Class Notes – Career Advice

John Doerr – The legendary VC from KPCB gave a wonderful talk at UC Berkeley a while back. The talk covered a variety of topics: identifying great companies, evaluation criteria for VCs, areas/industries of interest, and career advice. I jotted down some notes when he spoke on the topic of career advice.

Career Advice

• Know what you are optimizing for.
  • Learning, Work-Life Balance, Money.
• Learn how to sell.
• Learn how to manage a team.
  • Not 1-2 people. At-least 5-10 people.
• Seek Mentorship.
• Always Network.
  • Develop personal, life-long networks.
  • If you are uncomfortable with networking – Get outside of your comfort-zone and meet with people.
• Public Speaking
  • More than anything else, people are judged by the ability to think and speak on their feet.
• Get in on the ground floor of a high-growth company.
  • Intel in 1974, Google in 2001, Uber in 2010
• Be thoughtful about the field you want to work in.
  • Easier to move companies, than to change industries.
• Always strive to be a leader.
  • Great leaders, are always in demand. Doesn’t matter what industry/company.
  • Mercenaries vs Missionaries

Venture Capital Resources

When it comes to Venture Capital, there is a great amount of information scattered across the web. I have attempted to collect, sort, and organize the information that I have personally found helpful. Below is a list of Newsletters I subscribe to, Blogs I read, VCs and Entrepreneurs I follow on Twitter, and other Miscellaneous Information that I hope you will find as useful as I did.

If you think there is more interesting material that I should add to this list, do let me know in the comments or over on Twitter. Feel free to follow me @vatsals

 

VC Newsletters (Data, Deals, News, Interviews, Opinions, Events)

CBInsights – http://cbinsights.com/

Mattermark – http://mattermark.com/

StrictlyVC – http://www.strictlyvc.com/

Dan Primack – Fortune – Term Sheet – http://www.GetTermSheet.com

PEHub – PEHubWire – http://www.pehub.com/pewire-signup/

Benedict Evans – A16Z – http://ben-evans.com/news/

Charlie O’Donell – Brooklyn Bridge Ventures – Events Newsletter – http://www.thisisgoingtobebig.com/weekly/

VCCircle – India Specific – http://www.vccircle.com/about-us

(VCCircle also publishes TechCircle)

James Altucher – http://www.jamesaltucher.com

http://jamesaltucher.us5.list-manage2.com/subscribe?u=ca6ae38471d227b05e07a47e9&id=4443cd21dd

John Gannon’s e-mail list  – http://johngannonblog.com/vc-careers/

Pete Soderling – HakkaLabs – Technology/Software Newsletter – http://www.hakkalabs.com/subscribe

NYC Built – http://www.nycbuilt.org

 

Product

ProductHunt- http://www.producthunt.com

KickStarter – http://www.kickstarter.com

Indiegogo – http://www.indiegogo.com

 

Investments

CrunchBase – http://www.crunchbase.com

AngelList – http://www.angel.co

FundersClub – http://www.fundersclub.com

SeedInvest – http://www.seedinvest.com

MarketSnacks – Newsletter – http://www.marketsnacks.com

 

Blogs

Fred Wilson – Union Square Ventures (http://www.usv.com/) – http://www.avc.com/

Chris Dixon – A16Z – http://www.cdixon.org

Ben Horowitz – A16Z – http://www.bhorowitz.com/

Hunter Walk – Homebrew – http://www.hunterwalk.com

Bill Gurley – Benchmark Capital – http://www.abovethecrowd.com

Tomasz Tonguz – Redpoint Ventures – http://tomtunguz.com/

First Round Capital Blog –  http://www.firstround.com/blog/

Lightspeed VP Blog – http://www.lsvp.com/blog/

Albert Wenger – Union Square Ventures – continuations.com

Benedict Evans – A16Z – ben-evans.com

Kenneth Norton – Google Ventures – A great resource for Product Management – http://kennorton.me/

Semil Shah – HayStack – http://blog.semilshah.com

Schalf’s Notes: http://schlaf.me/

 

Books 

The Hard Thing About Hard Things – Ben Horowitz – Amazon Link

Mastering the VC Game – Jeff Bussgang

Venture Deals – Brad Feld

 

Data

Shai Goldman’s list of VC Funds under $200M – Spreadsheet Link

 

Other great resources

Google Ventures – GV Library – Great resource for Startups/Hiring/Design/Product Management – http://www.gv.com/library/

Sequoia Capital – Grove – https://www.sequoiacap.com/grove

Kevin Rose – Partner@GV and Co-Founder @Digg/@Milk has a series of great interviews – Foundation.bz

Product Hunt – Radio – Interviews with Founders – http://www.producthunt.com/radio

NYC Startup List –  http://nytm.org/made-in-nyc

ffVC Resource Page – http://ffvc.com/resources/

KPCB – Mary Meecker Annual Internet Trends Report: http://www.kpcb.com/internet-trends

 

Communities

Hacker News – https://news.ycombinator.com/

USV – http://www.usv.com

Quora – http://www.quora.com/Venture-Capital

Reddit – http://www.reddit.com/r/venturecapital

Reddit – http://www.reddit.com/r/startups

 

Events

Charlie O’Donell – Brooklyn Bridge Ventures – Events Newsletter – http://www.thisisgoingtobebig.com/weekly/

Gary’s Guide – NYC Tech Events – http://garysguide.com/events

 

Other resource notes similar to this

John Gannon’s Resource Page (Also subscribe to his e-mail list)  – http://johngannonblog.com/vc-careers/

Adam Besvinick’s Startup Primer – http://ventureminded.me/startupprimer

The Beginner’s Guide to VC – https://mattermark.com/want-learn-venture-capital/

Thanks for reading through!