After our most recent Chicago Ventures open office hours at 1871, we realized that many entrepreneurs were curious about how we, as investors, think. The truth is that all of us here – Stuart, Kevin, Jason, Liz & myself – think pretty much like the entrepreneurs we support. Amongst our team there are decades of operating experience, stories of maxed out credit cards, dozens (if not hundreds) of all nighters, difficult lawsuits, negative PR which threatened our businesses, etc. We’ve been there. We're thinking about the same things you are: creatively & sustainably growing businesses, innovative distribution channels, new market trends (swimming pools as a service?!?), and what the mobile world looks like in 5 years.
Instead of writing a long, boring (tl;dr) post about what we look for now & how to get funded (!!!), I decided to instead link to some highly relevant threads from places like Quora, Slideshare, and private blogs that reflect a lot of the issues we’re thinking about and discussing regularly, both internally and with companies in our portfolio. These are the issues, which, in our minds, should drive much of the day to day thought inside your startup. And, if these are some of the same issues you’re gauging and struggling with, then our minds are probably more aligned than you’d think.
Some of these are classics, others are less known & I hope all of them are helpful –
1) “How did company X initially gain traction” – with insights from startups from Twitter to Dropbox to Youtube.
2) HBR Case Study on BabbaCo – Very relevant case for Chicago entrepreneurs that struggles with the question of whether to prioritize growth or product. Good analysis of customer acquisition channels, costs, churn [Paywall].
3) Dave McClure’s Startup Metrics for Pirates – Simple, easy to understand, approach to how we approach benchmarks & metrics.
4) What are the most effective ways of increasing SaaS activation rates? – Good analysis from the foudners of KissMetrics and Close.io
5) Dropbox’s Growth via it’s 1st Marketer – Strong analysis from Sean Ellis on how to build the proper funnel.
6) How to be a Growth Hacker via Andrew Chen – This post reflects the type of creativity and innovation required for distribution channels as PPC & virality become commoditized.
7) The Rise of Enterprise Marketing via Chris Dixon – Why all of the sudden SaaS, IaaS, & DaaS companies are now exciting for VCs.
8) Every New Employee Should Do Customer Support – Several of our portfolio companies implement this policy and we love it. This is the type of thinking we’re looking for.
9) Consumer Fatigue – The importance of curation and understanding consumer pain points.
10) Is P2P Car Sharing a Big Opportunity – How to think about collaborative consumption and gauge whether a P2P model is worth pursuing.
11) Assessment of 2013 Cloud Software Market – Authored by Bessemer Venture Partners, stresses the importance of “grow or die” and the current landgrab landscape of enterprise SaaS.
12) Chris Dixon: I wish I would’ve cut my Meetings to 10 minutes – This is how we approach startups. We want to understand the message in under 60 seconds. And we want to know your secret: why you’re the team to build a huge business.
13) The VC Paradox – We love this post because we view ourselves as long term investors, investing in entrepreneurs over multiple funds and therefore solving the paradox.
14) On the Future of iOS and Android – Steve Cheney’s most recent post on how the platforms are diverging and the opportunities for real time app granularization.
15) The Dangerous Seduction of the LTV Formula – One of Bill Gurley’s most important posts ever, and a series of insights that we have used to greenlight or pass on dozens of investments.
We look forward to chatting with lots of new faces during our office hours at 1871 and please don’t hesitate to drop us a line or post in the comments if you have feedback on any of the links I referenced.
Ezra
