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WHY YOU SHOULD FAIL 50% OF YOUR EXPERIMENTS

CHIEF PEOPLE OFFICER PITFALL FOR LATER STAGE CEOS

BUILDING YOUR PERSONAL BRAINTRUST

HOW TO IMPROVE CEO MENTAL HEALTH

VCS: DID YOUR PORTFOLIO COMPANIES POTENTIALLY COMMIT TAX FRAUD?

5 INTERESTING LESSONS FROM SHOPIFY AT $6.8BN

VC RETURNS ARE AT A 10+ YEAR LOW

We can’t say we’re surprised. Down rounds, inertia in the IPO market, and climbing rates of administrations were always going to impact VC returns. The second order impact of this is that LPs are likely going to be a little hesitant giving GPs fresh capital, which impacts the amount of funding available for startups.

M&A MAKES A STRONG COMEBACK IN THE DACH REGION

The absence of growth funding in the DACH region has been replaced with healthy M&A. The number of M&A transactions in the region has increased from 153 in H1 2022 to 235 in H1 2023, a 54% increase. Last month LeanIX was acquired for a reported €1.2bn by software giant SAP in one of Germany’s biggest ever tech acquisitions.

SELLING IN STEALTH, CATEGORY CREATION AND EXPANSION

Ryan Lieber was the 40th hire at Snowflake back in 2014 when it was still in stealth. Starting as an SDR, he’s since worked on country expansion and program management. This piece explores the challenges of building a category-creating business and a few lessons learned selling along the way: the optimal SDR:AE ratio, pipeline health checks, and involving engineers in sales calls.

TIPS FOR GATHERING PRODUCT FEEDBACK

Customers don’t really know what they want. Very few of them are able to envision and articulate new product ideas. Instead of asking them what they want, ask them more about their problems. The solution will start to become more apparent.

11 YEARS OF SAAS PRODUCT STRATEGY

Reflections on Tanda’s transition into a multi-product company, with key takeaways including the value of diversifying products, adjusting ineffective features, and prioritizing customer-driven demand.

GOING FROM DEVELOPER TO CEO

You’re either a builder or a seller right? This is a rundown from an engineer who turned into a founder and then switched to the business side of the operation. The biggest takeaway is how the move meant they ended up juggling lots of work streams and had to get good at fast context switching.

THE TOP METRICS FOR USAGE-BASED SAAS

Usage-based billing seems to be growing in popularity. How do you know if it’s working? Here are the 14 top metrics you should be keeping an eye on.

WHO CAN COMMERCIALIZE NEW TECHNOLOGIES?

Investors often prioritize easily identifiable metrics, such as founder pedigree, especially when dealing with novel technologies that are still emerging. However, as technologies mature, the focus on founder backgrounds might not necessarily yield the best innovative ventures. Instead, the fusion of top-tier research with creative product perspectives might be the key to pushing forward in industries like AI, biotech, robotics, and more.

ON GETTING IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME

As founders, we’re sometimes perfectionists. Get comfortable with the fact that the first version is never the final version. Doing something great is a series of iterations.

SELLING INTO THE FUTURE

To win a government contract, Fairchild Semiconductor quoted products significantly below market rate. It did this because it was confident that over time its manufacturing costs would come down significantly. Is there something we can learn from this and apply to selling AI products? Compute costs will no doubt come down, chips will get better, and hardware will improve.

PETER THIEL’S COMMENTS ON EUROPE

Of the seventeen $100bn corporations founded since 1990, eleven were in the U.S. and six in China. Is Europe priming itself for future success? It has the highest density of AI talent, the highest share of cited research publications, and a large student demographic studying computer science and engineering.

HOW TO LOSE AT GENERATIVE AI

Great read on the tricky parts of creating value around generative AI for startups. While the incumbents are favored, finding your path and creating real value early is where startups can have a fighting chance.

3D AS THE NEW MODALITY

The realm of 3D computing is emerging, with advancements in capturing, rendering, and displaying 3D content on various devices. While companies like Apple and Meta are pioneering this shift, the transition from 2D to 3D presents both opportunities for new immersive experiences and challenges in ensuring consumer adoption.

8 WAYS SAAS COMPANIES CAN USE AI TO GET AHEAD

From task automation to writing code, AI is adding leverage to how we analyze customer data and build products. The key takeaway here is that AI is enabling people to do a lot more, and if you’re not using it, you’re likely going to get outpaced by the competition.

MY APP STACK: FRANK DALE, SVP OF PRODUCT AT SALESLOFT

Frank Dale leads the Product Management team at SalesLoft. In this article, Dale breaks down the apps he can’t live without, including ProductBoard, Figma, Jira, Mixpanel, Pendo, and Looker.

STOCK BASED COMP, FOR DUMMIES

We all think we know how stock based comp (SBC) works, but it never hurts to get a refresher on its impact on the bottom line. A quick read about the impact of SBC using Expensify as an example.

AN ALTERNATIVE WAY TO THINK ABOUT GROWTH

Up and to the right, right? Hear me out, down and to the left is the way. Say you want to grow 10x in three years, instead of thinking about the present day and how you’ll get to that goal, start with the goal and work backwards. This acts as a forcing function to shift your mindset away from the incremental and to the expansive.

THE VALUE OF CUSTOMER SUCCESS

Startups seem to be introducing Customer Success teams earlier in their journey. What used to be a post-Series A thing is now being introduced alongside your early paying customers. There’s often confusion across the organization as to what they really do. Are they a cost or profit center? Here’s how you can help ensure every department knows the value of Customer Success.

NICE TEAMS FINISH LAST

The bigger the mistake, the more clear you need to be with someone that they made it. Trying to be nice often involves sugar coating failure and this means you’re being unclear on the cause of the problem. Failure to tell people about their mistakes means you’re robbing them of learning.

AI ISN’T A DRILL, AND YOUR USERS DON’T WANT HOLES

AI is often misunderstood as a one-size-fits-all solution, but businesses need to recognize that it's merely a tool, and not every business requires it. Identifying genuine problems and needs should precede technology adoption, rather than trying to retrofit AI solutions where they may not be needed or beneficial.

ON GOOD MICROMANAGEMENT

We’re repeatedly taught that micromanagement is the root of all evil, but sometimes having a hand on the wheel isn’t all that bad if you know the problem space really well. It’s about knowing when you’re starting to annoy your reports.

SAAS COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE THROUGH ELEGANT LLM FEEDBACK MECHANISMS

While Google may be behind a bit in the AI game, they are leaning hard into their advantage of all-the-eyeballs-in-the-universe. The feedback loop on making sure results are positive is tight and depending on how they utilize it, could be a differentiator. Don’t count the GOOG out just yet.

GLOBAL VENTURE FUNDING IN Q3 2023 FALLS AGAIN

A great recap of Q3 funding across a variety of sectors. The short version: things are down except for the hot spaces and no end in sight for the IPO market slump.

THE HYPER-PERSONALIZATION OF EVERYTHING

A detailed take on how AI is going to impact the digital world as it relates to the individual consumer. Just as in media, hyper personalization makes it tough to build (or maintain) a juggernaut but also opens up so many opportunities for niche brands that can find their users.

HUBSPOT MARKETING VS. KLAVIYO: TWO TITANS, TWO PATHS

With so much of their data out in the open as public companies, it’s hard not to compare and contrast these two behemoths. One is focused on e-commerce, while the other takes a broader approach. They are both growing at crazy rates.

THE THIN LINE BETWEEN BOLD AND RECKLESS

This article explores the Vanderbilt of yesteryear and asks whether we could possibly be as reckless again today. History always repeats itself and looking at it, especially with a lens on the current technology cycle, always yields helpful insights.

FOUNDERS

This article is a deep dive into funding options outside of equity. It is the first part of a multi-part series that covers debt options for startups. It is a great primer for those new to (or revisiting) the topic.

DATALENS

A modern business intelligence and data visualization system.

WHEELS OF JUSTICE SLOW TO ACCEPT LEGAL TECH AS FUNDING FALLS

Even with the onslaught of AI company funding in the last year, legal tech has slowed significantly. The view from the trenches is there is a lot of noise out there with new companies appearing regularly but not a lot of meat on the bones or sales on the books just yet. It will be curious to see if this is a trend or just a blip.

OPEN SOURCE AI BUSINESS MODELS & BRAND MOATS

We’ve seen how open source models can work and thrive over the last 25+ years and even as they mature and become more “closed” (*cough* Redhat *cough*), the model has lasting impacts. In the face of AI, not all playbooks are the same. This article provides a thoughtful and in-depth review of open source models and how AI will play in this.

GIVING AND RECEIVING ADVICE

Giving and receiving advice is fraught with complexities due to varying motivations and the presence of ambivalence in advice-seekers. It's vital to navigate advice with discernment, acknowledging that valuable guidance can sometimes come from unexpected sources.

WHAT DO VENTURE CAPITALISTS DO?

A nostalgic look at a research paper from 1984 around what VCs do all day and a view on how all of that has changed. And boy, has it changed.

VENTURE CAPITAL TERM SHEET: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

When a venture fund wants to invest in a startup, it sends the founders a term sheet. As the name suggests, this short document details the terms and conditions upon which the fund intends to invest.

MEDIOCRE SUCCESS IS WORSE THAN OUTRIGHT FAILURE

For startups, ambiguous "mediocre successes" in experiments are more detrimental than clear failures, as they hinder decisive learning and growth.

EMERGING TRENDS AND SHIFTS IN THE INDIAN FINTECH LANDSCAPE

We flagged the Indian software scene in the last edition, here’s a quick dive into the Indian fintech space, which saw $442m in funding in Q2 2023.

THE MOBILE REVOLUTION VS. THE AI REVOLUTION

AI is a technological revolution more akin to the invention of the internet than the proliferation of smartphones, as computers will no longer act like calculators but as something like the human brain.

SMALL APPLICATIONS, GROWING PROTOCOLS

This essay describes the big potential of small apps. It goes over the challenges they face in building defensible, long-term businesses as well as a possible solution by building on top of growing protocols.

TALKING EXPANSION WITH PUBLIC.COM GM INTERNATIONAL, DANN BIBAS

Internationalizing, whether launching totally into new markets or bringing additional products to it, is really one big continuous experiment in customer discovery.

A DEEP DIVE ON THE MONTHLY TO ANNUAL PLAN PRICING TRICK

A simple trick: if your average user stays around for four months, price your annual plan at five months. This allows you to increase your LTV by 25%, and it’s a really simple change to make.

HOW TO HANDLE ADVISORY SHARES

An X thread exploring who should get advisory shares, how much they should get, why you might give advisory shares, and potential pitfalls.

LESSONS FROM BOOTSTRAPPED COMPANIES FOUNDED BY SOFTWARE ENGINEERS

Five things that worked consistently for five bootstrapped founders: do things better than anyone else, create a “wow” experience, keep it simple, focus, and ship.

YOUR PRODUCT IS BORING

“Visual differentiation” - you’ve achieved it when a customer sees your product in the first 30 seconds, it’s crystal clear to them what makes you different from everything else they have ever seen.

STRONG OPINIONS WEAKLY HELD

“Strong opinions, weakly held” is a mantra used by Marc Andreesen. It’s a technique for decision-making under imperfect information. It’s about committing to a decision, moving fast and learning quickly, and then being comfortable pivoting when new information surfaces.