This is going to be BIG.

JUNE 10, 2015

I recently met up with an investor who I'm not totally sure is a fit for my second fund , so it was important to me that I was upfront about all the reasons why he shouldn't come in. The last thing you want as either a founder or even a VC is to have an investor get stuck with you when you're not on the same page about expectations. So here's all the reasons I told him he shouldn't be in: 1) Fund investing is boring.

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venture capital investing investment ventures 412

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 11, 2015

This morning it was announced that Matt Murphy had left his role as a partner Kleiner Perkins to join as a partner in Menlo Ventures. As much of the coverage in the press this morning acknowledges it’s rare for a partner to leave from one firm to another. It’s even more rare for VCs to talk publicly about other VCs, so I thought it would be fun to break rank and tell you about Matt.

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ventures board VC culture 291

Tomasz Tunguz

JUNE 8, 2015

Worth $11.5B, ServiceNow is the third public SaaS company, after Salesforce and LinkedIn. Based in San Diego, ServiceNow employs roughly 3000 people, and sells a system of record for IT operations teams to manage IT assets, facilities, and human resources. ServiceNow’s software allows clients to develop custom applications for their own needs, often with the help of the company’s professional services team.

SaaS 45

SaaS sustainability enablement development 45

Berkonomics

JUNE 11, 2015

By Frank Peters. Our guest insight this week is from Frank Peters, well-known in the angel and in the bicycle worlds for his podcasts and passion. His personal story is full of lessons for us all. – Dave. We’ve all heard the modern day mantra: Fail Fast. It’s good advice; the theory being that entrepreneurs can discover the flaws in their business models sooner, make course corrections and move in a more favorable direction.

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Speaker: Lee Andrews, Founder at LJA New Media & Tony Karrer, Founder and CTO at Aggregage

This session will walk you through how one CEO used generative AI, workflow automation, and sales personalization to transform an entire security company—then built the Zero to Strategy framework that other mid-market leaders are now using to unlock 3.5x ROI. As a business executive, you’ll learn how to assess AI opportunities in your business, drive adoption across teams, and overcome internal resource constraints—without hiring a single data scientist.

frameworks

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 11, 2015

Product Hunt. It seems out of nowhere it has become the go to website for startup companies to launch their new products or businesses. It reminds me a lot of how TechCrunch felt in 2006. It was the place that every startup knew they HAD TO be in order to attract initial users and also gain the attention of venture capitalists. I strong showing on TechCrunch created initial product demand and if you could sustain that it led to buzz overall in the tech community.

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startup communities advice media 316

Tomasz Tunguz

JUNE 10, 2015

Compensation structures are one of the most interesting questions facing customer success organizations in software startups. How should customer success leaders structure their team’s compensation in order to align the objectives of individual customer success managers with those of the larger business? At the Customer Success Summit, Boaz Maor, VP of Customer Success at Mashery presented his rubric for answering this question.

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startup 40

Tomasz Tunguz

JUNE 9, 2015

As I prepared the S-1 analysis for ServiceNow, the third largest public SaaS company in the world , I came across a section in their latest annual report called Key Factors Affecting Our Performance in which the company describes the two ways they evaluate churn. One is common, but another is unusual. Below I’ve quoted their definitions. Upsell rate.

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SaaS health startup 40