The Mattermark Daily is a hand-curated newsletter compiled daily to bring you first-person accounts of entrepreneurship, investment and insights from the startup ecosystem. If you enjoy what you read here, please consider forwarding it to spread the word. Not getting the daily regularly? Click here to subscribe!

From the Operators

Josiah Humphrey of Appster recounts the days of an office littered with fast-food wrappers and what it took to get past a series of huge, expensive mistakes in “How betrayal, near-failure, and a vacuum saved my $19M startup”

Stevie Buckley of Talent Stuff explains that acquiring & retaining talent is just going to get harder if companies aren’t prioritizing the health of employees’ personal lives in “Ping pong, desk beers, and employee benefits”

Justin Rezvani of theAmplify attributes his motivation to become and succeed as an entrepreneur to his mindset after a car accident in “How a Near-Death Experience Sparked My Drive to Become a Successful Entrepreneur”

Jonathan Grana of Interseller shares the top things he’s learned to avoid as a technical founder doing product sales in “4 Critical Sales Mistakes that Technical Founders Must Avoid”

Laurence Bradford of Teachable has assembled a playbook of tactics and resources to help build an employer brand worthy of the best talent in “How listening to our employees is helping Teachable build an employer brand”

LB Harvey of Intercom on their strategy and execution while building a product-focused sales team in “Hiring for sales in a product-led world”

From the Investors

Leah Busque of FUEL Capital, welcome to the Investors section! Check out Leah’s history as a founder and goals as an investor in “My Next Task: Building a VC Firm Founders Can Trust”

Guy Turner of Hyde Park Venture Partners shares an expression from some of his portfolio founders that simply defines product-market fit in “The PMF sales equation”

Boris Wertz of VersionOne Ventures provides three principles he uses to guide his interactions with portfolio founders in “Three rules for VC-entrepreneur engagement”

Sungjoon Cho of Formation Group isolates why it’s possible for startups to beat the bigger players, saying it’s all about the ability to operate in much smaller markets in “Moving the Needle”

Bryce Roberts of Indie.vc has a quick reminder that The Next Steve Jobs won’t look like the last.

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