December, 2022

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Is Your Startup a Good Fit for Venture Capital?

Entrepreneur's Handbook

5 criteria VCs look for before considering investing Continue reading on Entrepreneur's Handbook ยป.

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Praying to the God of Valuation

Both Sides of the Table

Something happened in the past 7 years in the startup and venture capital world that I hadnโ€™t experienced since the late 90โ€™sโ€Šโ€”โ€Šwe all began praying to the God of Valuation. It wasnโ€™t always like this and frankly it took a lot of joy out of the industry for me personally. What happened? How might our next phase of the journey seem brighter, even with more uncertain days for startups and capital markets?

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Upgrade Your Leadership Skills to Stabilize Your Team and Maintain Momentum

Entrepreneurs' Organization

The pandemic was the strongest catalyst for workplace change Iโ€™ve seen in my lifetime. It disrupted the way work was done, which means it also impacted how leaders operate. Remote and hybrid work became the new normal overnight, and leaders had to quickly transition to new processes and systems. Why was the shift to remote work so powerful? It challenged leaders to think beyond the status quo.

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What Happened In 2022

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

I like to bookend the New Year holiday with two posts, one looking back at the year that is ending and one looking forward to the year ahead. This is the first of these two posts. The second one will run tomorrow. What happened in 2022 is the bottom fell out of the capital markets and the startup and tech sector more broadly. Back in February 2021, I wrote a post called How This Ends.

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The Big Payoff of Application Analytics

Outdated or absent analytics wonโ€™t cut it in todayโ€™s data-driven applications โ€“ not for your end users, your development team, or your business. Thatโ€™s what drove the five companies in this e-book to change their approach to analytics. Download this e-book to learn about the unique problems each company faced and how they achieved huge returns beyond expectation by embedding analytics into applications.

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A $30B Software Company from a $15m Investment

Tomasz Tunguz

Constellation Software is a $30b+ publicly-traded software holding company employing more than 25,000. A former venture capitalist, Mark Leonard started Constellation in 1995 with $15m of outside investment & a goal of buying vertical software companies with a moat & good unit economics. Vertical software companies pursue a particular market segment like car dealership management or hotel management software.

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Inspiring Sustainable Design: Circular Economyโ€”Design for a Lifetime

Venture Well

To help faculty engage students in green design methods, we spotlight key exercises from the Tools for Design and Sustainability course, developed by Dr. Jeremy Faludi of Delft University of Technology. The post Inspiring Sustainable Design: Circular Economyโ€”Design for a Lifetime appeared first on VentureWell.

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Revel raises $7.8M to become the Instagram and Robinhood of NFT platforms

TechCrunch

Revel , an NFT or โ€œsocial collectiblesโ€ platform, raised $7.8 million in seed financing led by Dragonfly Capital, the startupโ€™s CEO, Adi Sideman, exclusively told TechCrunch. โ€œOne way to describe Revel is a cross between Instagram and Robinhood, wrapped in social game economics,โ€ Sideman said. Instagram is known as a social media platform while Robinhood is known as an investing and trading platform.

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7 Tips for Success from a PR and Connection Superhero

Entrepreneurs' Organization

Justin Breen self-describes as โ€œa Dad who happens to be an entrepreneur.โ€ His own father died when Justin was just 13, so spending time with his sons, ages 8 and 10, takes precedence over all else. Five years ago, Justin started his public relations company, BrEpic Communications , with zero business experience. After being a journalist for 20 years, Justin created his company for two reasons: 1.

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Sign Everything

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

The advances in AI over the last year are mind-boggling. I attended a dinner this past week with USV portfolio founders and one who works in education told us that ChatGPT has effectively ended the essay as a way for teachers to assess student progress. It will be easier for a student to prompt ChatGPT to write the essay than to write it themselves.

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PE Mastery: CAPTARGET's Playbook for Quality Lead Flow

CAPTARGET presents a masterclass in M&A deal sourcing. Learn to cast a wide net, embracing seller self-identification. Consistency is the linchpin: keep the origination process steady for a reliable flow of opportunities. Diversify your tactics, employing various tools and vendors. Tech matters! Understand DNS settings, domain authority, and brand presence for optimal outreach.

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PLG & Profitability : More Product Doesn't Necessarily Mean Greater Profits

Tomasz Tunguz

Profitability or net income margin has become the most important correlate to public software company valuations. But public companies are less profitable today than a year ago. Surprisingly, PLG companies’ profitability has suffered more than sales-led businesses. Across every quartile, public software & infrastructure companies have seen a 5 percentage point drop in net income since Covid.

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Should you use TikTok for your business?

Startup Blogpost

From having visual and shareable content to making the jump to YouTube Shorts, here are 10 answers to the question, “Should you use TikTok for your business? Please share how your business has approached TikTok as a platform.” Yes, if You Have Visual and Highly Shareable Content. Yes, Itโ€™s an Excellent Way to Reach Your Audience. If You Haven’t Already Started, Look Elsewhere.

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Reshore and Restore: Unlocking American Innovation for the 21st Century

Andreessen Horowitz

Whether through COVID-19, climate change, or geopolitical conflict, the past few years have laid bare the tenuous connections underpinning key parts of our modern world. Wars, pandemics, ransomware attacks, and extreme weather events have pushed supply chains, power grids, and … The post Reshore and Restore: Unlocking American Innovation for the 21st Century appeared first on Andreessen Horowitz.

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Kenyaโ€™s Uncover raises $1M to expand skincare product enterprise across Africa

TechCrunch

Africaโ€™s beauty and personal care market is growing accelerated by its growing young and fashion conscious population, increasing spending power, and urbanization. The marketโ€™s potential has in recent years attracted major brands, with Fenty Beauty by Rihanna and LVMH being the latest entrants. Niche local brands are also emerging to offer tailored beauty and skin care products.

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How to Stay Competitive in the Evolving State of Martech

Marketing technology is essential for B2B marketers to stay competitive in a rapidly changing digital landscape โ€” and with 53% of marketers experiencing legacy technology issues and limitations, theyโ€™re researching innovations to expand and refine their technology stacks. To help practitioners keep up with the rapidly evolving martech landscape, this special report will discuss: How practitioners are integrating technologies and systems to encourage information-sharing between departments and pr

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EO Members Share Their Favorite In-Person Moments from 2022

Entrepreneurs' Organization

In 2022, EO members enjoyed a long-awaited return to in-person events at the global, regional and local levels. We asked EO members about their most memorable moments and inspiring in-person encounters in the EO community. Hereโ€™s what they shared: EO Global Leadership Conference (GLC) and MyEO Women Summit. โ€œIt’s been great being back together, especially with other leaders at EOโ€™s Global Leadership Conference (GLC), where we learned together in our respective tracks and also learned from

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The Hour Of Code

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

I have written many times about the Hour Of Code here at AVC. It is the highlight of the annual Computer Science Education Week which is the first week of December, which is this week. Yesterday Marco Argenti, Goldman Sachs’ CIO, and I went with NYC Schools Chancellor David Banks to the Hospitality Management High School in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood in Manhattan to do an Hour of Code with the students there.

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2022 YC Year in Review

Y Combinator

In 2022, most of the world freed itself from the shackles of the COVID pandemic, everyone struggled with inflation, and a war broke out in Europe. Here at YC we took things in stride and recruited our summer and winter batches as always. We also slowly began to bring back that very human thing we used to do: meeting in person. For the S22 batch, we instituted a beginning-of-batch retreat and weekly meetups.

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QYOU Mediaโ€™s Ginsburg is Reimagining Influencer Brand Marketing

Jason Malki

I had the pleasure of interviewing Glenn Ginsburg. Glenn Ginsburg holds the position of President at QYOU Media and launched and runs QYOUโ€™s award winning Influencer Marketing Agency whose client portfolio includes Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures, Sony Pictures, Hasbro, Activision, Capcom, Hyundai and other leading brands. Under Glennโ€™s leadership QYOU Media has also become the foremost authority on brand engagement on popular short form entertainment platform TikTok.

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Statement of Cash Flows vs. Cash Flow Statement

Speaker: Wayne Spivak - President and Chief Financial Officer of SBA * Consulting LTD, Industry Writer, and Public Speaker

The old adages that "cash is king" and "you canโ€™t spend profits" still hold true today. But however well-known these sayings might be, it requires a change in mindset to properly implement a cash flow management system that predicts your business's runaway as accurately as possible. Key to this new mindset is understanding the difference between the Statement of Cash Flows, a historical look at the source and uses of cash, and the Cash Flow Statement, which uses transaction history and forward-l

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Which accelerators do top tier VC's care about for pre-seed or seed funding for your startup from a Techstars COO

Founder Bounty

I have been through the fundraising process. Not only is it damn hard - you guys have to know what not to waste your time on since your busy founders and what to waste your time on. So here it is. Having been in touch with top tier VC's for pre seed and seed these are the best ones. YC Y Combinator is easily one of the most famous accelerators in the world, thanks to its huge profile and excellent reputation among startups.

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Mozilla acquires Active Replica to build on its metaverse vision

TechCrunch

An automated status updater for Slack isn’t the only thing Mozilla acquired this week. On Wednesday, the company announced that it snatched up Active Replica , a Vancouver-based startup developing a “web-based metaverse.” According to Mozilla SVP Imo Udom, Active Replica will support Mozilla’s ongoing work with Hubs, the latter’s VR chatroom service and open source project.

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Why now is the ideal time to learn from your successes

Entrepreneurs' Organization

Contributed by Brooke Lively, an Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) member in Fort Worth. Brooke is founder and president of Cathedral Capital , which provides strategic financial advice to drive profit by creating customized teams of financial professionals to analyze data trends and guide entrepreneurs through their numbers so they can predictably scale and grow their businesses.

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The Difference Between Jobs to Be Done And Problems

Entrepreneur's Handbook

The nuanced balance to creating value for your customers Image: IWantProductMarket.Fit Problems are at the core of each startup. It shapes your solution that generates value. Without generating value, itโ€™s hard to retain customers. Therefore we have books , articles and podcasts around the mantra: โ€œLove the problem, not the solutionโ€. So what is love?

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How to Avoid the Pain and Cost of PCI Compliance While Optimizing Payments

Speaker: P. Andrew Sjogren, Sr. Product Marketing Manager at Very Good Security, Matt Doka, Co-Founder and CTO of Fivestars, and Steve Andrews, President & CEO of the Western Bankers Associationย 

PCI compliance can feel challenging and sometimes the result feels like you are optimizing more for security and compliance than you are for business outcomes. The key is to take the right strategy to PCI compliance that gets you both. In this webinar, we have a great set of panelists who will take you through how Zero Data strategies can be used as part of a well-rounded compliance and security approach, and get you to market much sooner by also allowing for payment optimization.

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YC Generative AI Co-Founder Meetup

Y Combinator

Attention aspiring entrepreneurs! Are you passionate about using generative AI to create innovative products and services? Do you have a great idea that you're looking to bring to life, but you're still missing the perfect co-founder to make it happen? YC is excited to announce our first-ever generative AI themed co-founder meetup, happening virtually on Saturday, December 17th at 11am-1pm PST.

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a16z Slack Debate: Will Generative AI Supplant Therapists, Game Makersโ€ฆFriends?

Andreessen Horowitz

There’s much more to generative AI than heroic avatars and tongue-in-cheek art. The potential applications are widespread, from drug discovery and therapy to writing, game development, education, ecommerce, and more. Last week, five a16z partners met on Slack to debate … The post a16z Slack Debate: Will Generative AI Supplant Therapists, Game Makers…Friends?

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When to Quit Your Job & Start Your Own Business

OkDork

From ages 22 to 26, I was working day jobs. I worked at Intel, then at Facebook, and finally at Mint.com. I had some cool experiences, but overall I was mostly unhappy because I wanted to start my own business, soooooโ€ฆ. I kept quitting early or getting fired. If I could go back in time I would do things a little differently. and this is the post I wished I had when I felt stuck.

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South Korean financial super app Toss closes $405M Series G as valuation rises 7%

TechCrunch

Viva Republica, an operator of South Korean finance super app Toss , has finalized a $405 million Series G funding and it says it is now valued at 9.1 trillion won ( $7 billion), up from 8.5 trillion won in June 2021, when it raised $410 million in pre-Series G funding at a $7.4 billion (8.5 trillion won) valuation. (South Korea’s currency has depreciated against the dollar this year.).

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Building Healthy Innovation Ecosystems for Your Projects

Speaker: Nick Noreรฑa, Innovation Coach and Advisor, Kromatic

Every startup and innovation project exists within an ecosystem that either helps or hurts that project. As innovation managers, we need to keep a pulse of that ecosystem and make sure we're helping those innovation projects we're managing every step of the way. In this webinar, Nick Noreรฑa will walk through an Innovation Ecosystem Model that he and his team at Kromatic have developed to help investors, heads of product, teachers, and executives understand how they can best support innovation in