Board Observers Weekly - August 26th, 2014. The Difference between Rocket Internet and Y Combinator - Henrik Zillmer. A Dozen Things I’ve Learned From John Doerr. The Technology. Note: This is the talk I gave at Startup School Europe, which was held last Saturday in London.
You've heard a lot of great startup advice today. This is going to be a little different. I often advise startups that it's better to seek deep appeal, to create something that a few people love, even if most people don't get it right away. In that spirit, I've decided to share the technology and dreams that matter to me, with the hope that it will be very appealing to the right person. This is, after all, a business defined by outliers. We talk a lot about technology, and its ability to transform and improve the world. We often sweat life's big decisions, but it's the little decisions that matter the most -- the ones we make thousands of times a day, often without even realizing it.
We all know the power of defaults. First, I don't know anything. It's also the first pattern. This is the danger of experience. I don't want to downplay the value of experience. Escaping dogma is hard. The problem with App Store distribution in 3 charts. Last week, Comscore released its US Mobile App Report, a comprehensive analysis of app usage in the United States.
At a general level, the report highlights the continued shift in consumer digital media engagement from the desktop and mobile web to mobile apps and paints a relatively optimistic picture of the mobile ecosystem: Continued growth in mobile engagement, from 47% of total digital media time in March 2013 to 60% in June 2014;Relatively high median income levels for mobile device owners: $85k for iOS and $61k for Android, compared to a $51k median household income overall in the US and $55k for viewers of 'America's Funniest Home Videos';A healthy balance of age groups, especially on iPhone, where no single group represents more than 23% of the total ownership base or less than 16%.
Investment Thesis @USV. Corporate Development 101: What Every Startup Should Know. The following is a guest post by Chris Sheehan.
Chris is COO of TrueLens, an early stage startup in the social marketing space. He is also a board member, advisor and investor in many Boston and NYC startups. You can follow him on Twitter at @c_sheehan and his blog Early Stage Adventures. What the heck is corporate development and why should I care? Back in the first wave of the Internet, I was part of the team at BEA Systems that built up in-house corporate development.
For entrepreneurs, I think its helpful to understand the role corporate development plays in larger software companies. What is corporate development? - most public consumer and enterprise software companies (and increasingly many high growth private companies) have a person or sometimes a team in charge of corporate development- the mandate varies from pure deal execution to a role that combines strategy, execution, and integration. . - I lean towards the view that it can be very helpful. Can your VCs help? The Power of Getting the Band Back Together. Startups are hard.
You’ve heard that a million times. Those that we survive with become family. It’s something you can’t know unless you’ve ever been in the trenches. Working hard together at a big company just isn’t the same. The truth is you really don’t know how your teammates or your bosses will perform in good times and bad. After 6 months – you know. Who cut you in on their bonus because even though you’re “just an sales engineer” they know you really deserved more credit for this deal. We tell startup stories. So one of the surest signs you’ve hired a leader is the willingness of his or her former team to re-assemble. When you’re hiring most reference checkers focus on the person’s former bosses. I would take a strong employee referral from an existing employee I trust 10x over a person more qualified on paper (given similar skill levels).
It’s like you hear about “mafia’s” of PayPal, Facebook, MySpace, Salesforce, etc. Mafias matter a lot to me, as well. DataSift?