment in Slack."

Octane Lending Inc., a lender aggregator that was founded to help dealers efficiently secure financing for their customers from a marketplace of lenders and insurance providers, closes a Series A-2 funding round, bringing their total raised to $12 million in "Octane Lending Revs Up Finance Arm, Closing Series A-2 Round."

analyticsMD wins the 2017 Healthcare Informatics Innovator Awards for Innovation in Cost Savings in "The 2017 Healthcare Informatics Innovator Awards: Innovation in Cost Savings Winner: analyticsMD."

Sourcery Technologies, Inc. CEO and Co-founder, Na’ama Moran, has been named the winner of the 2017 Top Woman in Foodservice Technology in the Innovator category by Hospitality Technology Magazine in "Na’ama Moran, CEO of Sourcery, Wins Top Women in Foodservice Technology."

VetPronto, a startup that brings on-demand veterinarians to your home, is currently available in a handful of major cities and will be launching in Dallas in "On-Demand Vet House Calls Ready To Launch In Dallas."

Le Tote, a subscription fashion rental site, plans to be profitable by the end of this year, says co-founder Rakesh Tondon, after raising $27.5 million in three rounds of funding and having its revenue and customer base grow between 300 percent and 350 percent over the past two years in "When Designer Labels Are Out of Reach, Fake it 'til You Make it."

BloomThat, a San Francisco-based website and app that is backed by $7 million in funding, offers a new take on gift giving and targets millennials with its burlap–wrapped bouquets and more in "Floral start-ups aim at younger generation with flash sales, organic bouquets."

Lead Genius has expanded from list gathering to all stages of the Account Based Marketing process, and is using Artificial Intelligence at many of their process stages in "Lead Genius Adds a Dash of Artificial Intelligence to Account Based Marketing."

Investor Thoughts

Christopher Steiner of FundersClub highlights two alternative methods for college students looking for ways to build their resumes before entering the job market, including building their own startup or interning at a growing startup in "College students should work summers...but not always for somebody else."

Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz chats with Frederic Kerrest of Okta, Brad Peterson of NASDAQ, and Dominic Shine of News Corp about how we should be thinking about securing infrastructure and identity for entities like major news media outlets or financial institutions in "a16z Podcast: Securing Infrastructure and Enterprise Services."

Tomasz Tunguz of Redpoint Ventures talks about how advances in computer science can apply to the way we live our lives, and uses when employers should complete their hiring search as an example in "How To Improve Your Decision Making By Learning From Computers."

Mark Suster of Upfront Ventures chats with Jonah Peretti of Buzzfeed at the 2017 Upfront Summit about the future of online media, understanding fake news, why it exists and what to do about it in "What You Could Learn from a True Pioneer in Digital, Social & Mobile Media."

Phil Libin of General Catalyst discusses how a young entrepreneur can find a great mentor, shares advice from his early mentors and what he looks for in a pitch in "How Do You Find a Great Mentor? Just Ask."

Tiffany Zhong formerly of Binary Capital gives an overview of what she learned about the whole VC industry, suggestions for founders, and suggestions for junior VCs in "55 things learned as a 19 year old VC." 

Alex Danco of Social Capital expands on how the tech industry evolved to accommodate and keep pace with consumers’ thirst for abundant consumption in part 2 of his series in "Understanding Abundance, part 2: Silicon Valley’s Special Sauce."

Founder and Operator Thoughts

Sid Sijbrandij of GitLab (FC Portfolio) chats with Ali Rowghani of YC Continuity about how GitLab has built a completely distributed company with 160 people (and growing) in "GitLab’s Secret to Managing 160 Employees in 160 Locations."

Laura Behrens Wu of Shippo (FC Portfolio) explains how the startup is reshaping the logistics industry by helping startups, SMBs, and enterprise companies compete using big data and cloud shipping tools "How Shippo is building a big data warehouse in the cloud."

Kintan Brahmbhatt of Amazon discusses how to detect and anticipate points of product friction, and shares the three stages of the product experience where customers are most vulnerable to experiencing friction in "Amazon’s Friction-Killing Tactics To Make Products More Seamless."

Dustin Rosen of Techstars lists three key elements of micro-traction that founders can demonstrate to create funding momentum before meaningful revenue or customer growth in "What to Do When “Seed” Investors Ask to See More Traction."

Sam Altman of Y Combinator answers questions submitted on Whale ranging from the best thing he has learned from Paul Graham to the next 10-year goal for the company in "Sam Altman’s Whale AMA."

Eric Siu of Single Grain shares six reasons why he firmly believes that native advertising is the future of content marketing in "Why Native Advertising is the Future of Content Marketing."

Ben Cheng of Oursky shares his reflections as a CEO of why remote work did not work at their company, and how they underestimated the effort that the entire company would have to make remote work in "Why our company’s remote work system failed."

Shane Parrish of Farnam Street highlights that an important aspect to improving the odds of making good choices is to recognize when the odds are in your favor in "The Perfect Pitch."

In Other News

Amazon has launched their own video conferencing and communications platform from AWS, named Chime, that’s focused on business users, and it includes VoIP calling and video messaging, and virtual meetings, allowing users to host or join a remote meeting through the service in "Amazon launches Chime, a video conferencing and communications service for business."

Snap set the terms for its IPO, and will offer 200 million shares for $14 to $16 apiece according to a filing, giving the company a market value of $16.2 billion to $18.5 billion, based on the total shares outstanding after the offering in "Snap Set to Pitch $3.2 Billion Share Sale to Voteless Investors."

Did You Know?

Did you know that Google handles an estimated 1 billion search queries each and every day, releasing almost 200 tons of CO2 per day?