Danielle and I just got back from a trip to San Francisco, and it was good to see several of our friends there. I’m especially happy I got to eat at Plow twice. We’re excited to do a return trip after the holidays. In the meantime, we’re looking forward to snow here in Denver this weekend.
Product Advice From the Trenches
David Tuite of Workday started compiling a List of Companies with Public Roadmaps. If you’ve been thinking of opening up your roadmap to customers you can learn from companies like Trello, Buffer, and Twitch.
Sachin Rekhi of Notejoy outlines a framework that incorporates long term vision, customers and business objectives in How to Prioritize a Product Roadmap.
From the Operators
Dave Kellogg of Host Analytics gives a shoutout to Fenwich Wests’s Q3 Venture Capital Survey and does a good job highlighting numbers around key negotiating points like liquidation preference in Highlights from the Fenwick & West 3Q18 Venture Capital Survey.
Ceci Stallsmith of Slack draws the important distinction between confidence and arrogance in The Art of Making You Feel Small.
From the Investors
Matrix Partners compiled their 2018 SAAS Private Survey Results- Part 1 and it covers everything from average growth rates, to contract size, to upsell trends. It’s a great resource for founders in search of benchmarks.
Andrew Clark of Visible shares a best practices that gets your employee base on the same page as the founding team in The Friday Note Challenge.
Seth Levine of Foundry Group has put together an excellent on board meetings covering everything from meeting pre, to the board package, to running the meeting itself. See the full write up in Designing the Ideal Board Meeting Blog Series.
A few years ago Series A crunch was the big worry in startups. Now there is a new crunch, and its the journey of Going from a proof of concept fund to an “institutional” venture fund covered by Samir Kaji of First Republic Bank.
Christoph Janz of Point Nine Capital sees a pattern of founders diluting early investors in Founders: Please don’t allow anyone to screw your early backers.
Battery Ventures recently hosted a panel Getting from Seed to Series A: Insider Tips from Tech’s Top Early-Stage Funders with Forerunner, Felicis, and Battery. It’s useful right out of the gate with honest talk about where leading VCs have their bar for Series A.