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It’s Monday, and since you probably could use a laugh, we highly recommend Zoe Piel’s satirical deck about a firm that “improves” 3-year-old children - get your daily dose of investing (and parenting) advice in “Unlocking Braden’s Potential”

From the Operators

Gleb Budman of Backblaze provides a list of concise tactics to help get a company off the ground, emphasizing that a founding team should know what problem they’re trying to solve, in “Surviving Your First Year”

Arlo Gilbert of Meta SaaS identifies six problems an algorithmic seed-stage VC could theoretically avoid with unbiased investing in “Silicon Valley’s Dirty Secret (Part II)”

Matt Preuss of Visible on turning proper preparation and efficient execution during a board meeting into startup success in “How to Get the Most Out of Your Next Board Meeting”

Jon Fish of Level Education provides a list of the most important lessons he’s personally learned as a founder in “The 10 Commandments of Startups”

From the Investors

Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures cites his story of losing almost everything during the dot com crash as a warning to those putting too many eggs in the crypto basket in “Diversification (aka How To Survive A Crash)”

Brad Feld of Foundry Group follows up on Fred’s post, explaining his experiences during the dot com collapse to argue for not just financial, but emotional, diversification in “Emotional Lessons From the Collapse of the Internet Bubble”

Hunter Walk of Homebrew quotes a founder’s story as an example of the uselessness in convincing a non-critical employee/customer/investor to do something in “‘Convince Me’ said the Investor. ‘No’ said the Founder.”

Geoff Ralston and Michael Seibel of Y Combinator assemble a guide of “YC’s Essential Startup Advice” including a succinct Tl;dr section and other articles that can help startups succeed.

Frederik Groce of Storm Ventures argues that machine learning will be required for a verticalized SaaS product to prosper in “SaaS: The White Collar Industrial Revolution”