Navigating Mid-SuccessSam Altman of YC So you start figuring out how the parts fit together as you fall. Every once in a while, it turns out you do have the parts for a spaceship—the market is huge, you have a great product, there’s a natural monopoly, and you have a credible path to be the winner. In that case, there’s plenty of advice available for you. Dropbox claims $1B revenue run rateToday at an event in San Francisco in which it announced updates to its Paper app and its Smart Sync feature, Dropbox CEO Drew Houston talked up the company’s revenue growth and self-serve business model. Houston claimed that Dropbox was on pace for a $1 billion revenue run rate and that the company was free-cash flow positive, which could bolster the company’s plans for a rumored late-2017 IPO. [ Tech Crunch ] How Much Money Should I Raise For My Startup? How much should a founder raise for their startup? I imagine almost every founder contemplating a fundraising round ponders this question. There are many different paths to developing an answer. The right answer that every startup founder has told me is as much capital as possible at the highest possible price. But what strategies exist to justify increasing the round size and consequently price? Hillaryland dominates VC investmentVenture capitalists continued to ignore startups between the coasts in 2016, per data from the National Venture Capital Association. From a political perspective, that means states won by Hillary Clinton last November received nearly nine out of every 10 venture dollars disbursed. ‘Becoming Warren Buffett’ Goes Beyond a $74 Billion FortuneWarren E. Buffett isn’t exactly an unknown quantity. As America’s most famous investor and the possessor of what Forbes estimates is a $74 billion fortune, he has been the subject of endless scrutiny across print and film, most without his participation. But to Mr. Buffett, one of the appeals of agreeing to let the cameras into his life for “Becoming Warren Buffett,”an HBO documentary debuting on Monday, was to tell his story in a relatively new way. Nowhere are there in-depth discussions about balance sheets and cash flow, though there are flashy animations illustrating basic investing principles. Instead, the film focuses on how Warren Edward Buffett grew from the Nebraskan son of a congressman to become the Oracle of Omaha, the avuncular mascot of American capitalism who built Berkshire Hathaway into a $406 billion empire, and shows some of his warts along the way. [ NY Times ] In 1992 I was homeless in Silicon Valley. Well, not homeless, exactly. I was working in a yogurt shop and had somehow convinced the owner of the shop to let me sleep, rent-free, in the attic above the store. Once, when I was letting myself in late at night, the police stopped me. They thought I was trying to rob the place. I couldn’t blame them. I probably would have stopped me, too. But I was surviving. A few months earlier, I had left my native Iran and landed in the United States with $700. I couldn’t speak English and knew handful of people in California. But I knew America stood for opportunity, and I was ready to seize it. I was also in love. In Tehran, I had fallen hard for a girl I grew up with. I spent the little money I had making phone calls halfway around the world. Soon I ran out of money. Insomniac CEO Ted Price pummels Trump’s Muslim ban in YouTube videoInsomniac Games CEO founder Ted Price took a stand against President Donald Trump’s ban on Muslim travel from seven Muslim countries. While other game developers issued tweets or sent emails to employees about Trump, Price took the extra step of creating a YouTube video, where he stood in front of a camera with all of Insomniac’s employees behind him. He made a plea not only to Trump, but to gamers to stand in opposition to the policy. And Price, whose company makes many popular games like Ratchet & Clank or Resistance, used the medium that gamers turn to just about every day, YouTube. Google employees staged a protest over Trump’s immigration banMore than 2,000 Google employees in offices around the world staged a walkout on Monday afternoon in protest of President Donald Trump’s executive order banning immigration in seven Muslim-majority countries. Using the hashtag #GooglersUnite, employees tweeted photos and videos of walkout actions around the world, including at headquarters in Mountain View. |