FundersClub Weekly Newsletter - July 13, 2017
FundersClub Portfolio News
OnboardIQ makes applying for hourly work easier, and raises $9.1 million to expand their product and customer reach in "OnboardIQ raises $9.1 million to automate hiring for hourly workers."
LedgerX is granted the status of a swap execution facility (SEF) by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), making it "the first federally regulated bitcoin options exchange and clearing house to list and clear fully-collateralized, physically-settled bitcoin options for the institutional market" in "Bitcoin platform LedgerX secures swap execution facility status in US."
Scentbird intends to expand from a perfume and makeup subscription service into the home and personal care markets, with a launch planned for the fall in "Scentbird plans expansion into home fragrances and personal care products."
TerrAvion provides aerial imagery for agriculture by flying small planes over large fields to capture field data in order to optimize operations in "Aerial imagery an emerging technology to help agricultural needs."
AppZen is featured on CB Insights' list for EaaS (Expert Automation & Augmentation Software) in "The State of Enterprise Automation."
AppZen, Plato, Pop Up Archive, RainForestQA, Sight Machine, and Skymind are listed as companies working on artificial intelligence and machine learning products primarily for business use in "A list of artificial intelligence tools you can use today — for businesses (2/3)."
Investor Thoughts
Christopher Steiner of FundersClub draws from his own, and other founders' experiences, to offer some guidelines on how to best put together a work from home program in "Working From Home Can Be Productive Perk, But It's Best Done With Some Rules."
Lars Dalgaard of Andreessen Horowitz highlights extreme listening by salespeople as the most important flow of information for delivering the timeliest product improvements and for keeping strong company focus in "Ears: Use Them."
Albert Wenger of Union Square Ventures introduces continuous random variables to further his lessons on probability in "Uncertainty Wednesday: Continuous Random Variables."
Medha Agarwal of Redpoint Ventures gives advice to machine learning founders on how to position their companies in “Attention all machine learning founders: Why do you need ML for your business?”
Brad Feld of Foundry Group shares an email he received from a friend of 20 years on a topic he often talks about with founders in "The Loneliness of an Entrepreneur."
Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures sits down with Kirsty Nathoo of Y Combinator at their fourth annual Female Founders Conference, and their full conversation is shared here: "Aileen Lee and Kirsty Nathoo at the Female Founders Conference."
Roseanne Wincek of IVP chats with Harry Stebbings of The 20 Minute VC about the blurring of early & late stage, why your go to market strategy is more important now than ever, and why venture is the academia of tech in "20VC with Roseanne Wincek, Principal at IVP."
Founder and Operator Thoughts
Jonathan Chizick of AppZen (FC Portfolio) does a podcast interview with Justin Jones of Simple AI about using A.I to automate Expense reporting and auditing in "Eliminate The Headaches & Cost Of Expense Reporting And Auditing – Using A.I"
David Bladow of BloomThat (FC Portfolio), along with 19 other founders, shares lessons they're learning right now in "20 Founders Share the Biggest Lessons They Are Learning Right Now."
Valerie Streif, senior adviser at Mentat (FC Portfolio), advises readers to be aware if work becomes all-consuming and to avoid the pitfall of feeling guilty in Cosmopolitan's article on "6 Signs You’re Burned Out at Work."
Chris Von Wilpert of Rocketship Agency reverse engineers the growth strategy at Slack (FC Portfolio) and shows you how you can apply the same techniques to outsmart your competition in "Peek Inside Slack’s Multi-million Dollar SaaS Growth Strategy."
Jason Rowley of Crunchbase dives deep into the state of the global venture capital ecosystem, and assesses investment and liquidity in terms of money in versus money out in "Inside the Q2 2017 global venture capital ecosystem."
Dave Parker of Techstars dives into traction and the executive summary, as they are both key components of successful fundraising efforts in "Startup Fundraising: The Executive Summary."
Steven Loeb of Vator does a status check on how some recent tech IPOs (as far back as Facebook) have been faring in "How the hottest tech IPOs have fared since going public."
Derek Parham, Startup Advisors & Investor, shares the technical design review system he has seen be the most successful for keeping engineering teams healthy, communicating clearly, and effective even as they absorb more people and projects in "Making Engineering Team Communication Clearer, Faster, Better."
Steve Blank of Lean Startup uses an experience of his to emphasize that founders should recognize transitional boundaries in company size and be weary of unintended consequences when scaling a company in "Why good people leave large tech companies."
In Other News
Facebook plans to unveil a cheaper, wireless device later this year that the company is betting will popularize VR the way Apple did the smartphone in "Facebook Plans to Unveil a $200 Wireless Oculus VR Headset for 2018."
Net Neutrality Day of Action, an online protest day on which thousands of websites, people and services called attention to the impending revocation of net neutrality rules by the FCC, saw an impressive turnout on the web in "Net Neutrality Day of Action spurs millions to speak out for online freedoms."
WeWork is embarking on an ambitious expansion plan in Latin America, with India and China also being the company’s “primary new markets” in "WeWork Plans ‘Aggressive’ Expansion in Latin America Push."
Did You Know?
Did you know that ketchup was sold as medicine in the 1830s? Source
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