View from Seed

APRIL 27, 2020

But in this current environment more than ever, there will be some spectacular companies that are getting built that need a bit more seed capital to shore up their product or growth engine prior to a scaling series A (or perhaps as a last step before profitable long term growth).

Cofounder 194

Cofounder Software Review Portfolio Technical Review 194

View from Seed

JULY 24, 2015

The invite-only event was attended by 300 of the area’s best tech leaders, founders, product managers, designers, developers, investors, engineers, salesmen and women, and more, all of whom are hard at work in consumer tech. More functionally, Boston needs to improve its design, branding, and PR skills.

Boston 120

Boston Cofounder B2C PR 120

View from Seed

MARCH 24, 2021

Advice on How to Make Your First Analytics Hire “Analytics is about designing, reporting, and leveraging operating metrics to aid strategic and functional decision-making. And a regular update with candor about what is going well and what is not signals an orientation towards transparency, which in turn engenders trust.”

Seed Stage 177

Seed Stage Hiring IPO Analytics 177

View from Seed

JANUARY 21, 2022

As a kid, I was enamored with anything possessing an engine that could go fast (Fast and Furious is my favorite movie series). My fantasy as a kid was to work at the Audi HQ in Stuttgart, Germany, designing and building my dream car. As an engineer, my brain solves problems by breaking them into digestible pieces.

B2B 120

B2B Germany Stock Engineer 120

View from Seed

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

Because of that, foods are being increasingly engineered to achieve certain goals or outcomes, and consumers are willing to accept some pretty weird form factors to achieve this. But it is really the beginning of what I think is the next 20+ year wave around these engineered, purpose built food products.

eCommerce 168

eCommerce Differentiation Engineer Product 168

View from Seed

JULY 14, 2020

This allowed them to design a conversational-based learning experience that is enthusiastically received by both the frontline workers and their managers. Rounding out the founding team is Jeff Silver , who brings software and product leadership after years of engineering leadership experience at Managed by Q.

Portfolio 177

Portfolio Leadership Metrics Employee 177

View from Seed

MARCH 19, 2015

Engineers and even marketers proudly claim to be “full stack.” Starting in 2009, Savoia began using an approach as an engineering director at Google that helped the tech giant know whether it was about to build the right product for the market … or a product that would flop. ” Take the example above.

Product 120

Product Technical Review Marketing Lean 120

View from Seed

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

Analytics is about designing, reporting, and leveraging operating metrics to aid strategic and functional decision-making. The difference in technical proficiency here could mean whether your analyst can “self-serve” without bothering the engineering team (who would rather focus on building the product) while still being effective.

Analytics 149

Analytics Hiring SQL Forecast 149

View from Seed

JULY 21, 2022

They can’t afford to spend 10% of their $100,000 salary on Interior Design Services alone, but they would certainly be willing and able to spend a few hundred dollars. The show has so many layers to it: politics, money, engineering, relationships, rivalries… It’s so fun now to follow all the F1 racing season live- I’m invested.

Early Stage 156

Early Stage San Francisco Michigan Portfolio 156

View from Seed

JUNE 5, 2018

Keeping that in mind, we designed the program in such way that later-stage portfolio companies such as Dia&Co and MealPal could gain insights alongside younger ones such as Voodoo Manufacturing , ExecThread , and Virgent Realty. no one wants to be the first female engineer joining a 15-person all male-engineering team.

Hiring 120

Hiring Portfolio Metrics B2C 120

View from Seed

JANUARY 11, 2018

In our portfolio, Code Climate is a perfect example of this, as its software becomes embedded within an engineering team’s daily workflow. In the end, we look for companies dramatically improving people’s everyday lives first, and then search for startups that design the business model around that transformation. Alignable ).

B2B 120

B2B B2C Vertical Portfolio 120

View from Seed

NOVEMBER 4, 2019

And to do that, founders either spend way too much money on a third party dev shop, or hire a “lead engineer” that is capable, but not really a star. Although this seems obvious, you’d be surprised how many early stage companies immediately invest too much time and energy to build a product that doesn’t really prove anything.

Seed Stage 180

Seed Stage Bootstrapping Demand Early Stage 180

View from Seed

APRIL 7, 2015

Dirty Secret #1: An early-stage startup’s design actually does matter. Of course, nice design and glossy materials is not what gets VCs to invest (hopefully), but the opposite of this hurts more than one would think. Dirty Secret #2: Feedback from VCs usually sucks (despite how often founders seek it out).

Early Stage 120

Early Stage Founder Later Stage Engineer 120

View from Seed

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

When you have extremely limited engineering resources, it’s even more critical to stay focused and clearly set your priorities. This is a common challenge for companies of all sizes/stages, but the tradeoff could be especially tricky for early-stage startups given the extremely limited engineering resources.

Hiring 120

Hiring Bandwidth Product Early Stage 120

View from Seed

MARCH 15, 2016

In a world of highly designed marketing emails, these plain texts emails stand out and feel much more authentic. Just like plain text emails stand out when compared to the norm of highly designed marketing emails, un-gated content seems to have the same type of response. Free, Un-gated Content. Forget about that.

Customer 174

Customer Startup Email Channel 174

View from Seed

MARCH 10, 2015

One of the biggest ways the app evolved from day one was from a design point of view. We followed the data: The iPhone app was initially twice the users of the Android app, so we started focusing more on that to design a more customized product. Bleacher Report’s Team Stream app.

Mobile 120

Mobile San Francisco Curation Seed Stage 120

View from Seed

JUNE 13, 2016

After a lot of testing, David has landed on a specific model with three engineers to a team. What about product and design? Two software engineers, either back-end or front-end, report into the tech lead. In this setup, the engineering team runs the product organization. We’ll get there.). They own the solution.

Product 120

Product Customer Agile Cofounder 120

View from Seed

NOVEMBER 17, 2016

If you look at historically, when people built the first cars over 100 years ago, there were no companies that made engines and components and whatever. LEE: Right, Ford’s first factory — the main, huge one, where they still make cars — this was called River Rouge. It’s like the size of a city.

Startup 120

Startup Vertical Seed Stage United States 120