Start up blogs
As an OpenView Venture Partners analyst I talk to a lot of great entrepreneurs, management teams and energized CEOs on a daily basis. Unfortunately, because we invest in such a small percentage of those companies with whom I converse, I often feel I leave a meeting without the ability to provide the significant value these entrepreneurs deserve. The earlier stage companies often ask me questions concerning what we expect from a company prior to making an investment, what to include in a business plan, how a management team needs to change in order to scale, how a company can attract new customers while gaining additional revenue from existing customers and the best way to create competitive advantage.
These are all valid and important questions that require a lot of discussion to hammer out and find the best solutions — and they aren’t necessarily ones VCs should answer. Below, I compiled a list of blogs I found valuable and informative. Some of them address the exact questions we hear on a daily basis.
They may be targeted to start ups; however, expansion or late stage companies can also find value in them.
Ben’s Blog co-founder and General Partner of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz
Steve Blank
High tech entrepreneur
On Startups Self proclaimed start up junkie and Founder/CTO @HubSpot
AVC Internet commentary by Fred Wilson, a New York-based venture capitalist (his MBA Monday series is particularly interesting) Instigator Blog Thoughts & lessons learned on start ups, entrepreneurship, marketing and other stuff. Authored by Ben Yoskovitz, founder at a start up accelerator.
Also: OpenView Labs is our own great resource for software managers. We developed the website to share OpenView’s expertise and approaches for building expansion stage technology companies.
We talked with MongoDB’s former Director of Growth Marketing, Francesca Krihely, about how she and her team built such an incredible community.