FundersClub Weekly Newsletter - February 2, 2017
FundersClub Portfolio News
Slack, the business app that lets teams of users communicate, share files from other services, and work on them with each other, is launching Enterprise Grid – a new product aimed at corporates and other very large enterprises, and unleashes a new set of search, business intelligence and analytics tools in "Slack takes aim at the corporate sector with Enterprise Grid, adds bots from SAP."
Oohlala is a custom university-specific app for students and administrators, and is looking to expand with a $4 million Series A round in "Oohlala aims to school the university-specific app space with a $4M Series A."
Apoorva Mehta of Instacart shares his journey of growing Instacart to more than 300 full-time employees and tens of thousands of part-time grocery shoppers in "Apoorva Mehta had 20 failed start-ups before Instacart."
The Nymi Band is being used as a secure identification method for users on Atos by analyzing their heartbeat in "Nymi’s HeartID integrated into Atos authentication solutions."
Investor Thoughts
Christopher Steiner of FundersClub shares metrics on the impact that immigrants have had not only on the FC portfolio, but also on the U.S. economy, to help illustrate the indelible relationship between America's tech dominance, its upward job growth and its status as the land of opportunity and innovation in "Each Immigrant FundersClub Founder Creates 159 U.S. Jobs."
Benedict Evans of Andreessen Horowitz shares his visions of what early constraints and assumptions about mobile that are being abandoned as new models are emerging in "Mobile 2.0."
Medha Agarwal of Redpoint Ventures explains that for a new start-up leveraging A.I. to create a winning approach, they must first focus on a specific use case and create valuable data in "Creating a Winning Approach with A.I."
Chris Orlob of OpenView Partners asks B2B sales professionals what is the most valuable piece of advice they have when it comes to conducting winning sales conversations, and shares a few unique perspectives in "6 Buyer-Centric Sales Lessons From 74 Top-Flight Sales Leaders."
Paul Arnold of Switch Ventures explores why he believes that the market for making seed investments remains attractive in "(Still) A Good Time For Seed."
Angel Investor Joanne Wilson shares her journey going from entrepreneur to investor and offers advice for fundraising in "It’s Not All About The Concept."
CB Insights looks at all still-private unicorns since 2009 and charts them based on when they first joined the unicorn club in "The Increasingly Crowded Unicorn Club In One Infographic."
Founder and Operator Thoughts
Sam Altman of Y Combinator explains what to do when you did everything right except for finding a perfect market in "Navigating Mid-Success."
Andrew Chen of Uber expands on The Bad Product Fallacy when making an investment and looks at common root causes in "The Bad Product Fallacy: Don’t confuse “I don’t like it” with “That’s a bad product and it’ll fail”"
Amy Chang of Accompany shares lessons from her vast experience for founders and individuals alike who are looking for an advisor for their career and business in "Snag the Best Advisors for Your Startup, from Best-selling Authors to Fortune 500 CEOs."
Barbara Szirmai of Techstars chats with David Cohen of Techstars about the recipe for successful startups, celebration of failure and Techstars’ experience in Berlin in "It’s a People Game: A Closer Look at Techstars’ Recipe for Success."
Jason Fried of Bootcamp gives an actual example in their business of how a couple small design decisions lead to significant operational complexity in "Case study: How complexity creeps in."
John Lincoln of Ignite Visibility shares three online advertising strategies that he believes will rule in 2017 as the digital market continues to move quickly in "3 Winning Online Advertising Strategies That Will Rule 2017."
Hila Qu of Acorns offers a plan for your first 90 days in a growth role to help you navigate through your initial period with a clear vision, focus, and path to maximize your likelihood of success in "Your First 90 Day Startup Growth Plan."
In Other News
Uber is suspending its service in Taiwan starting February 12 following an ongoing stand-off with the government, and isn’t saying when it will resume in the country in "Uber bows to government pressure and suspends its service in Taiwan."
Pokémon Go, which broke download records and raced to $500 million in revenue quicker than any app in history, now has beat another record being the fastest game to reach $1 billion in revenue in "Report: Pokémon Go has now crossed $1 billion in revenue."
Did You Know?
Did you know that the tongue of the blue whale can weigh as much as an elephant?