FundersClub Weekly Newsletter - June 22, 2017
FundersClub Portfolio News
Flexport plans to open a 100,000-square-foot warehouse in Atlanta and is scouting for about 25,000 square feet of office space in Midtown, which will add more than 200 jobs in "Freight industry disruptor Flexport plans $100 million Atlanta hub."
Instacart will now handle orders for Wegmans grocery store, with deliveries initially available in suburbs near Washington, D.C., and a few dozen more cities within the coming months in "Instacart Will Deliver For Yet Another Grocery Chain."
Suiteness announces a partnership with Viceroy Hotel Group to integrate some of their most exclusive and lavish suites from hotels in cities such as Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco into Suiteness’ online booking platform in "Suiteness Partners With Viceroy Hotel Group to Offer Exclusive Suites Online."
ZUtA, the first mini robotic printer, is a WiFi enabled portable printer that connects with your smartphone, tablet or laptop to easily print on the go in "Need a Printer on the Go? Here’s ZUtA!"
Wheelys launches MobyMart, an unstaffed, driverless mobile store that is now roaming the streets of Shanghai, where subscribers enter the vehicle using the app, select and scan their purchases, and step off in "AmazonGo Gets Closer To Launch, But MobyMart Is Already Live."
Flex is targeting the feminine hygiene industry with a refreshing, new product solving old problems, and is available at Bulletin in Soho for the next few weeks in "This brand wants you to have sex on your period."
Rainforest QA launches a new service that aims to use machine learning and crowdsourcing to help developers make better apps in "Rainforest QA taps AI to augment human-powered app testing."
Estimote launches a new product that uses Bluetooth and a form of wireless signal called UltraWideBand (UWB), allowing users to avoid manually mapping out a room’s dimensions before placing the beacons inside their store in "How companies are trying to deliver location."
Investor Thoughts
Christopher Steiner of FundersClub shares tips on how and where to get data, and enough of it, to hone one's AI skills and to build the desired model in "How To Get Data For AI Applications - Tricks and Tactics."
Mark Suster of Upfront Ventures walks through the discussion he has with founders when talking about burn rate in "What is the Right Burn Rate for your Startup?"
Albert Wenger of Union Square Ventures introduces random variables to compare three different investment scenarios in "Uncertainty Wednesday: Random Variables."
Medha Agarwal of Redpoint Ventures looks at the changes in e-commerce, diving into how Amazon is now the largest e-commerce apparel retailer for millennials in "PSA: Amazon leads in apparel e-commerce among millennials."
Elad Gil, Angel Investor chats with Harry Stebbings of The 20 Minute VC on becoming one of silicon valleys top angels, why most people get market sizing wrong and whether VC services should always be bundled together in "20VC with Elad Gil, Angel Investor and founder of Color Genomics."
Jalak Jobanputra of Future\Perfect Ventures uses Uber as an example to explore how Initial Coin Offerings (ICO’s) can put power back into the hands of people who are contributing, in addition to those providing capital in "An Uber Lesson for ICOs."
Devin Miller of Nation Venture Capital Association answers what it takes to become a venture capital investor, which limited partners Emerging Managers should target, the best approaches to developing and articulating an investment thesis, and more in "Emerging Managers are Pushing the VC Industry Forward."
Nakul Mandan of Lightspeed Venture Partners sits down with David Blonski of Elementum, Oleg Rogynskyy of People.ai, and Rajeev Behera of Reflektive to talk about their approaches to raising a big Series A round in "How to Raise a Big Arse Round: Lightspeed VC, People.ai, Elementum and Reflektive."
Founder and Operator Thoughts
Laura Behrens Wu of Shippo (FC Portfolio) chats with Charu Sharma of Huffington Post about the meaning of entrepreneurship, her accomplishments, a time she went against the flow to achieve her goal, and more in "Going Against the Flow: Laura Behrens Wu, CEO of Shippo."
Claire Hughes Johnson of Stripe offers a list of questions companies should ask themselves as they head into rapid growth, ideally in that relatively brief moment right after clinching product-market fit, in "To Grow Faster, Hit Pause — and Ask These Questions from Stripe’s COO."
Julie Zhuo of Facebook lists a few of the ways she has practiced getting and staying motivated in "Staying Motivated."
Aaron Patzer of Mint compiles four secrets for a perfect startup pitch, backed up by insights from entrepreneurial experts in "4 Pitching Secrets from an Entrepreneur Whose Company Sold for $170M."
Claire Lew of Know Your Company describes what separates the boss you don’t want to be from the boss everyone wishes they had in "The Boss You Don’t Want to Be."
Jon Westenberg of Creatomic outlines the benefits of each part of a content marketing strategy in "Why You Need To Build a Content Plan (And A Content Team)."
Steve Blank of Lean Startup is interviewed by The Growth Show and chats about his current thinking about innovation in companies and government agencies in "We Have a Moral Obligation."
Jean Hsu of Medium, Nikhil Pandit of Clever Inc., Richard Sun of Kabam, and Yi Huang of Facebook sit down with Christian McCarrick of Telmate to share their tips to being great Engineering Leaders in "Plato Event #1 (part 4/6) — Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things."
Ramit Sethi of I Will Teach You To Be Rich shares 3 ways he learned to separate his business from the rest of the pack in "The Art of Standing Out from the Crowd."
In Other News
Google Inc presses U.S. lawmakers and the international community to update laws on how governments access customer data stored on servers located in other countries, hoping to address concerns for both law enforcement officials and Silicon Valley in "Google pushes framework for law enforcement access to overseas data."
Tesla Inc took a step closer toward establishing an electric vehicle manufacturing plant in China as it is in exploratory talks with the Shanghai municipal government, which would ultimately allow them to avoid a 25-percent tariff on imported vehicles in "Tesla moves a step closer to building electric cars in China."
Did You Know?
Did you know that Randy Gardner holds the record for longest period a human has intentionally gone without sleep not using stimulants of any kind, for staying awake for 264.4 hours (11 days 24 minutes) as a 17-year-old high school student in 1964? Source