Tag: getting started

What are two main things that all SaaS companies need to be sure to think about? While there is likely a laundry list of such items, a culture of creativity and security should be top of mind, at least according to Adam Fitzgerald, Head of Worldwide Developer Marketing at AWS, and Nicolas Dessaigne, Co-Founder and CEO of Algolia.

I have held many titles in the tech industry: Engineer, Lead Engineer, Head of Engineering, VP of Engineering, and CTO. You would think that each of these titles would be self-explanatory, but as I’ve transitioned from one company to another, I’ve been surprised by how differently these roles are interpreted by different organizations.

During a recent founders panel at the AWS Loft San Francisco, four founders shared hard-won insights on startup culture, how they’ve evolved as leaders, launching versus scaling, growth strategies, and the perennial pursuit of the elusive concept of work-life balance.

In the middle of Paris’s 13th arrondissement, a few blocks away from the banks of the Seine, stands a former railway depot. It used to be known as la Halle Freyssinet; today it’s simply Station F. And it’s the world’s biggest startup campus, housing 1,000 companies within 34,000 square meters. To put that in Parisian perspective, it’s the size of the Eiffel tower lying down. We spoke with Roxanne Varza, the director of Station F, to get a sense of what’s been happening since the campus opened in June 2017.

Whether its old boys’ clubs, glass ceilings or imposter syndrome, there are many reasons why women are prevented from fulfilling their business ambitions. As countless successful female entrepreneurs have proven over the years, so-called truths about the startup world are easily exploded. Here, some female VCs dispel the various myths that prevent female founders from pursuing their visions.

Chris Obereder is in some ways a typical Silicon Valley wunderkind. Only 26, he started out in tech at the age of 14 and has been called a “social media black magic artist” by Napster founder Sean Parker. But unlike some of his other tech industry peers, he emphasizes the importance of openness, creativity and just plain fun in crafting a career.

Alex Hirst and Lizzie Penny, Co-Founders at The Hoxby Collective, share why they decided to start their own company and how the cloud made it possible.

GotSpot is a digital marketplace that connects small enterprises in need of short-term space to existing brick-and-mortar businesses who have available, non-traditional space that could be better maximized. Think Airbnb, but for commercial spaces.

At the most basic level, a term sheet is a non-binding contract. It’s a short document, anywhere from 1-10 pages, that has a handful of terms outlining what will happen in an investment. If a deal goes through, lawyers will take the term sheet and turn it into hundreds of pages of legal documentation. 

Notes from Founders is the first of a series of eBooks comprised of 25 original founder interviews split across five issues.