It's SaaStr Annual Week, Who's There?

We’re proud to announce many new updates to the Mattermark suite of products. These new updates include a Public List of SaaStr Annual 2017 sponsors and speakers, along with the new Mattermark Growth Score, and increased coverage of 1.57 million to 4 million companies, and 990,000 new industry tags. Here's the full product, data, and Public List update. :)

From the Investors

Deepak Ravichandran, Jeff Lu, and Roger Lee of Battery Ventures crunched data on public consumer companies to create an index to track “network-effects” companies like Snap, Inc., in “Network Effects – The Keys to Ascending the Consumer-Internet Throne”

Guy Turner of Hyde Park Venture Partners argues that new infrastructure or UI innovation (like AI), within software, only matters to the extent that it further drives marginal cost to zero in “The Essence of Software and Zero Marginal Cost”

Ben Einstein of Bolt explains what startups can do to set appropriate user expectations when launching a new hardware product in “Hardware Startups Should Lower User Expectations”

Thomas Reygagne of Avolta Partners looks to mitigate an entrepreneur’s hopes with why venture capitalists finance innovation and traction only when it is profitable in “Are French VCs Financing Innovation?”

From the Operators

Elad Gil of Color Genomics realizes that if you plan to go fundraise in twelve months, you should start to build select VC relationships early vs. right before you fundraise in “Building VC Relationships”

Sam Mallikarjunan of HubSpot dives into why it's getting easier than ever for established companies to lose a big sales lead in “Lead Positions are More Tenuous Than Ever”

James Altucher, a serial entrepreneur, offers his thoughts on why an ‘entrepreneurial mindset’ is really brutal and is really a 'raging fire that often scorches the Earth until there are no survivors' in “How To Develop An Entrepreneur Mindset”

Jessica Ellis of Magoosh dissects why your brain is the ultimate brainstorming tool in “The Neuroscience of Breakthrough Thinking”

Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist

As required reading for Mattermark employees, I recommend you check out the new third edition of Venture Deals by Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson of Foundry Group. It provides entrepreneurs and startup owners with a definitive reference for understanding venture capital funding.