Interesting two part TechCrunch series about how the rise of crowdfunding is likely going to impact the business of venture capital and early stage investing.
Part I – Is Equity Crowdfunding A Threat To Venture Capitalists? (link)
Part II – The Crowd’s Money Can Dominate Early-Stage Investing, But Only If The VCs Get Their Cut (link)
Source: Intel, Found via The Big Picture
This morning Sir Richard Branson blogged about a glass bottom boat startup he loaned money to in the British Virgin Islands. The bulk of his short post is about the startup and his plans to continue to fund startups in the BVI.
What struck me most about his post was his first paragraph: “It takes gumption to become an entrepreneur. You need to show initiative, bravery and resourcefulness. You also need a lot of help along the way”
I’ve often thought about the most important qualities of an entrepreneur but to me, gumption might be the most important. It’s not always the smartest or most well funded that survive; it’s the shrewd, resourceful, and dedicated. While those qualities don’t guarantee success I would argue they’re fundamental to it.
You show me an entrepreneur who has made it without gumption and I’ll show you one lucky bastard.
Clerky is a Y Combinator backed startup that “helps startups get legal stuff done right (and fast)”. Looks like a great service that helps take the headache out of the legal side of startups / company formation. I’ll be interested to read the reviews as their user base ramps up.
If you’re spending serious time and effort on a startup it might be time to consider making things official – especially if you have co-founders. Things can get pretty hairy down the road if you don’t get all the legal stuff figured out early on.
Techcrunch has a pretty good write up about it here
Cool infographic from RMI on the SEO Tactics they used for their clients in 2012. They expect the chart to remain the same for much of 2013.
Found via Cool Infographics
A little surprised to see only 10% of Yelp’s users are accessing via mobile. Actually really surprised especially considering how awesome the Yelp monocle is. Skype also seems a bit low to me but I guess if you’ve got a mobile phone you’ll just use the embedded phone functionality (unless like me you have AT&T and routinely have to use skype + wifi to make calls).
Found via Cool Infographics
This looks like a pretty awesome service. I would love to have digital copies of my snailmail and not have to deal with all the crap.
They’re just kicking off their national roll out starting in San Francisco. Check ’em out.
Found via The Big Picture
Somewhat narrow version of Disruption of you ask me but an awesome article. I tend to think of disruption as anything that pisses off / scares the incumbents and makes them revise their game plan. That definition is broad and not very helpful. Andy Rachleff’s definition (based on Clay Christensen’s definition) is much more structured and useful.
If you do anything remotely related to startups you’ve probably used CrunchBase at least once or twice. It is an awesome platform with a ton of great data.
It appears the folks at big data analytics company SiSense has utilized CrunchBase’s API to create some pretty sweet visualizations. Check ’em out.
Photogenic Thoughts 