How a cold call to a billionaire led this founder to sell his company for $225 millionOn July 22, 2009, John Gabbert stared at the bank balance for his two-year old startup and took a screenshot. "We had $22,000 in the bank and we owed $100,000," Gabbert, CEO of PitchBook Data, told Business Insider. "I told myself, 'This is either the bottom or the end.'" The startup wasn't exactly living large. "For the first two and half years we worked in a 200 square foot internal office with no windows, and we got up to 7 people in there. It was ridiculous," he laughed. He had spent the first 20 months of the startup living away from his wife and two young kids to save money – they moved home to Seattle while he
camped out at a friend's house in San Francisco and worked 80 to 100-hours a week. He kept tabs of his hours on a sticky note. Growth as a false signal in Y Combinator startupsOne has to appreciate how Paul Graham built Y Combinator into the world’s flagship accelerator and handed it off to others to continue its impressive run at the top of the heap. In fact, I have yet to meet a founder who regrets joining the program. But after stepping away from the YC scene for five years* and then returning to observe the last two demo days, I now wonder if some of the views Paul shared in his original, widely read Essays are being taken to absurd extremes. The evolution of his take on startup growth serves as an excellent example. [ Tech Crunch ] Marc Andreessen on Change, Constraints, and CuriosityIf you want to be successful as a venture capitalist, you need to be ruthlessly open-minded, constantly re-examining your assumptions, shared Andreessen Horowitz Cofounder and Partner Marc Andreessen. Read more leadership lessons from his Stanford GSB. Megan Quinn, General Partner of Spark Capital on the Mood in Silicon Valley after Trump's WinHello! This week, Jay Yarow (CNBC), Farhad Manjoo (New York Times), and General Partner of Spark Capital, Megan Quinn talk about how Silicon Valley feels about the outcome of the election. [ The Jay and Farhad Podcast ] I will apply for Indian citizenship if I have to, says Uber CEO Travis KalanickPatriotism seems to be the new buzzword for India’s technology startups. Under intense competition from foreign players like Amazon and Uber, Indian companies such as Flipkart and Ola are advocating protectionist policies. These home-grown tech firms are making a nationalistic pitch, pointing at Chinese policies that treat foreign companies merely as a source of capital instead of letting them compete on the domestic
front. U.S. Startups Are Piling on DebtWith fewer companies getting funded these days, many startups are opting to borrow money instead. Some have already been forced to shutter after missing payments. Last year venture capitalists plowed a record $79 billion into startups at often unsustainable valuations. Enthusiasm waned in 2016, when fewer startups got funded, and those that did faced more scrutiny and tougher deal terms. While the market has recovered somewhat in the last few months, it's down 10 percent from its high mid last year, according to the Bloomberg U.S. Startups Barometer, an index tracking funding and exits for private companies. [ Bloomberg ] Airbnb Is Building a Flight-Booking ToolThe home-rental company wants to own more of the travel planning process. Airbnb Inc. is developing a service for booking air travel as the home-rental startup looks to compete with Priceline Group Inc. and Expedia Inc. for more of people's online travel spending. Development of the flight-booking feature is early, and the company is considering various routes to break into the business, said people familiar with the plans. Airbnb may acquire an online travel agency or license data from a provider, such as Amadeus IT Group SA or Sabre Corp., said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing unfinished products. Within the company, the project is simply known as Flights, the people said. [ Bloomberg ] Anyone who spent a lot of time online in the early 2000s will remember whiling away the hours popping in and out of chatrooms and instant messaging their friends. But in the years since AIM faded into obscurity, nothing has really replaced instant communication for teens. While Snapchat came close, Generation Z — the cohort born between the mid-1990s and early 2000s — has moved on to another app: Houseparty. Houseparty is a mobile app for live video chatting. Unlike Facetime or Skype, you can have up to eight people in a room and have several "parties" going at once. It's like a video version of a chatroom, and teens are going crazy for it: the app launched last February and now has more than 1 million daily active users. The app is the 18th most popular app in the App Store and the third most popular social networking app. [ Business Insider ] Curated by Venture Pulse Team. Find us on : [ Venturepulse.org, CrunchBase, AngelList ] |