Library

  • Marc Andreessen has started blogging and has particularly focused on how to evaluate venture capitalists in a three part series. He’s so smart, so articulate, and so experienced that he generally speaks the truth.
  • Another new blog, Ask The VC, is very rapidly building a broad resource for entrepreneurs that covers all the technical questions of dealing with venture capitalists: negotiating terms, building boards, and other specific issues that come up in most investments.
  • Here’s an interesting LinkedIn question and the thread that developed out of it: What one quality is most important in an entrepreneur?
  • We weren’t going to mention this new book we’ve been hearing about until we read it. But Paul Kedrosky reviewed it — since we trust his opinion, the book certainly sounds like an excellent resource for the entrepreneur: It’s called Founders At Work and is straight interviews with founders of companies.
  • There’s also a new website called Startupping. I’ve registered but haven’t quite figured out how useful it will be, since I think usefulness depends on adoption and that means that I’m either a chicken or an egg — a typical startup problem!
  • Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson are providing a public service for entrepreneurs called Ask The VC. We hope they continue to be motivated to provide this service indefinitely!
  • Sort of like A Christmas Carol, here’s Guy Kawasaki’s classic on the top ten lies VCs tell entrepreneurs.
  • Christine Herron is a smart lady. Here’s her report on hacking a startup.
  • We really like Startup Review, written by Nisan Gabbay, as a place to think about how to start companies. For instance, there is a review of Xfire and how it changed course when its first product didn’t catch fire. (Pun intended.) Stewart is the guy who invested in the new product (after DFJ was smart enough to stick with its entrepreneur and fund him through the discovery process) and can attest that the review is basically accurate. That’s a good sign about the other reviews!
  • Harvard Business School is a great institution and it maintains a public resource of content and information that is really useful for entrepreneurs.
  • Not to give too much attention to Harvard, but this interview conducted by Bill Sahlman, one of the key professors who thinks about entrepreneurship at the business school, covers a lot of ground and is particularly interesting since it was conducted while the Internet Bubble was in full force. It also involves one member of our Hall of Fame, Ruth Owades.
  • In terms of public resources, it’s hard to do better than this collection of video clips, podcasts, presentations and other material about entrepreneurship, all provided free of charge by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program.