From the Operators
Todd Olson of Pendo shares five ways to measure product success that both precede and go beyond the NPS survey in "The 5 Key Measurements of Product Success"
Ezekiel Buchheit of Amazon recalls not getting a job due to not having a side project, and emphasizes that being a passionate employee means being a passionate human, not just a code machine, in "No, I have no side code projects to show you"
Andrew Rasmussen of Canny tells the story of reaching ramen profitability, explaining how they found their "burning problem" and operate inexpensively as digital nomads in "How we Bootstrapped our SaaS Startup to Ramen Profitability"
Nick Mehta of Gainsight is back in another interview with Roger Lee of Battery Ventures, explaining how to operate with a board not just in the worst of times, but all the time, in "Together in the Trenches: Managing Challenges in a Founder/VC Partnership"
Recurly's research team has published a deep dive into what it takes to acquire subscribers after analyzing over 1200 subscription model sites in "Recurly Research Subscriber Acquisition"
From the Investors
Claire Fauquier of Corigin Ventures discusses the important difference between unit economic profitability and corporate profitability, and emphasizes that as an investor the former is much more important in "At the Early Stage, Focus on Unit Economic Profitability, not Corporate Profitability"
Ash Rust of Sterling Road covers the do's and don'ts of sourcing talent through marketplaces, a personal network, and other communities in "Startup Recruiting — Where to Find the Best People"
Lindel Eakman of Foundry Group questions whether LPs lack of appetite to invest in new seed funds signals that there are simply too many small-check firms in "Window Shopping"
Drew Beechler of High Alpha distills knowledge of product launches across multiple portfolio companies into a set of five important areas to focus on when introducing a new product in "5 Tips to Nail a Successful Product Launch"
From the Bankers
Greg Becker of Silicon Valley Bank shares the history behind the SVB Startup Outlook, and requests founders and execs at private tech, healthcare or life science companies to take their survey in "Join the conversation — What’s in store for startups in 2018?"
Jobs!
Jason from Foundry Group wrote in to tell us that they're hiring!
What they do: VC firm making investments in market-leading firms
Open Position: "General Counsel" (Boulder)
Why you want to work there: Their conference room is literally full of toys. Trust us, we've seen it many times.
Laughs!
NSFW! "Flopstarter" is a hilarious riff on Kickstarter with several crowdfunded products you probably don't want.
