Blood, Sweat and Years: Raising Money As A Deep Learning Startup

Deep learning startups are in vogue, but that doesn’t mean fundraising is easy. Here are the pitfalls startups should avoid to get funded and build a business.

From the Investors

Josh Nussbaum of Compound discusses the recent trend of ML/AI startups raising larger rounds in order to build large data sets early on in "Data Sets are the New Server Rooms"

Willy Braun of daphni shares his discoveries about how due diligence are actually made in the VC industry and how he tries to improve his process in “The Hard Truth Behind Investing as a VC”

Yannick Roux of EC1 Capital dissects some data on 1st time venture funds outperformance and risk profile in " On First Time VC Funds Performance"

Beezer Clarkson of Sapphire Ventures covers VC ‘war chests’ and the decline in first time fund creation in “The Twenty Minute VC: Beezer Clarkson” (podcast)

Aaron Batalion of Lightspeed Venture Partners walks through how an imaginary home security camera company could build network effects directly into a their product experience in “The Next Phase of Network Effects — Hardware SaaS”

Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz outlines two tests investors run on entrepreneurs before working with them in “Marc Andreessen at YC Startup School” (video)

From the Operators

Sachin Rekhi offers his best practices and techniques for understanding the customer feedback that your organization is already hearing in “Designing Your Product’s Continuous Feedback Loop”

Sarahjane Sacchetti of Collective Health encourages startup leaders to take steps now to support their business by supporting their people in “The Family-Friendly Startup is Possible. Here’s How You Build One.”

Glenn Rogers of Float believes that mastering peak launch is all in the “Attack” stage and expands on three key areas to focus on in “Lessons in Launching a SaaS Product.”

Laura Roeder of MeetEdgar describes how adding structure helps employees spend time doing what you hired them for, and less time trying to figure out how in “How “Empowering” Your Team Is Stressing Everyone Out”

Alexis Tryon formerly of Artsicle reflects on leaving her startup after five years and how a founder’s identity gets tangled up with their company in “Introducing Myself Has Never Been This Hard.”

Nandini Jammi of ProdPad pleas to tech media to redefine what is classified as “newsworthy” in “The Rise and Fall of YPlan Is The Most Boring Tech Story Ever”