My friends know that I’m fond of using stem cells as a metaphor for cities, companies, and parts of your life. These are the blobs of opportunity you come across in life where it seems like anything is possible, and growth is bound to occur.
For example in Denver, the Rhino district seems to be where all the stem cells in the city are. It’s where most my coffee meetings end up, and it’s also home to several amazing murals. Companies can have whole departments that are stem cells, and sometimes the best way to recruit at a large company like Google or Twitter is to show that you’re the stem cells of the company; this is where all the exciting new potential is.
This week I have a great link to share with you about stem cells.
From the Operators
I did work last week on vacation to look at the most popular Buried Reads posts so far. You all are really interested in whether and how entrepreneurs can be good parents. This week Avni Patel Thompson of Poppy shares how impactful her family’s nanny has been. Read her post Can we please talk about the truth behind how we “do it all”?.
When I came across Adrienne Tran of Tesla tweeting about increasing optionality through specialties, it immediately made me think about the stem cell metaphor I mentioned above.
From the Investors
Sarah Tavel of Benchmark Capital has a great tweetstorm on becoming a VC. You can tell reading it she’s capturing several hard won lessons. Personally, the long feedback cycles she mentions are why I think angel investing will always play second fiddle to coding for me. I thrive too much on quick wins.
This week Jeff Bussgang of Flybridge Capital Partners published his Rocket Ship Startup List. If you just graduated/dropped out of college and want to get into startups, take a look at Jeff’s list. But also if you join a company and feel like you’re riding Apollo 1 not 11, take it as a chance to learn. Before shipping Windows 3.1 and Windows 95, Brad Silverberg worked on the failed Lisa project at Apple. Before Danielle joined Twilio as employee one, she was working at a company that struggled mightily to get customers. Sometimes the failing companies teach you painful lessons where the drive of “never again” propels you more than ever.
I try not to cover headline news here, since I figured you all get enough of that already. But this week Brad Feld of Foundry Group has a great view from in the trenches on how tariffs are affecting hardware startups.