FundersClub Weekly Newsletter - December 2, 2016
FundersClub Portfolio News
Slack co-founder and CTO Cal Henderson discusses how the company wants to make their artificial intelligence strong enough so that it can read through your messages so you don't have to in "Slack Co-Founder on How Artificial Intelligence Could Eliminate the Need to Check Your Email Ever Again."
Le Tote is using big data to use feedback and reviews to optimize the customer experience in "The Subscription Box That Knows More About You Than You Do."
Waggl, a technology platform that surfaces and distills real-time insights from groups of people, announces a partnership with Agility Consulting, the world’s premier consulting firm helping global leaders and organizations adapt and thrive in a "volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous" world in "Waggl Partners With Agility Consulting to Help Organizations Become Focused, Fast, and Flexible."
SeamlessMD’s patient engagement platform is being used by The Ottawa Hospital and The Bariatric Medical Institute to extend their support for bariatric surgery patients into their homes in "Ottawa Hospital Taps SeamlessMD for Bariatric Patient Engagement."
GitLab's newly released Review Apps feature lets developers create temporary apps for reviewing merge requests before moving to production in "GitLab looks to transform app testing."
Unocoin releases a new wallet app that will allow users to buy and sell bitcoin in exchange for Indian rupees as well as send, receive and store the cryptocurrency in "India’s Unocoin Releases New Bitcoin Trading App for Mobile Devices."
Investor Thoughts
Kevin Lee of FundersClub discusses the variation in product management between companies, the importance of finding the right role, and what technologies and markets he’s excited about right now in “Venture Capital is Product Management.”
Alex Iskold of Techstars looks at different aspects of competition and how a startup can deal with its competitors in "8 Tips for Dealing with Competitor."
Tomasz Tunguz of Redpoint Ventures describes how revenue recognition for SaaS companies will change with the new reporting system effective in 2017, and how SaaS startups will have more flexibility in "The Important SaaS Accounting Changes Coming In 2017."
Stefano Bernardi of Mission and Market VC gives a list of firms that he thinks brought the most innovation to the VC landscape in recent times in "The 26 most innovative venture capital firms."
Sarah Duffy of OpenView Partners explains why she thinks companies need to embrace the mentality that the so-called perfect candidate to hire has a lot more to do with future potential than past experience in "How & Why You Should Hire Sales Professionals Based On Potential Rather Than Experience."
Sarah McBride of Bloomberg reports that declines in the venture capital market could be affecting the younger companies that raised seed funding just a year or two ago the most in "Many Boom-Time Startups Are Fizzling Out."
Ash Rust of Trinity Ventures says that once your product is working for customers, and not before, you should be aiming for 10% weekly growth, and offers tips on how to hit that goal in "How to Get 10% Weekly Growth."
Andy Dunn of Bonobos writes about the task of risk taking, and how to stay "foolish and focused" in "Risk And Innovation."
Founder and Operator Thoughts
Craig Cannon of Y Combinator chats with Mara Castro of Warby Parkerabout her journey from being their first employee to being Director of Customer Experience in "Employee #1: Warby Parker."
Brian Chesky of Airbnb shares a simple quote that had a huge effect on him and allowed him to stop editing his imagination in "Brian Chesky: What a Professor Told Me in College That Still Gives Me Strength."
Jason D. Rowley of Mattermark analyzes what the earnings released from Box, an enterprise storage and collaboration company, mean for SaaS companies, as it is a decent indicator for public investor sentiment regarding SaaS revenue in "The Changing Value Of ARR V."
Larry Kim of WordStream describes how content marketing actually works and shares 10 Twitter and Facebook advertising hacks to use as a catalyst to get more content views or to accelerate traffic in "The 10 Greatest Social Media Advertising Tips for Content Marketers."
Benjamin P. Hardy writes about the negative effects of worrying and offers simple solutions to decreasing stress and anxiety in "This Simple Strategy Decreases Anxiety And Fear."
Leigh Buchanan of Inc. magazine shares that Inc.'s annual report on the state of entrepreneurship finds many company owners want to feel better about the economy, and sales and profits, as well as health care costs and premiums, are going up in "State of Entrepreneurship 2017: Growing Revenue, Growing Uncertainty."
In Other News
Fitbit is set to acquire smartwatch maker Pebble, according to a report from The Information, for a “small amount” and that the deal will see Pebble and its products closed down over time, with Fitbit acquiring its assets, which include intellectual property and software in "Fitbit is reportedly buying troubled smartwatch maker Pebble for around $40 million."
Amazon releases the AWS Snowmobile, a tractor-trailer that can store up to 100 petabytes of data where users can contract Amazon to move exabytes of data to the cloud using the new trucks in "Amazon will truck your massive piles of data to the cloud with an 18-wheeler."
Google announces the launch of App Maker, the newest in the low-code, drag-and-drop app building market that promises to make it easy for anybody to quickly develop basic apps in "Google launches App Maker."
Did You Know?
Did you know that a shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes?