2023

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The Twenty Year Itch: My Last VC Investment Out of Brooklyn Bridge Ventures

This is going to be BIG.

Sometime in the next few weeks, I’ll complete my next investment. It will be the 105th deal out of Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, the firm I started back in September 2012, and it will be the last deal I’ll be making out of my third fund. It will also be my last venture capital deal. I think it’s important in this era of building audiences and living in public to acknowledge that no one actually needs to explain the reasons why they’re making career moves or leaving a company.

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Moonshots, Momentum, and Legislative Tailwinds Beyond Silicon Valley

Revolution

Insights and soundbites from our second Beyond Silicon Valley Summit This year, we had more than 150 investors from 31 states join us for our second Beyond Silicon Valley Summit. And while this May’s economic backdrop was markedly different from last’s , enthusiasm was high and outlooks remained positive for the startup momentum building between the coasts.

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Charting a Course: Building a Winning VC Fund Strategy [Part II]

The Seraf Compass

In Part I of this article we discussed several key concepts of fund investment strategy and how funds are categorized, whether it be by industry, geography, stage, specialty (e.g. social impact, corporate, etc.) or some other criteria. Now let's take a closer look at capital allocation strategy and the life cycle of a venture fund.

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Smile Identity expands African footprint with acquisition of Appruve to strengthen ID verification services

TechCrunch

Smile Identity , a KYC compliance and ID verification partner for many African fintechs and businesses, has acquired Inclusive Innovations, the parent company of Appruve , a Ghanaian developer of identity verification software. In a statement shared with TechCrunch, Smile Identity said it is “actively fulfilling regulatory requirements to finalize the transaction for the [Inclusive Innovation] affiliated entities in Africa.

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The B2B Sales Leader's Guide for Any Economic Environment

When economic headwinds pick up, sales leaders are the first to sound the alarm — and chart a new course. Longer sales cycles, larger buying committees, increased price pressure, and smaller teams can quickly combine to reduce your margin for error and increase the urgency to find a solution. To thrive in a challenging environment, sales teams need a rock-solid grasp of the fundamentals and the biggest force-multipliers they can get their hands on.

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What I’ve Learned After Holding One Thousand Interviews

Entrepreneur's Handbook

What I’ve Learned After Holding 1000 Interviews How to hire in startups and big companies the interview process Hiring is one of the most important things you do as a manager or entrepreneur. It will make or break your startup, team or project. In the past 10 years, I’ve been hiring and building teams for startups and big companies, and I’ve got some valuable tricks up my sleeve in keeping a good process and hiring great people.

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More Trending

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PowerUp Podcast Season Three: Highlighting remarkable Taranaki entrepreneurs

NZ Entrepreneur

Te Puna Umanga/Venture Taranaki has now released the final three episodes of PowerUp Podcast , Season Three, hosted by long time business advocate David Downs. Over the six-part series, we have heard valuable insights and practical advice from trailblazing Taranaki enterprise owners who are leading in their fields. While all six guests have unique stories, they are all shining examples of how the region’s famous lifestyle and thriving entrepreneur ecosystem allows big ideas to flourish.

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Killing The ‘Must Have a Warm Intro To a VC’ Myth Will Be Good For Founders and Great for the World

Hunter Walk

Why I’m Participating in SeedChecks’ “Submit Your Deck” Community We’ve never believed in hiding. Our email addresses are on our website , and there’s no junior staffer or AI Bot replying on our behalf. A strong Cold Email always beats a weak Warm Email. And we’ve backed successful startups where the relationship began exactly this way.

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Navigating the High Cost of AI Compute

Andreessen Horowitz

Source: Midjourney The generative AI boom is compute-bound. It has the unique property that adding more compute directly results in a better product. Usually, R&D investment is more directly tied to how valuable a product was, and that relationship is … The post Navigating the High Cost of AI Compute appeared first on Andreessen Horowitz.

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IWD: 45 Women to Watch

GCUC

IWD: 45 Women to Watch Women have been making significant contributions to the coworking industry since its inception, and continue to be influential in shaping the future of work.

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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 can’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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Why I Drove Across India in a Glorified Lawnmower

Entrepreneurs' Organization

In addition to rethinking business strategies to help your company thrive, the new year is an ideal time to assess your personal journey and decide which bucket-list items to pursue. If you’re the adventurous type (we see you, EOers!), take inspiration from Matt Haney of EO Minnesota. In 2022, Matt and his Forum-mate, Riley Harlan , completed a Rickshaw Run across India.

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How to raise an angel round in 10 simple steps

Gust

Number one, understand your business. It sounds obvious, but the majority of entrepreneurs who pitch me have obviously never thought through many of the major issues surrounding their companies. You should know EVERYTHING about your business, product, customers and competition. You should know every metric regarding customer acquisition, conversion and retention.

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Potential Conflicts of Interest in Proptech

Revolution

Unpacking Proptech: A data-driven series on advancing built world innovation As mentioned in Part 1 , an outsized portion of the proptech investor base comes from the real estate community — a reality I would argue is complicating the industry’s growth. Part of the antidote for startups: employing a more prudent approach to raising capital and curating a diverse investor base.

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Venture Capital Prospecting: How To Raise a VC Fund [Part I]

The Seraf Compass

Staying on top of the early stage investing world requires a lot of reading. One of the biggest trends we witnessed over the past few years is the rapid pace of new early stage venture fund formation combined with significant growth in the amount of capital invested. A decade or two ago, most of the new funds were traditional VC funds located in technology hubs in the US and a few other countries around the globe.

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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 Association 

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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A pot of gold at the intersection of DevOps and generative AI?

TechCrunch

W elcome to the TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s inspired by the daily TechCrunch+ column where it gets its name. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. Generative AI isn’t just about creative endeavors and parlor tricks. Investors and Big Tech alike are betting that it will also affect enterprise infrastructure and cybersecurity, and they are putting money where their mouth is. — Anna Dev tools plus generative AI Y Combinator Demo Days are a

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The 5-Step Blueprint for Finding Your Perfect Co-Founder

Entrepreneur's Handbook

Partnering with the right co-founder is the biggest determinant of your future success. Having founded multiple startups across various industries, I firmly believe having the right co-founder(s) is the most significant determinant of startup success. Hence, it’s important to spend significant time up-front to probe co-founder compatibility more deeply — beyond sharing your work experiences, future vision, or a brief phone call.

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How to build an email marketing list—and 24 winning strategies [2023]

The Zapier Blog

Back in November, I was doing some Christmas shopping and ordered a pack of t-shirts online. A week later, I started receiving newsletters from the brand advertising its latest collection of winter wear. I didn't intentionally join any marketing lists, so I felt a little violated. And here lies the challenge of building an email marketing list : collecting emails to contact without annoying your recipients.

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PowerUp Podcast returns for season three

NZ Entrepreneur

Te Puna Umanga/Venture Taranaki’s PowerUp podcast is back with the release of the first three episodes of the latest six-part series that celebrates the prominent Taranaki entrepreneurs and innovators who are leaving their mark on the world. As the Regional Development Agency, Te Puna Umanga/Venture Taranaki is powering up the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Taranaki so that fresh thinking and innovation can continue to thrive in the like no other region.

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Building Healthy Innovation Ecosystems for Your Projects

Speaker: Nick Noreña, 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 Noreña 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

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I Can’t Stop Marveling at SF’s Driverless Cars

Hunter Walk

My daughter and I love San Francisco’s driverless cars from Cruise and Waymo. It’s extraordinary to see these autonomous vehicles putter around our streets, sometimes with non-driver passengers in the back seats. I know they’re not perfect. I know lots of capital was spent and commercialization has been slower than some pundits imagined ( although some of the reasons are up for debate ).

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Five Predictions for the Future of Learning in the Age of AI 

Andreessen Horowitz

When OpenAI released its chatbot ChatGPT last year, proponents were quick to announce the death of various writing-related fields, such as screenwriting, computer programming, and music composition. One particular field stood out as a sector that would feel the power … The post Five Predictions for the Future of Learning in the Age of AI appeared first on Andreessen Horowitz.

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When customers are "willing" to pay

A Smart Bear: Longform

This fresh take on "Willingness-to-Pay" analyzes three types of customer motivation, leading to superior strategies for growth that also better the world.

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ChatGPT & Taylor Swift

Tomasz Tunguz

For each of the 14 weeks, more people searched for ChatGPT than Taylor Swift according to Google Trends data. You won’t find people outside of tech hubs googling for microservices or layer 2 blockchains or serverless databases with any great frequency. But Minnesotans & Idahoans & Vermontans are searching for ChatGPT. People are curious about AI.

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The Startup Funding Gap

This resource discusses the gap between early funding from friends/family and the more substantial rounds from angel groups and VCs. Why does this gap exist and what can be done about it?

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Tom Blomfield of GoCardless and Monzo is Our Newest Group Partner

Y Combinator

To help you make a startup that matters, it helps to have people who have been in the idea maze — trying to get product-market fit, finding it, and holding on to it – to get you through that maze yourself. If you’ve been in there at all, you know how hard it is to even find product-market fit, let alone keep it. I’m proud to say our newest group partner is Tom Blomfield, who has been there not once but twice, and twice emerged with a billion-dollar company.

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6 Essential Tips for Crafting Compelling Subject Lines

Campaign Monitor

It’s true — marketers don’t think about email open rates as much as they used to. Yet, to get your reader to the actual content of your email — to make that conversion — you have to get them to actually open the email. Their engagement starts with a subject line that captures their attention, one which they won’t simply swipe and delete. If you struggle to write open-worthy subject lines, and your campaigns always seem to be sinking into a pool of failed marketing, don’t worry — you’re in good

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The Seraf Method to Valuing Startups: Exit Practicalities

The Seraf Compass

Having evaluated four common methods for valuing early stage companies in a previous article, it's time to take a closer look at the Seraf Method which builds on everything great that has come before it (with the debt of gratitude acknowledged!), but adds key refinements necessary to make it work reliably in real life. In a nutshell, the Seraf Method consists of four simple steps, which we have boiled down into three worksheets and a look-up table.

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Apple acquired a startup using AI to compress videos

TechCrunch

Apple has quietly acquired a Mountain View-based startup, WaveOne , that was developing AI algorithms for compressing video. Apple wouldn’t confirm the sale when asked for comment. But WaveOne’s website was shut down around January, and several former employees , including one of WaveOne’s co-founders , now work within Apple’s various machine learning groups.

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The ABM Benchmark Survey

ABM gets better with age — but unfortunately, marketers don't have the luxury of pouring it into an oak barrel for a couple decades to let it mature. In a recent survey with Demand Gen Report, we found 59% of experienced practitioners (those with ABM programs more than a year old) indicated their ABM programs are meeting or greatly exceeding their expectations, while only 45% of novices (those with ABM programs less than one year old) could say the same.