From the Operators
Aytekin Tank of JotForm acknowledges that the term "growth hacking" may be overused and has its place, but should never become more important than simply delighting a customer in "Button colors won’t save your business. And your growth hacker might be your worst enemy."
Todd Belveal of Washlava shares four telltale signs that an industry is ready to be disrupted by a technology startup, especially when it comes to negative customer sentiment in "How To Tell If An Industry Is Ripe For Disruption"
Lars Kamp of Intermix.io speculates that the decline in seed funding means the best option for early-stage founders is to seek investment through a syndicate in "How Successful Founders Will Raise Money in 2018"
From the Investors
Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures reiterates that the VC ecosystem is way behind the times when it comes to gender diversity (and diversity in general) and announces the formation of a new Women in VC Blog as an extension of Female Founder Office Hours in "Announcing the Women in VC Blog – Female Founder Office Hours"
Jeff Seibert, angel investor and former founder of Increo and Crashlytics, sums up the job of a founder as only having one task: "Look at where you’re spending your time, then fire yourself from that position" in "You Have One Job"
Bilal Zuberi of Lux Capital expresses surprise at the number of VCs who are still "faking" it despite the incredible volume of experts who wish to lend expertise, and notes the topics that could best support learning in VC (lots of which we cover in this newsletter) in "Learning as a VC"
Brad Feld of Foundry Group asks whether social tech companies were ever really concerned about their users' best interests, citing recent comments from early Facebook executives, and providing an interesting perspective for the next generation of social platform founders & integrators in "Did Tech Companies Ever Have Our Best Interests At Heart?"
