FundersClub Weekly Newsletter - April 27, 2017
FundersClub Portfolio News
Alex Mittal of FunderClub hosts a Q&A on FC Live with Ajay Kamat of Pear VC. The full video can now be watched here: Q&A with Ajay Kamat of Pear VC — FundersClub Live Series.
Laura Behrens Wu & Simon Kreuz of Shippo, and Matthew Bailey, Aaron Grant & Stephen Lake of Thalmic Labs are listed as a few of the year's top young founders by Inc Magazine in "Meet the 30 Most Brilliant Young Entrepreneurs of 2017."
CBR lists Sight Machine as one of the top 10 IoT startups to watch this year in "Top 10 IoT startups to watch this year."
Coinbase is launching a new subsidiary brand focusing on secure messaging, blockchain-enabled payments, and distributed applications called Token in "Coinbase is Planning to Launch an Ethereum Messaging App."
Bedly aims to take some of the pain out of the housing-rental process and concentrates on medium to long-term stays, with 95 percent of their listings coming pre-furnished in "Bedly raises $2.7 million to make renting an apartment a little less horrible."
Bellabeat launches The Shell, a connected health accessory for an iPhone that allows pregnant women to listen to their baby's heartbeat in "Living with Bellabeat Shell: Listening to my baby's heartbeat."
Investor Thoughts
Christopher Steiner of FundersClub describes how building an on-demand company not only requires founders to solve the normal demand and product riddles, but also to become experts in logistics, transportation and more, and shares some quick takeaways on what is most important in "Keys To Building An On-Demand Startup."
Chris Fralic of First Round Capital unpacks the strategies that have earned him his reputation – including how to become a genuine and highly-connective networker, how to propel your career forward with each interaction, and more in "How to Become Insanely Well-Connected."
Benedict Evans of Andreessen Horowitz writes how while everyone is saying that machine learning is the new mobile, we also have a set of profound changes coming as a result of new primary technology as well as a set of changes that come from shifts in consumer behavior and operating economics in "Ten Year Futures."
Mark Suster of Upfront Ventures draws on his experience as someone who has had to raise capital for nearly 20 years himself and as an investor on the board of companies to share some thoughts for people who will raise in the years ahead in "Getting Your Head in the Game for Fund-Raising."
Crunchbase finds that just over 20 percent of all pre-IPO, non-private equity venture capital and debt financing for U.S. startups have gone to unicorns in "Among Companies Founded Since 2004, Unicorns Raised A Fifth Of US Venture Financing."
Tomasz Tunguz of Redpoint Ventures highlights that while an advantage of a better algorithm doesn’t appear in the sales process in SaaS, algorithmic advantage accrues to the customer success teams, and reveals itself in the retention metrics in "My Algorithm Is Better Than Yours."
Josh Elman of Greylock Partners illustrates how identifying growth levers, conducting in-depth analysis and reporting, and supplementing it with customer queries can be used to unlock and then optimize an opportunity for growth in "Putting It All Together – How Josh Elman Identified A Growth Driver At Twitter."
Founder and Operator Thoughts
Laura Behrens Wu of Shippo (FC Portfolio) discusses what life experiences led her to where she is now, career highlights and challenges, and advice to women who want a career in her industry in "Women in Business Q&A: Laura Behrens Wu, co-founder and CEO, Shippo."
Julia Grace of Slack (FC Portfolio) answers questions about how Slack has changed since she joined in 2015 and how they transitioned from a gaming company in "Why Slack can't slow down."
Momchil Kyurkchiev of Leanplum shares five ways his experience as an immigrant served as a foundation for launching a startup in "Why Being an Immigrant is the Ultimate Entrepreneurial Experience."
Craig Cannon of Y Combinator chats with Kate Heddleston of Opsolutely on developer productivity, human-computer interaction, academic vs. practical knowledge, being a female founder and more in "Founder Stories: Kate Heddleston of Opsolutely."
Kevin Kelly expands his evidence for each of five counter-assumptions to the claim that a superhuman intelligence is arising soon, and makes the case that a superhuman AI is a kind of myth in "The AI Cargo Cult."
Steve Blank of Lean Startup writes the first in a series of posts on how startups are not just smaller versions of large companies, and starts by describing some of the structural problems companies have in "Why Companies Are Not Startups."
Max Nussenbaum of Castle explains what he is actually risking with building a startup, and explains that even failing would still leave you better off than if you'd never started in "Startups Aren’t Risky."
Nir Eyal of NirandFar describes the lesson that people don’t want something truly new, they want the familiar done differently, and applies this to the spread of innovation in "People Don’t Want Something Truly New, They Want the Familiar Done Differently."
Charles Chu of Market Meditations says that when one thing is good, chances are everything is good, and connects this to productivity in "All or Nothing Productivity: How Excellence Creates Excellence."
In Other News
Amazon.com Inc reports first-quarter revenue and profit above expectations as sales at its retail and cloud-computing businesses increased, and sent shares up more than 4 percent in extended trading in "Amazon's first-quarter profit, revenue beat estimates."
Apple Inc has held talks with payments industry partners about launching a money-transfer service that will allow iPhone owners to transfer money digitally to other iPhone users in "Apple in talks to launch money-transfer service: Recode."
Did You Know?
Did you know that Saudi Arabia imports sand and camels from Australia?
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