use cases, brain candy, blockchain
new year, new newsletter....
I’ve wanted to start an email newsletter for 2+ years but haven’t created enough content to do it. I’m making a public commitment to 4X my writing in 2020 (with only 2 posts this year, that may be easier than you’d think). I hope you will respond with your questions, comments and feedback about what is working and what’s not, as I adore implementing data-driven feedback cycles. Here goes!
First, a brand new blog post: How To Tell If Your Blockchain Idea Is Valuable Or Not: A Case For Use Cases. Based on the way we evaluate tech ideas at Founder Collective, I wrote an anti-post-mortem for blockchain, an idea which is too early to write off.
The best things I read this week related to startups 🍿
In revisiting the basics after some high-flying startups have lately hit the rocks, I enjoyed David Sack’s post on unit economics and gross margins. Launch founder Jason Calacanis echoes our philosophy on capital efficient startups in this post on the “pegasus” (possible unicorn successor). We are seeing content, community and commerce get remixed and converge — sometimes as a more cost-effective customer acquisition channel — Sam Lessin of Slow Ventures has a take on how this may play out in social media. Plus, how a mathematician found that movement and mental acuity were closely linked, specifically for idea generation.
Brain candy: Did you know?
🍎 NYC excels at hard tech
🎓 Boston's biggest exits are consumer startups
🇸🇪 Sweden is the capital of European entrepreneurship
My colleagues @dafrankel & @josephflaherty share some counterintuitive findings from 200+ startup exits in 17 cities: https://buff.ly/2YJJECR
Enterprise startup of the week: check out Vitally.io — our portfolio companies are raving about this SaaS subscriber analytics platform. Slice & dice your subscriber segments to your heart’s content. A CRO or geeky product manager’s dream 🌈
Consumer startup of the week: A panic button cleverly hidden inside a keychain or piece of jewelry. Cofounded by a female engineer and Amazon IoT device designer, invisawear jewelry is perfect for gifting to your loved ones. 🎁
Until next time! PS: send feedback, read + share my new blog post!