bwertz

Humanapi (https://www.humanapi.co/) is building something in this regard

I think you're saying the same thing.

Stripe, Twillio, etc. provide access to commodities.

The "API as a marketplace" concept postulates that there are situations in which the supply is differentiated and you care about with which supplier you get connected.

As we mention in the intro to the guide, we don't address product-market-fit questions in the handbook (or other things you need to figure out in the earliest stages of your company creation) - we are really focused on the time between seed and Series B and hiring is a key aspect of that phase.

thanks for pointing out - will fix it asap!

Probably faster in the rest of the world than the US as there are often less regulations

Why do you think that? Compare it to the type of customers you attract at different stage of building a product: your first customers are always the most passionate, most valuable customers. As you broaden the customer base, you attract people that are way less into your product. Female founders are still a very small group, only the most passionate, most courageous, most talented ones are currently considering becoming entrepreneurs. Once being a female founder is the new normal, pitch to funding rates between males and females will be much closer again. Having said all that, this is just a theory based on anecdotal experience.

My (anecdotal) experience is that the success rate of female founders to convert a pitch to funding is significantly higher - might be due to the fact that only the most talented female founders have currently the courage to think about starting a company.

Great new challenges - love the Pub Crawl one

Cool project!

Agreed. Other very successful start-ups include: Wattpad, Frank & Oak, Indochino, Clio, Unbounce, Top Hat.

I might be biased as I run a venture fund myself (Version One Ventures) but I think there are a handful excellent investors up here in Canada, most of which invest across North-America. Here is a good overview: http://www.techvibes.com/blog/state-of-venture-capital-in-ca...

I think there is a growing numbers if finished products on Tindie

Great template - most of my SaaS portfolio companies use very similar metrics templates. One addition would be YoY numbers so that you can better account for seasonality.

There are a few really successful companies here in Vancouver (Hootsuite, Clio, Unbounce, A Thinking Ape, Indochino), a healthy early-stage ecosystem (LaunchAcademy, GrowLab) and a great pool of developers and designers (that's why you have Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple all having development offices in town)

Not a Canadian angel but an early-stage fund (www.versiononeventures.com) - would love to talk to the start-ups you are mentioning - thx for making an intro.

@versiononevc is one of the funds that is designated for Startup Visa Canada - shoot me an email, happy to talk

Agreed - just went through the list of product that pass the toothbrush test for me and Gmail is on top: Gmail, Google Search, Google Drive, Twitter, Facebook, Dropbox, Skype, Evernote, New York Times, Si.com. Commerce: Amazon, Frank & Oak.

Interesting data point that 50% of your products features are never been interacted with - I would assume that this is true for many products

I think analytics was referring more to the tools to capture analytics data, not the process of making sense of that data (which is definitely core!)

Thanks - removed the link.

I would argue it needs to - marketing starts with thinking about how to communicate your product value to your customers and ends with strategies to keep them happy and around for as long as possible. A great product is the basis but if you don't spend time thinking about how to market your product, your company will most likely not scale

Interesting example - sounds really strange that they outsource their product design

Fully agree with you - need to have strong product people as part of your founder team

Excited to be an investor in tindie - congrats, Emile!

The internet is the largest interoperable web service and wasn't VC-funded.

Agreed - great differentiation between company and market dynamis. Looks like you have done some thinking on this topic.

Great book - thanks for mentioning. Agree with you that there are multiple ways of locking in customers but the point of the post was rather that the web has changed the relative importance of the different barriers to entry. Most have decreased in their importance (among others lock-in effects) but the clear winner are demand-side economies of scale.

I think continuous fast-paced innovation in an industry usually creates relatively low barriers to entry as perpetual innovation cycles “self-correct” potential monopolies.

Thanks @davidcrow - nice summary of the post :-)

Would love to know if anybody has had some experience with patents and their value for start-ups