Secret Socks
Are you looking forward to the holiday season?
Well Simone (our editor) is, and came up with our own version of the popular Secret Santa, and called it, Secret Socks. Especially for the startup community, we're facilitating Secret Socks so you can make sure you get to give a gift to someone else in the community, and that you get a gift too 😇
All you have to do to take part is to register as a participant here
Have a great weekend!
Must read
Dear Microsoft,
Slack shook up everyone this week with an open letter addressed to Microsoft. The letter itself is ballsy, and culturally relevant.
Why Slack may live to regret its smarmy letter to Microsoft
So, even if we appreciated the bold move by Slack, the following question remains: was it a wise decision to take this route?
Sponsored
Avoid failure by developing a toolchain that enables DevOps
Read the Gartner Research Note and discover how your IT organization can automate and optimize DevOps projects using a toolchain architecture.
Culture
Too many startups like playing startup
Are you playing startup, pretending to be a business more than working on the business?
Modern Entrepreneurship
My first email to my investors
Because transparency is a good thing, Loic Le Meur published his first investor update online for everyone to see. Read how his new venture Leade.rs is doing!
Is Snapchat's IPO worth investing in?
You'd say that Chat inc.'s 40 billion valuation is a clear sign that we are in a bubble, but is it?
Growth
How I went from being a stranger to having a network in Silicon Valley
It's not about getting over 500 connections on LinkedIn, but about making sure you know why you want what you want, and what you can contribute in any relation. Off course, it also helps to surround yourself with the right communities 😏
2016 is almost over and Growth Hacking is still bullshit
We'd love to hear arguments on why Growth Hacking isn't bullshit. We mean, everything that is white hat is basically Lean Startup or experiment driven marketing, and everything that is black hat growth hacking is basically messing with potential customers, right?
Trends
So who’s really going to own autonomous cars? There’s four scenarios.
We especially like the scenario where self-driving cars will own themselves. That is as much SciFi as you will read in this newsletter!
Product
Your World is Full of Placebo Buttons (and That's a Good Thing)
So why do we keep pushing the darned buttons? Of course, not all the buttons we encounter in our daily life are nonfunctional all the time. But how are we to know the difference? The crosswalk eventually flashes WALK, and the elevator door eventually closes. But rarely do we question whether a causal relationship exists.
Sales
How we're thinking about pricing
Most money in SAAS companies is made from inactive users. They pay, but don't use the actual product. How can we do this differently?
