Sat.Nov 15, 2014 - Fri.Nov 21, 2014

article thumbnail

Valuing My Own Time and Saying No

This is going to be BIG.

'The other day, I got a note asking whether I''d be willing to meet some "Head of New Things" at a big telecom. That wasn''t their actual title, but it was something like that. You''ve met them before. They''re new to the gig, super excited about all its potential, and getting out there selling founders hope for that one big gamechanging deal. But I''ve seen this movie before, so here''s how I responded: "Hi!

pitching 300
article thumbnail

Surround Yourself With People Smarter Than You

Gust

'Einstein image via Flickr by Sebastian Niedlich. Helpers do what you say, while good help does what you need, without you saying anything. People who can help you the most are actually smarter than you, at least in their domain. Top entrepreneurs spend more time putting the right team in place to accomplish their objectives than they spend on any other components of their job.

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

Why Entrepreneurs Should Be Respected More Than Loved

Both Sides of the Table

'One of the vivid memories I have from being a startup CEO is the feeling that most people in your company have a look in their eyes that like they can do your job as well as you. How hard could it be? You just assign out tasks to all of us. In the early days the CEO is the jack-of-all-trades, doer-of-all, famously the “chief janitor” or coffee maker.

article thumbnail

Why 2015 Will be a Great Year for Startups

Tomasz Tunguz

At the DEMO conference, Danielle Morrill, the founder and CEO of Mattermark presented an impressive statistic. Seed, Series A, Series B and Later Stage startups employ 1M people, up from 650,000 just six months ago, according to Mattermark’s data sources. While it’s logical to think that the largest and fastest growing startups might employ the majority of startup employees because they hire at stupendous rates, this isn’t the case today.

startup 40
article thumbnail

The Big Payoff of Application Analytics

Outdated or absent analytics won’t cut it in today’s data-driven applications – not for your end users, your development team, or your business. That’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.

article thumbnail

If I was an Uber investor. (besides the obvious fact that I'd be rich.)

This is going to be BIG.

'I like Uber as a service. It just works. I also like the fact that it seems to provide a lot of work for a lot of otherwise underemployed people. All of the drivers I''ve spoken to have said nothing but good things about it. They seem to like getting the work. Do I think that all of the executives are bad people? No. In fact, I like all the people I know somewhat well who work there.

culture 323

More Trending

article thumbnail

The Silent Killer – The Company Your Community Never Created

Both Sides of the Table

'I was at a dinner recently in Chicago and the table discussion was about building great companies outside of Silicon Valley. Of course this can be done and of course I am a big proponent of the rise of startup centers across the country as the Internet has moved from the “infrastructure phase” to the “application phase” dominated by the three C’s: content, communications and commerce.

article thumbnail

Benchmarking New Relic's S-1 - How 7 Key SaaS Metrics Stack Up

Tomasz Tunguz

This post is part of a continuing series evaluating the S-1s of publicly traded SaaS companies in order to better understand the core business and build a library of benchmarks that might be useful to founders. New Relic is San Francisco based, 534 person company providing tools for engineers to understand how well their code is performing. The company operates in the Application Performance Management category, which New Relic calls Software Analytics.

SaaS 40
article thumbnail

Don’t make assertions that will later prove untrue.

Berkonomics

'Sometimes it is easy for someone at the top of an organization to make a statement that, in the enthusiasm of the moment or to make a point, crosses the line between fact and fiction. Sometimes it seems to you to be just an unimportant little stretch of the facts. An estimate of the number of customers, of the amount of traffic to your website, of the numbers of products sold or hours spent in development – there are thousands of areas where a number sounds better when it is larger.

energy 75
article thumbnail

Surround Yourself With People Smarter Than You

Gust

'Einstein image via Flickr by Sebastian Niedlich. Helpers do what you say, while good help does what you need, without you saying anything. People who can help you the most are actually smarter than you, at least in their domain. Top entrepreneurs spend more time putting the right team in place to accomplish their objectives than they spend on any Read more >.

article thumbnail

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.

article thumbnail

Why Negative Churn is Such a Powerful Growth Mechanism

Tomasz Tunguz

Negative churn is an incredibly attractive characteristic of a SaaS company because it means that customer accounts are like high-yield savings accounts. Every month, more money comes in, without much effort. This is a powerful effect and can fuel SaaS companies to huge success, as we saw in New Relic’s S-1. The concept of negative churn is a bit amorphous so let’s illustrate the impact on a startup.

SaaS 41
article thumbnail

How Important are Professional Services to Your Startup?

Tomasz Tunguz

Hortonworks filed their S-1 last week. Reading through the document, I noticed the company had quite a substantial fraction of professional services revenue; 41% of trailing 12 month revenue is services. Of the companies we have studied in our S-1 analyses , Hortonworks generates more professional services revenue as a fraction of total revenue than any other company.

SaaS 40
article thumbnail

Emerging Entrepreneurship Ecosystems: GIST Net Launches

Gust

'Today, Gust is proud to join the U.S. Department of State and several other private sector partners to launch The GIST Network (GIST Net), an interactive online network connecting science and technology entrepreneurs in emerging economies. GIST Net will provide entrepreneurs with the resources and mentorship they need to collaborate, seek funding, and grow their businesses.