Danielle has written two blog posts recently about our life after selling our startup and moving from San Francisco to Denver.
Building Your Life is the Creative Thing You’re Doing Right Now started to come to her after feeling a bit sad not to be building a new startup with some big ambitious idea. Our mutual friend Fawaz’s reaction became the title of the post. As someone who occasionally panics when I feel my own productive output isn’t far out ahead of consumption of things like media, his advice made me rethink how hard I am on myself.
This weekend, she also wrote and posted Post-Startup Life: Reflecting on My First 18 Months Living in Denver. She asked me after writing it, “did I share too much?” My thought is that most founders privately move on from these things despite lots of behind the scenes emotions and doubt. If more people wrote about their experience, more founders would understand their outcome or struggles are fairly common.
From the Investors
Om Malik of True Ventures wrote A Founder Metric That Matters. I’m a little more optimistic than he is that Dara Khosrowshahi uses Uber frequently. However, it was a gut check that I should use my own companies product more often.
Jason Lemkin of SaaStr answers What was your first meeting with an angel investor like? He ended up bungling it by asking for a steep valuation, and it’s a great reminder that understanding how your potential investors fund is structured is a great way to know how far you can stretch valuations or limit their ownership percentage.
From the Operators
Fred Wilson turned us on to the post A No B.S. Guide to Startup Stock Option Grants by Matt Cooper of Skillshare. It delivers on exactly what its title promises, and is on of the more detailed, explicit blog posts I’ve seen on the topic.