Top 4 Curated VC Picks + Must-Read Top 3 Books for 14Feb2024
🗒️ Venture Capital Veteran Connie Chan Leaves Andreessen Horowitz As Firm Shifts Focus to AI
Medium: Connie Chan, a longtime consumer tech investor and prominent partner at Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, is leaving the firm. Chan has decided to step down from her role after over a decade at the prominent VC firm. The move comes as Andreessen Horowitz appears to be shifting its investment focus more heavily into artificial intelligence and enterprise technology under newer partners.
🗒️ New Diversity Reporting Law for Venture Capital Companies with a Nexus to California
JDSPURA: On October 8, 2023, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 54 (“SB 54”) into law, which attempts to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion amongst venture capital (“VC”) investments. The law is the first transparency measure of its kind in the United States and will have a wide reaching impact on VC companies nationwide. Thus, it is important to know which VC companies it affects and what the bill’s future holds
🗒️ How Polychain Capital Avoided the Crypto Blow-Ups of 2022
Unchained Crypto: Unlike many other big crypto investors, Olaf Carlson-Wee says his venture capital firm Polychain Capital managed to emerge relatively unscathed from all the big blow-ups of 2022, including those of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX and Alameda, and Terra Luna/UST. That’s because Carlson-Wee, who’s been investing in crypto since 2011 and was the first employee at Coinbase, adheres to strict risk controls given that crypto is inherently a “risky and speculative asset class.”
🗒️ Want to Raise Money? Ignore These 3 Sources of Conventional Wisdom
Entrepreneur: Raising venture capital is an infamously tricky task. Thousands of startups pitch VCs each year, hoping to receive the funding to help turn their dreams into reality. At the top firms, only 0.7% of companies receive the funding they seek. With so much at stake and such long odds of success, founders constantly search for ways to improve their pitches. Unfortunately, this often leads them to learn and follow conventional wisdom, much of which is outdated and ineffective. This article will explore three sources of conventional wisdom that entrepreneurs should approach critically.
Top 3 book summaries this week 📚
How To Begin by Michael Bungay Stanier
This is a book about becoming the best version of yourself, and to doing something that makes the world a better place. You do that by setting, and then implementing what Michael Bungay Stanier calls "worthy goals."
Winning Body Language for Sales Professionals by Mark Bowden
We all know that body language is a critical part of our conversations. In Mark Bowden's new book you'll learn why your movements and body actions speak much louder than your words.
First, Break All The Rules by Marcus Buckingham
How does a manager attract and retain talent? According to Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman they must First, Break All the Rules. Join us for ten minutes to find out why and what we should break to do what great managers do differently.