I’ve written before about the concept of flow in a personal sense, but it’s been on my mind recently as it applies to companies as well. My friend Venkat Rao posted a great piece on startup positioning back in 2010 that captures the concept of company-level flow very well: “It is the controlled, but not continue…
I turned 45 a few weeks ago, a big enough number to make me pause and think. I’ve also had to stop road running in the past few years (I can still run short distances on a treadmill) because of a recurring injury that I can’t seem to kick. I took up swimming a few continue…
It’s now common knowledge that open source software (OSS) has permanently altered the economics of the information business. Free access to powerful software development frameworks and libraries — coupled with cheap, pay-as-you go delivery infrastructure — has sparked a massive creative explosion. With software innovation now effectively decoupled from the capital markets, increasingly powerful digital continue…
This post originally appeared on PandoDaily — reposting here for regular Crashdev readers. The tech community is congenitally allergic to bureaucrats, governments, and institutions of all kinds. Respected, even revered, entrepreneurial leaders like Peter Thiel can make statements like, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible” with hardly an eyebrow raised among continue…
“Power law returns” “‘Rich-get-richer’ competitive dynamics” Startup culture is replete with catchphrases — like the two above — that hint at the intense competitive and economic pressures at work just below the shiny, idealistic surface. This isn’t news to anyone who’s been a founder or funder of a venture-backed business; the venture capital marketplace operates continue…
I’ve written about this before (see “Beware of ‘Angels’ with Sticky Fingers“) but I just had a fresh run-in with this class of investor and wanted to share the (anonymized) story in case others find themselves in a similar situation. The new twist on the story looks like this: An “influential” angel writes a small continue…
GigaOm broke the story this morning so I’m just piling on, but I wanted to share a little backstory on our latest Founders’ Co-op investment — Meldium –because it’s a great example of how we think and work here. Last April I wrote a post (in the spirit of Paul Graham/YC’s periodic “request for startups“) continue…
I mentioned this in passing a few weeks ago but given their progress / momentum since then I thought it was worth hitting head-on. Good decisions are powered by good data and few decision markets have been more opaque than the one for early-stage company financing. Angellist has made a strong recent bid as the continue…
Like it or not, we live in the data age. Each of us, in nearly every sphere of our lives, generates data exhausts that are increasingly used to weigh, measure and categorize us. This is not only true for individuals, but at every level at which human effort can be aggregated — companies, cities, regions, continue…
One of Seattle’s quiet startup success stories just got a little louder: as TechCrunch and GeekWire reported last night, we joined Accel’s Rich Wong and Real Networks founder/CEO Rob Glaser in a $9.4MM Series A for HasOffers. Founders’ Co-op is a seed-stage fund so this is an unusual deal for us — but then HasOffers continue…