If the Shoe Fits: 5 Instantly Useful Links
by Miki SaxonA Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here
I found several useful/interesting reads yesterday and thought I’d share them with you.
If you’re wondering what’s hot (security) and what’s not (social and dating apps) take a look at the thoughts of Sequoia Capital’s Mike Moritz after recently listening to 146 pitches in a row.
Investing in startups is like bird-watching, (…) For venture capitalists, Moritz advises not to look at the flock, but at each individual startup. “Each one is different, and I try to find an interestingly complected bird in a flock rather than try to make an observation about an entire flock,” Moritz has said.
That said, some trends appear when the looking at the group as a whole.
Moritz is also the PayPal board member whose penny-pinching advice saved the company in 2008 and every founder should be following it now.
“That focus was instrumental in PayPal’s survival,” Roelof Botha said. “We could have been spending money willy-nilly and fallen by the wayside by accident.”
Tenacity is lauded in the startup world; the idea is that passion and never quitting are the hallmark of successful founders, but the story of François Reichelt proves that Kenny Rogers offers a more common sense approach.
“Know when to hold ’em and know when to fold ’em.”
Last are two links that provide useful tools for you.
First is a way to find company emails when you have the name.
Oleg Campbell has automated the process of hunting for someone’s corporate email with a nifty new Chrome extension built on top of Gmail. It’s called, descriptively, Name2Email.
Second is tech lawyer David Tollen’s Tech Contracts book and website, with helpful information and free forms for SaaS, software licensing, and other IT agreements.
It’s a plain-English how-to guide on IT contracts for lawyers, contract managers, salespeople, IT staffers, and executives.
Image credit: HikingArtist
