Thursdays at Abnormal Returns are all about startup and venture capital links. You can check out last week’s links including a look at why you SHOULD send your fundraising deck as a file, not a link.
Quote of the Day
"But confidence is CRITICAL in fund raising. Investors are human and humans want what they can’t have and what they perceive other people want."
(Mark Suster)
Metrics
- These are the startup metrics that really matter. (fastcompany.com)
- How to measure if your startup is "too far out over its skis." (avc.com)
Real estate
- The mortgage process is a complicated mess, hence an opportunity for startups. (a16z.com)
- Startup OpenDoor is allowing customers to "trade-in" in their current home for a new one. (wsj.com)
Companies
- Does Uber even need to go public? (bloomberg.com)
- Jack Ma doesn't want investors in Ant Financial to invest in rival companies as well. (wsj.com)
- In retrospect, the failure of Theranos' board of directors is shocking. (nytimes.com)
- WeWork has competition: the co-working space is getting crowded, quickly. (wsj.com)
Startups
- Recent IPO performance shows the entire startup sector is at-risk of overvaluation. (cnbc.com)
- Getting to product market fit is hard: insights from Andrew Chen of Andreessen Horowitz. (25iq.com)
- Another reason to favor priced rounds vs. convertible notes: the QSBS tax exclusion. (gothamgal.com)
- You can't take the Silicon Valley investing mindset and simply plop it in the Midwest. (theinformation.com)
- VCs are if anything, increasing their investment in blockchain-related companies. (techcrunch.com)
- When to raise a Series A. (blog.ycombinator.com)