Thursdays at Abnormal Returns are all about startup and venture capital links. You can check out last week’s links including a look at the evolving mortgage business.
Quote of the Day
"Brands are so valuable because they are the encapsulation of years long efforts to engender trust. "
(Tomasz Tunguz)
Fintech
- Why there is an opportunity in fintech: nobody loves their bank. (a16z.com)
- A talk with Scott Grimes, CEO of fintech startup Stackin. (tearsheet.co)
- SVB Financial Group has led a round of venture financing for Aumni, a company that seeks to help private capital investors track performance and analyze data from investment agreements. (institutionalinvestor.com)
- The state of the fintech industry, visualized. (visualcapitalist.com)
Reputation
- VCs build their reputation on the companies that don't work. (howardlindzon.com)
- Fred Wilson, " You might be able to get a VC into your cap table in a week but try getting them out. That’s almost impossible." (avc.com)
Location
- Can a $100 million gift re-boot the Portland, Maine economy? (nytimes.com)
- How Utah's startup scenes differs from the rest of the country. (marker.medium.com)
Venture capital
- Some key seed series takeaways from 2019 including "Seed funds are highly selective." (news.crunchbase.com)
- Private equity firms have gone public. Why not venture capital? (tomtunguz.com)
Companies
- The story of Gumroad and how it became a sustainable business, but not a breakout success. (wired.com)
- ProductHunt's YourStack aims to become a Yelp for products. (buzzfeednews.com)
Books
- "Patient Capital" by HBS professors Victoria Ivashina and Josh Lerner points the way towards longer term funding schemes. (realreturns.blog)
- What's new in the 4th edition of "Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist." (feld.com)
Startups
- Why your company needs a formal way to get customer feedback to the product and engineering teams. (venturebeat.com)
- Some things to think about when looking for a co-founder. (fastcompany.com)
- What are 'layoff spreadsheets' and do they actually work? (news.crunchbase.com)
- AB5 doesn’t account for how the labor market has changed. (city-journal.org)
