Archive for the ‘Venture Hacks’ Category

You can be so bad at so many things

Thursday, February 2nd, 2012

“You can be so bad at so many things… and as long as you stay focused on how you’re providing value to your users and customers, and you have something that is unique and valuable… you get through all that stuff.”

Mark Zuckerberg

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The problem with the Internet startup craze

Thursday, February 2nd, 2012

“The problem with the Internet startup craze isn’t that too many people are starting companies; it’s that too many people aren’t sticking with it.”

Steve Jobs

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1.5 Years Of AngelList: 8000 Intros, 400 Investments And That’s Just The Data We Can Tell You About

Thursday, February 2nd, 2012

It’s the AngelList centi-sesquicentennial and we want to share some stats with you. After 1.5 years, AngelList has seen…

  • 8,000 intros. An investor has asked for an intro to a startup on AngelList over 8,000 times.
  • 400 investments. A startup has been introduced to an investor and subsequently closed that investor over 400 times.
  • 8 acquisitions. At least 8 startups on AngelList have been acquired.

Before product-market fit, find passion-market fit

Thursday, February 2nd, 2012

Before product-market fit, find passion-market fit.

Building a product is a process, not a discrete action. And the Internet is efficiently arbitraged. Every single simple thing that can be done is being done, or has been done. The lesson of history is that product-market fit is very precise—one wrong tweak or slightly bad timing and you can miss the whole thing.

So the only way you’re likely to find product-market fit is if you’re almost irrationally obsessed with the market and if you’ve been working on it for a long time. Where the journey is the reward. Then, you’re likely to have unique insights (in the details) and consistent execution, through thick and thin, to find fit.

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But I don’t want to follow you on Twitter

Thursday, February 2nd, 2012

We post links to the very best startup advice on Twitter at @venturehacks. We read Hacker News, the best blogs, Quora, and everything else startup-related. Then we tweet about the best content we find.

But maybe you don’t use Twitter. Or you don’t want to follow us there. Or you hate us.

Well then, you can subscribe to a daily digest of the links we post on Twitter via email or RSS. Here’s a pic of the email version:

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Anatomy of an (un)fundable startup

Thursday, February 2nd, 2012

Naval and Mark Suster recently gave the keynotes at the 7th Founder Showcase. Andrew Chen did a better job of describing Naval’s keynote than I ever will:

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Getting Leverage in Hostage Negotiations

Thursday, February 2nd, 2012

“Every time the other party says ‘I want’ in a negotiation, you should hear the pleasant sound of a weight dropping on your side of the leverage scales.”

– G. Richard Shell, Bargaining for Advantage

Most entrepreneurs don’t understand the power of positive leverage. Here’s a typical situation:

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Reading your legal docs

Thursday, February 2nd, 2012

Go read Elad Gil’s You Should Read Every Word of Every Legal Doc.

Some docs are too long and boilerplate to read, so this is how I read financing docs:

  1. Read and understand everything in the term sheet. But when it comes to the closing docs, ask your lawyer to explain all the terms that he has seen written, or could have been written, more favorably to the startup. The closing docs are too long and boilerplate to read.
  2. Get a good lawyer because you probably don’t have one. You really won’t know what a good lawyer is until you’ve fired a few. I regularly run into lawyers at big firms who give bad advice alongside good advice. Don’t assume your lawyer is good just because he works at a big Silicon Valley law firm.
  3. You probably can’t tell the difference between good legal advice and bad legal advice. So you will need a great advisor like Elad.

You should subscribe to Elad’s blog. It is consistently great.

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"A" players write the playbook

Thursday, February 2nd, 2012

Eric Paley’s Curve of Talent is a brutal must-read. I’ve remixed it a bit to come up with the following definitions; the word’s are Eric’s, I’ve just re-ordered them:

F performers are not at all productive.

C performers struggle to competently fill their role, but are somewhat productive with sufficient coaching. Hard to admit, but most people in the business world don’t have a particularly clear idea on how to do their job well. Startups need to help C players transition out of the organization.

B players understand their objectives well and deliver them competently with minimum coaching. Coach B players on the need to not just competently deliver their function, but drive toward innovation within that function.

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AngelList startup wins TechCrunch Disrupt

Thursday, February 2nd, 2012

Congrats to TechCrunch Disrupt winner GetAround. Guess what they used to raise part of their first round?

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