Awesome interview from 2011 with Tony Conrad from True Ventures (via Startup Grind).

I’ve seen and heard a bit of Tony in the past but this was a great deep-dive conversation about his life and travels (including growing up in small-town Indiana and living in France and Indonesia), and True Ventures’ style of investing and authentic approach to helping entrepreneurs.  He also had extraordinary things to say about certain entrepreneurs he’s worked with, particularly Matt Mullenweg from WordPress.

I liked Tony’s idea of creating “unfair advantages” in startups (told in the context of launching About.me); his concept of making your own luck and defining the startup world as a “contact sport” (i.e. the importance of being out there and accessible, despite the difficulties of balancing that with home and family life); and his advice to take the long view, build relationships over time, and treat entrepreneurship as a career, not as a one-off event.

Many of Tony’s points closely mesh with points that David Hornik at August Capital told me recently when he was kind enough to sit with me in his office and discuss building a career in startups and VC in Silicon Valley.  I definitely hope to have the opportunity to meet and chat with Tony some time soon.

"Pursue all your dreams, think big, lean into your fears and keep building."

Hunter Walk, on the values he seeks to instill in his 1-year old daughter.  Taken from a letter he wrote to his Google colleagues on his departure from Google and on the same day it was reported that he’s launching a new VC fund. 

I agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment, and my wife and I hope to instill the same in our 2-year old daughter as well.

Emancipating the Engineering Class →

YC and Paul Graham have their reasonable detractors and there are valid reasons to disagree with them on some things, but this great quote from Chris Sacca aptly describes their lasting impact on the startup ecosystem:

“The YCombinator revolution emancipated the engineering class from servitude to MBA overlords, demystified the art of company-founding, and made huge leaps toward democratizing access to capital.”

Jeff Bussgang: Getting Back to Work - Multi-Dimensional Entrepreneurs →

Great post by Jeff Bussgang at Flybridge, about how important it is for entrepreneurs to recognize the role of fundraising and the capital markets in building a large successful business.

“Raising capital is a core part of building a valuable business.  Whether you are raising a $250K seed round or navigating a $100M IPO, the capital markets - in all of its various forms - are a fundamental constituent in the business-building journey.

“Developing expertise in raising capital is more than a necessary evil, it’s a competitive weapon.  If you have a stronger balance sheet than your competition, you can push off monetization decisions and focus on product-market fit.  You can take more risks on partner deals, focusing on long-term value creation, not short-term gain.  If you have a larger cash horde than your competition, you can make aggressive hires, attract better talent, perhaps even make acquisitions.  Adding some debt onto your balance sheet will lower your cost of capital and your dilution, which is better for existing investors and the management team.  In other words, being able to efficiently access the capital markets is as core to business-building as product management, go to market and your profit formula.” 

Irrational Optimism: An Essential Trait for Entrepreneurs →

Great post in Forbes from a few months back by Shafqat Islam, a friend and CEO/co-founder of NewsCred in NYC, on his incredible up-and-down journey building NewsCred. 

“The memory of running out of money and options is still fresh in my mind.  Which is why the first item on our list of company values is simple: never, ever, ever give up.”

A Vibrant Past: Colorizing the Archives of History →

This is spectacular — colorized images of famous black-and-white photos from history.  The photos of President Lincoln are particularly amazing I think.

For this week’s issue of TIME, Sanna Dullaway digitally colorized archival images of America’s 16th president in hopes of bringing history to life. Here’s a look back on the iconic images she’s revisited.

David Pakman: Who Holds the Power in Media – Content or Distribution? →

Nice analysis by David Pakman at Venrock on what drives the distribution of power between content creators and distributors/aggregators, and how those lessons apply to the internet in the context of music, TV/video, news, and books/ebooks.  Also an interesting view in the TV context around how unbundling of content delivered via IPTV (web/mobile) could drive a shift in power back to consumers and distributors.

Essentially, David argues that supply concentration and the fungibility / degree of commoditization of the content drive whether distributors or content creators have negotiating leverage on economic terms such as licensing fees.  He also points out that shifts in the power relationship occur when a “disruption materializes in the format/form of the media object itself (usually the new object has higher volume, velocity, virality)”.

betashop: 90 Things I've Learned From Founding 4 Technology Companies →

betashop:

On October 27, 2010 I wrote a blog post about the “57 Things I Learned Founding 3 Tech Companies.”

It has been awesome, flattering, and humbling to see that post went viral and has been seen by so many thousands of people — mainly aspiring entrepreneurs — and has been translated into many…

Filepicker.io: How to hire a sales person? →

filepicker:

First, let’s set some boundary conditions. This post is targeted at tech startups that are looking for an execution focused, front-line sales person. Filepicker.io is a good example of this kind of a company. This post is not about bringing on a business co-founder or hiring your first senior…

Bill Gurley: All Revenue Is Not Created Equal: The Keys To The 10X Revenue Club →

Nice in-depth post from last year by Bill Gurley at Benchmark Capital on business models and valuation, with a focus on software/internet businesses.  Reminds me of Tom Eisenmann’s 10-part series on business models on his “Platforms and Networks” blog.

Alex Maccaw: What It's Like To Work For Stripe →

Solid post by Alex Maccaw about Stripe’s startup culture.  Key takeaways:

1. Complete email transparency

2. Once a week “all hands” meeting (the only mandatory meeting)

3. Group activities, including group lunch

4. Everybody does support, on a rotating basis

5. Hackathons and “Capture The Flag” 

6. Chat (IM, IRC) — a happy medium between email and a face-to-face

7. Technical paper readings

8. Induction of new employees, including spending time with each team (I like this line a lot: “It turns out that the average monitor size at a company is a good tell as to how much employers care about first-class equipment and, in turn, their employees.”)

9. Encourage people to be generalists and explore different areas

Brooklyn Hacker: What A Hacker Learns After A Year In Marketing →

brooklynhacker:

A year ago last Friday I left eight years cutting code and plumbing servers to take my very first marketing job. Prior to then and even before in college and high school, hard skills were what paid my bills - technical work building stuff mostly for the Internet. Everything I had done up until…

Ben Horowitz: A Good Place To Work →

“Being a good company doesn’t matter when things go well, but it can be the difference between life and death when things go wrong.”

“The only thing that keeps an employee at a company when things go horribly wrong—other than needing a job, which isn’t so applicable in the current macro environment—is that she likes her job.”

“Things always go wrong.”

“In technology companies, when the employees disappear, the spiral begins: the company declines in value, the best employees leave, the company declines in value, the best employees leave. Spirals are extremely difficult to reverse.”

“Being a good company is an end itself.” 

“Every GO employee that I’d ever met counted GO as one of the greatest work experiences of their lives. The best work experience ever despite the fact that their careers stood still, they made no money and they were front-page failures. GO was a good place to work.  This made me realize what an amazingly effective CEO Bill [Campbell] was.

Apparently, John Doerr thought that too, because when Scott Cook needed a CEO for Intuit, John recommended Bill even though Bill lost a ton of John’s money at GO. And for years, everyone who ever came into contact with GO employees knew what Bill was about. He was about building good companies.

If you do nothing else, be like Bill and build a good company.” 

brycedotvc:

Look into Henry Rollins’ eyes as he recounts his story of a lucky break and a life of determined action to make the most of it. Hear beyond the words to what motivated him more than fame or money and how he describes the alternative path of life he was running from.

Hustle. Determination. Tenacity. Fear.

Entrepreneurship comes in all shapes and evades a single adjective or verb. It’s a complex cocktail of risks taken and evaded. It’s a way of life that many are drawn to for opportunity or a haven for others running from the alternative.

Henry’s story gives a glimpse into the less often discussed latter source of motivation.

Dave McClure: late bloomer, not a loser. (I hope) →

Amazingly honest and inspiring post by Dave McClure.

“and so here I am: still standing in the arena, in hand-to-hand combat with demons mostly of my own making, aiming to make a small dent in the universe. nowhere near a great success story, yet fighting the good fight and perhaps helping others to achieve greatness as I attempt a bit of my own. I’ll be 46 in a month, well past the age when most folks have already shown what they’re made of. but I’m still grasping for that brass ring.”