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Tiger drastically reduced its investment activity in 2023 and is set to cut its deal flow by 90%. This shift reflects a broader pullback in the venture industry and is one more indication of valuations creeping downward.
Often when we’re asked this question we start to talk about results that have already happened. We rarely talk about the smaller actions we’re doing right now. The real answer is not where you’ve been, but where the impact of your actions will take you.
Salesforce recently shared that they’re placing sales reps on performance improvement plans after only a month or so of missing quotas. Generally, it seems that companies are leaning harder on their sales reps and considering redundancies if they dip below 30-40% attainment of their quota.
Lightspeed’s take on the legaltech landscape as it relates to AI is interesting and transparent from the view of what’s-good-for-VCs-is-good-for-everyone take. There are few interesting insights and only time will tell if they are on the right track or not.
OpenView Venture Partners, a 20 year old fund with $2.4m AUM, recently announced it was closing its doors to much surprise. This article explores the reasons that cause funds to collapse and the often slow death that takes place considering they’re still holders of illiquid assets.
A fascinating teardown of the features on the internet that would seem incredibly odd to previous generations. From online best friends to the future of video, AI is going to play a huge role in how the makeup of our work and play evolves over the coming decade.
Sales is a people business, and the biggest failure is around recruiting the right people to help you build and run the engine.
An interesting take on entrepreneurship and raising money. Given that venture capital has not had the best year, and the rules are changing in startup financing in general, taking on venture might not mean you have your outcomes aligned. Think twice and know there are plenty of other places to find market expertise.
Usage-based pricing is more interesting than ever in the age of AI. A lot of companies and sectors don’t want to commit to SaaS-type upfront pricing as they don’t see the value or it doesn’t align with how they do business. Finding a balance of upfront vs usage-based pricing, as well as leaving room to make sure whatever you put in place isn’t a hindrance, is the key to success.
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The creator economy was valued at $104 billion in 2021. In 2022, the funding for creator economy startups saw a precipitous drop from a high of over $2.5 billion in 2021 to around $123 million in early 2023. Much like venture, power law exists across the creator economy. A minor subset of creators make up the majority of the value harvested.
Charlie Munger shares his ingredients for long-term business success and the rise of Berkshire Hathaway over the years in this conversation with Stripe's John Collison recorded last year. Munger passed away in late November, and this is an excellent recount of his wisdom acquired over the years.
Leading founders and venture investors talk about what's happening in AI, from the application of LLMs to enterprise innovation. If the pace of “things you should know about AI” is somewhat overwhelming, this is a good quick recap.
The gig economy is a roughly $1 trillion industry in the US. Gig working provides a flexible way to make money, but it’s increasingly becoming less reliable and the net growth of new gig workers is declining. Valuable insights if you’re building a gig working platform.
From the Cerebral Valley AI Summit in November, this podcast combins two interviews with tech titans Reid Hoffman & Vinod Khosla, gathering their views on the future of AI and its impact on society.
Why did Google, arguably the pioneer of all things generative AI, feel the need to juice its marketing around the launch of Gemini? It boggles the mind and shows just how much is at stake here in the game of winner-takes-all in AI.
Smart energy grids, voice-first companion apps, programmable medicines, AI tools for kids, and the next Disney being a gaming company. a16z asked over 40 partners to preview one big idea they believe will drive innovation in 2024.
Collective human activity is often the product of storytelling. A handful of investors and companies within tech have mastered the art of storytelling, leveraging brand and soft influence as a way to get people to work for them, invest in them, and believe in them. This article explores how soft power works, and provides some in-depth examples of companies doing it well.
Are we even remotely surprised at this point?
Getting caught out and not knowing something important when an investor asks is an awkward feeling. Here’s a checklist of the things you should have top of mind before you do your regular sync with an existing investor.
Software has a lot of playbooks by now, hardware doesn’t. Increasingly, investors look to hardware in the climate space, and even software companies view it as a way to build a moat and extend their activity into the real world. Here are some thoughts on how a founder can position themselves to build a successful hardware company.
“We tried that before”. Everyone knows that phrase at a startup, right? It’s true - if you hear hooves it’s likely a horse - but sometimes it’s a zebra. Relying on pattern recognition to make decisions can only get you so far. Here are some tactics on how to make sure you’re not wrongly relying on defaults.
It’s easy to get complacent and jaded in the face of so many seen-one-seen-’em-all companies/people/products. This post gives a pretty good formula for how to make sure you’re seeing the forest for the trees.
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Horizontal software, software designed to solve a user's pain regardless of the type of user that feels it, has defined the last 10 years of SaaS. Vertical SaaS, by contrast, is designed for a single or narrow user set, enabling the solution to be tailored to their needs. In this article, a Greylock partner forecasts that moving forward, users’ expectations around tailored services will govern how we build software.
With some variance depending on product complexity, it should still be within 1.5 sales cycles.
Large software companies like Datadog and Mongo are growing at 30% YoY. Looking back on previous years, this might not seem stellar, but in the current market, that’s top percentile. Many feel the sentiment in the room is that this signals a solid year ahead for software.
If you’ve got an idea and a team, now might be the time to take advantage of YC opening up 10 more spots for W24 class. Now is the PERFECT time to build something.
Macro and longer sales cycles aside, this article covers the top three things CROs are losing sleep over. They don’t think remote onboarding is working well enough, the candidate pipeline is weak, and Customer Success is dropping the bag.
The conversation at the 2022 TCV Engage Summit highlighted that while AI represents a technological shift, it lacks a new distribution channel, which is crucial for creating significant consumer opportunities. Current AI innovations must rely on traditional distribution methods, favoring established companies or innovative startups, but the potential for new distribution platforms remains uncertain.
Broader commentary on the state of software funding and growth metric benchmarks. As you’d expect, growth rates and NDR are generally down versus previous years and startups are being pushed to reach breakeven at the later stages. If all the Series C and D startups break even, you could argue the only reason they’d need growth investors is for M&A.
Crossing the chasm to enterprise, aka traditional late adopters or laggards, is really hard. It requires you to build an entirely new enterprise sales muscle, which simply takes time. The new direction has to be fully embodied by the organization. Here are some things to keep in mind as you consider the move.
In business, leaders must balance "managing down," which involves guiding and making decisions for their teams, and "managing up," where they navigate their relationship with higher-ups, influencing decisions and sometimes accepting overrules. This dual responsibility requires skillful handling of different scenarios to enhance team success and effectively contribute to the organization.
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Shipping things quickly, learning quickly, launching an MVP and iterating has defined software product building to date. Production speed is more important than craft. There’s a wave of new successful startups, like Superhuman and Linear, that are prioritizing building a rounded delightful product before it reaches the hands of consumers. Artisan software represents this trend towards optimizing UX from day one.
As founders, it’s nearly impossible to not work long hours in most cases. The same is likely true for your early hires. Here’s a reminder that productivity is not linear. Hours of input do not directly correlate to output.
Amazon and Berkshire Hathaway face a "scaled-out problem" due to their immense success, where growth becomes challenging as they expand into less profitable or more complex business areas. While Amazon experiments across various sectors like entertainment and healthcare, Berkshire prefers concentrated buyouts and equity purchases, yet both strategies reflect the complexity and risks of managing enormous companies at the peak of their success.
This article shares how potential hires might be assessing your company before they join. This is a useful framework to apply in order to attract top talent and sell them on the future upside of the company.
There’s a little space just before impossible. It’s nearly impossible. In other words, it’s really hard to do it. That’s where entrepreneurs should focus. That’s where competition will be thin, daunted by the challenge, and rewards outsized for those who achieve the nearly impossible.