Month: August 2023

New platforms and new technologies are ways that makes it easier for startups to break into established markets. A16Z has a longer blog post on lessons from how cloud played out, applied to AI.

I’m not sure how AI plays out as a fully fledged new platform (in the sense of e.g. mobile operating systems and app stores that provides a technical platform, distribution and monetization) vs a new technology platform (e.g. databases or cloud providers that provides a technical platform).

It is easy to see AI being the most important “new” software technology over the next 10-15 years. But which type of AI product will become a full platform is not obvious to me, even if it is obvious that (basically) all software will use and be improved with AI capabilites.

Martin at SwedishTechNews (you should subscribe to his free weekly newsletter with a roundup of Swedish tech news or his paid daily newsletter) has compiled a list of more than 200 investors investing in Swedish startups. Alliance VC is one of them.

Mostly Metrics: How to manage runaway SaaS spend. Good post from a tech CFO with metrics on how costs break down in a SaaS company. Very handy benchmarks when budgeting and practical tips on how to manage costs for SaaS tools specifically.

Rough rule of thumb, 70 % is people and 30 % is everything else. But it breaks down differently across COGS, sales, marketing, product, engineering, finance, HR and G&A.

Andrew Chen has written a good post on career planning (“the next next job”). I think that if a person enjoys the larger industry that person is in, using the current (and the next) job as stepping stones and to build a network make a lot of sense.

Carl Tengberg, founder and formerly CEO of Curb, has started a Substack and his first post is his letter called What I learned from Curb’s failure sent to his investors (which included Alliance VC).

It is 18 “reminder to self” on raising outside capital, building a business, managing oneself as a founder and CEO, hiring and building a team, and on moving forward.

A great way of learning about startups is to learn from people that have been in the arena and met success and failure. Carl’s post is a very good read.

Peter Benson has an interesting editorial in Affärsvärlden comparing the success of Novo Nordisk and other Danish companies with the largest Swedish export-oriented companies. I.e. in Sweden we need to up our game as we’re not doing as well as we might think.

At the end of the article Peter highlights of how relatively un-Swedish in practical terms (based on number of employees in Sweden and where things like management & control, value creation and core competencies are located) companies like Atlas Copco, Evolution, Assa Abloy and Hexagon are.

He likely picked companies based on them being listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange, which (in my mind) made him forget Spotify, a formally non-Swedish but still very Swedish company based on the principles (almost 2000 employees in Sweden, top management dominated by Swedes, value creation and core competencies are well-represented in Sweden). It is an example of the fact that the future of Swedish industry should be technology-heavy if we continue to invest in, build and own startups for the long term.

A good venture and startup focused episode of All-In podcast.

What to do when growth stalls is a very good essay by Andrew Chen (a16z). It’s a framework for better analysis than just adding the next great feature, spending more on marketing or adding AI for the sake of it.

Core assumption (which I agree with): “At its core, a product stalls when its churn catches up with its customer acquisition.”

It’s a long read (including ways to address different reasons for slowed growth) but very useful, particularly for B2C and product-led growth companies.