CoFounder Weekly is a newsletter about startup life. Sections: Thought Starters, Trends, Founder Stuff, Investor Stuff, Crossword Puzzle, Weekly Thought. This is not your average newsletter (could be better or worse).
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Source: Peter Steiner
THOUGHT STARTERS
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It’s tough to ask for things (i.e. raises, help) as well as saying no to a request.
Interesting that it’s tough on both sides of the same interaction.
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TRENDS
Inc. ran a story that the most successful people waking up at 4 a.m.
At 4am, I’m deep in a REM cycle dreaming about a flying on a magic carpet into a pool filled with jello.
Here are some other fun replies:
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Buffer CEO Joel Gascoigne continues to lead the way in the open startup movement. This week he shared his annual company results as well as the companies profit sharing policy via Twitter. This type of information is typically held pretty close to the chest. Earlier this year, Buffer spent $3.3 million buying out their VC investors and shared that story as well.
Tweetstorm here.
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Crypto Twitter is weird.
This week, Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin donated $300k on Twitter to Ethereum developers on a whim.
Here’s how it went down: An interview surfaced where Fred Wilson shared skepticism about Ethereum in a recent interview.
Ethereum developers replied with complaints on Twitter that it’s hard to balance their full-time job with working on Ethereum projects.
Shortly after, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin sent 1000 Ethereum to each of them (and one other developer).
At a price of ~$100, that’s just about $100K sent each. See the string chain of events here.
FOUNDER STUFF
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INVESTOR STUFF
Tweetstorm here. TL;DR: “Are you going to help a firm invest in companies that they otherwise would not have invested in without you?” Worthwhile read.
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Investor Ali Tamaseb recently shared a thorough analysis of billion-dollar startups. His methodology: gather data and quantify 65 factors on all 195 startups founded after 2005 until today in the U.S. that at one point passed the 1 billion dollar mark in valuation. He shared 50 things he learned (LINK). Some interesting tidbits include:
More than half of the founding CEOs are over 35 years old
Directly relevant industry experience did not matter (Editors note: Think Patrick Collison @ Stripe or Elon Musk @ SpaceX)
Almost 60% are repeat entrepreneurs
Google, Oracle, and IBM are the biggest billion dollar founder producers (Editors note: See tweetstorm about which B2B companies will produce the next supply the next batch of billion dollar founders)
A lot of Johns, Robs, and Daves (and unfortunately not much gender diversity)
These startups were disproportionately built in markets that were already huge and the large majority didn’t create a new demand
No discernible evidence of first being first to market is an advantage
Almost 90% of these companies did not go through any accelerator program. Of the rest, YCombinator is #1
Ex-founders make the best angel investors
One quick observation here:
This is data only about billion dollar startups. 99.93% of startups don’t reach this size. So the datapoints in the article can’t be extrapolated to other growing, profitable businesses.
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“When Things Get Wild” by Morgan Housel (LINK) gives perspective to the rocky economic climate. Three points jumped out:
“Expect about two recessions per decade, on average”
“If investing were all about math, mathematicians would be rich. If it were all about history, historians would be rich. If it were all about economics, economists would be rich. If it were all about psychology, psychologists would be rich. In reality it’s a mix of many disciplines, but some of the brightest people specialize in one topic and can’t see the world through another lens.”
“The biggest factor affecting market returns over a short period of time are changes in investor moods. And moods don’t care about spreadsheet, reasoning, formulas, or metrics.”
CROSSWORD
Ho ho ho!
Here’s this week’s crossword puzzle: http://cofounder.life/
Christmas edition!
WEEKEND THOUGHT
Here’s a poem I wrote in November 2017:
The Crash
What will you do when the stock market crashes?
Will you call your roommate and ask where the flask is?
Call mom and dad and ask them what to do?
Though that may not help since they lost big money too.
You can flock to Facebook for hot tips from business school friends,
Or refresh Twitter where the newsfeed never ends.
Maybe pick up The Intelligent Investor to undo your fate,
But realize you’re reading it one semester too late.
So when will the market crash? I’m not so sure.
I just want to be prepared and not too insecure.
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Happy holidays,
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