Startup Pitch 101, Early-Stage Funding Case Study, PQLs, Scaling Airbnb, & More

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Happy Monday! 

For most of you, this is the first time you’re getting this newsletter. It’s been so long since I’ve sent one that you may have forgotten you subscribed. If you never want to hear from me again, hit the unsubscribe button at the bottom. I won’t be offended. 😊

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Also, feel free to reply or tweet me if you have any feedback or posts you’d like me to feature in the next edition. Thanks!

What I'm Thinking About 🤔

As you likely know, I was let go from Mattermark in August, which ended my nearly 3-year adventure of curating the Mattermark Daily and Raise The Bar newsletters (among other marketing projects). All of you have graciously subscribed to this newsletter, where I’ll be curating similar content with the aim of saving you time scouring the web, discovering unique perspectives on a variety of startup related topics, and sharing things I’m interested in. 

Below, is my post about leaving Mattermark, if you’d like context. Feel free to read it or not. Otherwise, let’s get to my curated posts!

On To The Next Adventure

For the first time in years, my name is not at the bottom of the Mattermark Daily or Raise The Bar newsletters. As of August 8th, I’m no longer an employee of Mattermark. My two years and eleven months…

From Startup Investors 💰

Startup Investors include angel investors, venture capitalists, Private Equity, Limited Partners, and startup funding roles.

Startup Pitch 101 - How to Nail an Investor Meeting

Mark Suster of Upfront Ventures tweets a list for entrepreneurs to think through as they define their company’s strategy and prepare to nail a VC pitch. (a Twitter Moment)

Packaging Your Seed Round

Noah Jessop of Founder Collective understands that when raising venture capital, founders are selling a product, but they often fail to consider the “UX” of their startup. He conveys the importance of “packaging” your startup and how much more quickly they move forward in the funding process.

What do I look for in a pitch?

Sarah Guo of Greylock Partners shares her slides in an attempt to demystify one of the most common questions founders have and spread some tribal knowledge.

Cap Tables, Share Structures, Valuations, Oh My! A Case Study of Early-Stage Funding

Jason D. Rowley of Crunchbase News explains the basic mechanics of the first rounds of funding, some of the key terms involved, and how different types of financial instruments and deal structures work.

From Startup Operators ⚙️

Startup Operators can range from founders to employees in operations, design, engineering, product, HR, finance, and other relevant roles.

How Cloudflare Became a Unicorn from a Business Plan and a Vision in Span of 8 Years

Michelle Zatlyn of Cloudflare joins Shruti Gandhi of Array Ventures on the [Array] Podcast about her journey to becoming a fast-growing unicorn from her early days of starting Cloudflare.

An Open Source List of Bitcoin Resources

Bitcoin is a revolutionary system that is quite complex and has a high learning curve. Jameson Lopp of BitGo recommends you have a decent grasp of the system before you store a significant amount of value in it.

This $60M Startup Shares How They Built One of the Top Engineering Teams in SF

Spenser Skates and Curtis Liu, co-founders of Amplitude, are firm believers in the existence of 10x developers and share the three core cultural values that shape their team and hiring process.

From Sales Pros 🎯

How to Identify Product Qualified Leads

Mitch Morando of Whalr joins Andy Paul of #Accelerate! podcast to discuss the fundamentals of sales techniques, professionalism in sales, and his story of starting Whalr.

Ditch the Pitch: Why Your Sales Deck Needs to Tell a Story

Courtney Chuang of DocSend examines why a powerful story is the “secret” to sales content that closes more deals, which they learned firsthand from overhauling the DocSend sales deck.

What Should You Know About The Length Of Your Sales Cycle?

Vytautas Ramanauskas of Teamgate focuses on the definition of a sales cycle, ways of measuring its length, and tips on shortening your sales cycle.

From Growth & Marketing Pros 📈

Lessons Learned Scaling Airbnb 100X

Jonathan Golden of Airbnb reflects on his six years at Airbnb, as he watched it scale over 100X on every metric: listings, users, revenue, employees, and, yes, sometimes complexity.

The Second Most Important Metric for Every Company

Gokul Rajaram of Square lists examples of North Star Metrics (NSM), and describes why every company should, therefore, have (at least) two top level goals: the NSM and the corresponding check metric.

How Grammarly Bootstrapped It's Way To 6.9 Million Daily Users

Max Andersson of King Kong releases a detailed case study of how Grammarly built their business to this point with no venture capital and then how they used this solid base to go onto to raise one of the biggest Series A Funding rounds in history.

If you’ve made it this far, I’m impressed! 🙌 

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