From the Operators
Josiah Humphrey of Appster discusses the balance between running a frugal, yet sustainable, business with over-optimizing startup expense management in "How smart cost-cutting can accelerate your startup growth"
Yancey Strickler of Kickstarter has insights around the balance of being a CEO, building a team, finding success, and maintaining personal happiness in "Know your job"
Alan Cuddihy of PCH covers scaling, points of failure, advice on manufacturing overseas, and much more hardware startup advice in "Scaling Advice for Hardware Startups from PCH’s Alan Cuddihy"
David Cancel of Drift explains how a customer decides what to care about, cultivating customer-first company culture, and the most important things a product leader should focus on in "Customer-Driven Development — An Interview with David Cancel, CEO at Drift."
Oliver Jay of Asana talks about how they launched a paid product with a freemium model, covering everything from revenue recognition to building an organization with an enterprise sales model in "BC Startup Sales Podcast – Sales Model Evolution From Freemium To Enterprise with Oliver Jay (Asana)"
From the Investors
Sari Azout of Level VC believes that the best companies clearly communicate not just what they're "disrupting", but explain what the result of said disruption is, and covers positioning, content creation, and strategic messaging in "From Product/Market Fit to Language/Market Fit: A New Brand Storytelling Framework"
Chacho Valadez of Backstage Capital explains how working at a retail store provided the motivation to find a new career in venture capital in "My Unlikely Entrance into Venture Capital"
Louis Coppey of Point Nine Capital follows up an initial article around surviving as an AI startup, saying that one of the best early advantages a firm can have is a killer sales process in "PART II: Routes to defensibility for your AI Startup"
Hunter Walk of Homebrew shares a portfolio company's challenge with a take-home interview that causes unexpected challenges as they make diversity a hiring priority in "They Wanted To Eliminate Gender Bias In Technical Hiring But Ended Up Losing All Their Female Candidates."
Tomasz Tunguz of Redpoint Ventures uses data to respond to the multitude of hot takes around whether or not VC is doomed due to the ICO in "Just How Disruptive Are ICOs to the Classic VC Model?"
