Favorite news sources to stay on top of happenings in tech (relevant to recruiting for growth equity)
Hi guys, met with a headhunter today and they said they wanted to put me in front of a number of growth equity firms. They asked if I was up to speed on all current tech news and I lied through my teeth and said yes since I have more than a month to get caught up on tech.
I'm generally knowledgeable and read venture beat etc. but I'm wondering what your favorite news sources for staying current are on the tech world.
Thanks.
Hey Making Gravy, what a lonely thread. I'm here since nobody responded ...so maybe one of these discussions will help:
More suggestions...
I hope those threads give you a bit more insight.
Stratechery Techcrunch Hackernews ...among others
Hope this helps! Camondo
You are the single most helpful person I've interacted with on this site. Thanks as always.
Some pointers (slightly expanding a previous post I made):
Let's unpack each.
(i) TechCrunch is a good resource for 'what's happening now' type of stuff, but the ratio of meaty content (thought piece type stuff) to simple news articles is low. Stratechery is good. Venturebeat, as you mentioned, is good.
(ii) You'll get more value from curated newsletters. Put yourself on as many good venture lists as you can manage. The strong ones are Pro Rata (from Dan Primack, the don of tech newsletters), Term Sheet (what Dan spent six years editing at Fortune, now written by Erin Griffith after his departure to Axios), Launch Ticker (from Jason Calcanis, arguably the most prominent angel, sort of this younger generation's Ron Conway), and if you wanted a fourth, StrictlyVC.
You'll get daily emails (some offer both morning and night). If you read them thoroughly and start building any kind of tracking or bookmarking system of your own, this is 30-60 minutes daily that will keep you up to speed on what's happening. Over a couple years (separate from your interview process), you'll have an immediate grasp on useful things to know, like the rough intervals between certain hot companies' raising rounds, average round sizes in specific verticals, and updates on who is currently where (it's good to know when investors are changing shops).
(iii) Resources like Pitchbook and CB Insights are a godsend. They're expensive for you to subscribe on your own, but if you give them your email you'll get a daily morning snapshot of every newsworthy item plus links to their own quick-hit analysis of pertinent factoids prompted by that day's news (e.g. quarterly growth in deal volume and dollar scale in AR startups over the past three years). If I had to stress one thing in this whole post it'd be these two resources.
(iv) Absorb as much quality long-form content as you can. At the beginning, the immediate value this presents is that you end up simply knowing what some of the smartest minds in venture are thinking. Over the longer term, you will be able to critically evaluate someone's thesis in light of your own insight.
Top-notch ones to start with include the First Round Review, Benedict Evans' blog, Fred Wilson's blog (AVC), all of Paul Graham's essays, Bill Gurley's blog, Marc Andreessen / Ben Horowitz's (look at A16Z.com) ... and then there's a host of other great ones from specialists.
(v) If you combine (i)-(iv), you should have a substantial basis of raw knowledge to apply some critical thinking to. The real difference maker when talking to senior people in this field is not simply knowing the what of the market, but having a coherent and articulate why on how it matters.
One thing I see so many people do is take the banking or PE interview approach. The 'I read up to know what's going on and for half a dozen deals memorized each party, the dollar amounts, and advisors and then thought of a rationale for why each side wants to do it'.
That may wind up working in late-stage (growth equity) at the really institutionalized places, but the earlier you go in terms of stage, the less useful and the more hurtful it becomes.
Separately, this is also the thing that kills people's ability to progress in seniority. Some guys wonder why they don't get the Principal / Vice President promotion when they've memorized the written job description, lived it to the fullest, and gotten solid feedback year after year. It's because the partners are looking for who 'gets it' and 'getting it' is a subjective thing where people weave a thesis out of thin air. That's three-quarters of the battle.
The rest is just having the stomach to maintain that thesis (this is not just an "investment thesis": it includes your thesis on how you screen founders, support them after you invest, build the board that oversees them and contribute on it yourself, and feed them inputs to correct their course over years of operating) until something you backed exits and prints you money.
I've bookmarked this post and keep coming back to it over and over. Thank you.
Tech News That You Should Know - The Good, Bad And The Ugly (Originally Posted: 08/25/2012)
It seems like tech news are dominating the headlines lately. It's been quite a year for tech, but it's just getting started. There are 3 stories that I want to touch on:
1. Hot new products! It's clear that many of these companies are trying to take part of Apple's highly anticipated releases.
Here's an update from
August 29th: Samsung's Galaxy Note 2 Smartphone and Sony has updates on their tablets and TVs September 5th: Nokia and Microsoft talks about new Windows Phone September 6th: Amazon is probably announcing a new Kindle Fire September 12th: IPHONE 5!!!! ..and maybe a smaller tablet September 13th: Nintendo talks about WiiU
Which of these product announcements are you most looking forward to? Are you excited for the iPhone 5, or has Apple lost its touch?
2. A win for Apple is a win for us? While some of these news would be exciting for consumers, Samsung is suggesting that their lost in trial to Apple is a loss to consumers. Yes, Samsung lost their bitter patent struggle, which will be the subject of multiple appeals. Some may disagree with Samsung that this is consumers' lost. Quite the contrary, designers may need to create much different and creative products to avoid Apple's "touch and feel" to compete. Besides, creativity is killed when patents aren't protected. I'm going with this argument.
What do you think? Is this ruling good for consumers and the industry overall, or does Apple overstep its bounds on patent infringement?
3. Tin is the new blood diamonds For a bit of a buzz kill, the cover of Bloomberg Businessweek features a story titled The Deadly Tin Inside Your Smartphone, which describes the dangers that miners face in Indonesia. Why does this matter? Thousands of miners extract tin that is used for soldering in all electronics, including tablets and smartphones. They work with nothing more than an axe and a bucket, and barefoot too (have you ever walked a rocky beach?). The article also describes a story where a wall of rocks crushes a father of two, and a mining related death happens almost once a week, and rising. What makes Indonesia so special is that about a third of all tin mined in the world comes from one of their island Bangka, which is a driving force for their economy.
Two of Asia's main solders derive their tin almost all from Indonesia, and then supplies Foxconn (Apple's manufacturer) which has their own questionable work-safety standards. To be fair, Foxconn has factory standards above their competitors (which isn't saying much) and it seems that due to recent publicity, both Foxconn and Apple are working towards even better standards.
I'm not saying we should boycott electronics, which is clearly impossible, but I hope we at least consider the implications of our increasing appetite for such devices. Not to mention, tin is carcinogeous and excavations has "wrecked the landscape", causing irreparable damage to the environment . However, I believe as Apple reaches closer to a trillion in market cap, this issue will be more difficult to ignore, and Apple may succumb to public outcry. Is tin the new blood diamonds?
What do you think? Does this story change the way you think about purchasing electronics? Apathetic? Do you think anything will change after this story?
.
Humans will always get joy from someone else's expense. Tin is the new blood diamond and there will be more commodities to replace it in the future.
I can't help but notice how ignorant and likely out of context that statement is. People draw joy from other's expense? I don't think I've ever tripped someone for laughs without being ready to grab them if they did fall.
As for tin being the "new blood diamond," it's necessary to understand that so long as capital markets are what drive our societies, there will be good and bad implications of market demand. So long as demand for a product exists, there will be premium and less-than-premium ways of sourcing supply; there will also, necessarily, be corresponding labor markets to meet the demand for labor.
This is to say that people will work jobs that endanger their well-being so long as they have no other option available to them.
So if you've got an issue with this stuff, blame it on poverty, economic efficiency/inefficiency (depending on how you see it), and the real culprit: the fact that the human race hasn't solved the economic problem (scarcity).
OP your a moron they didn't pay shit to Apple and it will be overturned in higher courts
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