The Mattermark Daily is a hand-curated newsletter compiled daily to bring you first-person accounts of entrepreneurship, investment and insights from the startup ecosystem. If you enjoy what you read here, please consider forwarding it to spread the word. Not getting the daily regularly? Click here to subscribe!

From the Operators

Steve Blank of Stanford (and serial founder) acknowledges that premature scaling can definitely kill a startup, but seizing the big opportunity when it comes along is crucial in "When Lack of Nerve Kills Startups"

Jason Cohen of WP Engine defines "brittleness" in the context of startups, nothing the typical product decisions that lead to a scenario where a startup sells some product, has a good team, and ultimately fails in "Brittleness comes from “One Thing”"

Carol Luong of Leadfeeder provides three strategies to jumpstart a sales operation, including in-depth looks at finding low-hanging leads and having the right conversation in "Sales Advice for Technical Founders"

From the Investors

Hayley Barna, formerly of Birchbox and now of First Round, welcome to the Investors section! Read about how Haley plans on being the type of investor loved by founders in "It’s My First Day at First Round"

Lauren Loktev of Collaborative Fund argues that Silicon Valley marketers are ignoring the US's most valuable consumer group - people over age 52 - in "The Generation that Tech Forgot"

Jeremy Liew of Lightspeed Venture Partners uses examples of recent ecommerce exits to explain why they think it's so important to continue investing in Amazon competitors in "It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog."

Fred Destin debunks commonly cited venture return stats and explains why finding success in venture investing is so difficult in "Whatever happened to “venture is hard” ?"

Boris Wertz of Version One spells out why the next Stripe will be an insurance provider in "Who will be the Stripe for insurance?"

Jason Lemkin of SaaStr believes early SaaS startups should mix between hiring sales reps with a big rolodex and reps with experience selling software in "Field Sales: When Domain Expertise Does Matter. Just Don’t Over-Index."

Alex Adamson of Bowery Capital says a January start date for a new sales rep leaves out the Q4 experience of holiday buzz & culture, and an earlier start lets them ramp in onboarding and pipeline before the new year even starts in "Best Start Date In Sales: The Monday After Thanksgiving"