Category Archives: Startups

Nov 25
Fred Destin

Snapchat and that old no revenues debate

Like many others in the field I was left scratching my head about Snapchat recently.  Not because of the reported $4 billion offer but because of the explosion of age-old arguments about how scandalous it is for a company with …

17 Comments
Oct 12
Fred Destin

A (reconstituted) interview with Marc Andreessen

 Thanks to a slightly unfortunate messaging glitch (which of you entrepreneurs would like his labor of love to be compared to “fruit fly experiments” in the Wall Street Journal), pmarca a.k.a Marc Andreessen has been drawn into in-depth conversation on HackerNews.   …

5 Comments
Oct 9
Fred Destin

The Glorious Post Seed Startup Financing Chaos

The other day I got a call from Scott Kirstner at the Boston Globe answering: “what happens to all these incubators entrepreneurs after Demo Day”.   The short answer: chaos.  Full of opportunity, but chaos nonetheless.  Cue fractals on this …

17 Comments
Jul 11
Fred Destin

Dave McClure on growth hacking your way through the Series A crunch

Dave McClure’s new talk at Startup Festival in Montreal (#startupfest) slaps entrepreneurs across the face with the dire need for doing more marketing early to survive the funding drought … a.k.a. growth hack your way through the Series A crunch. …

5 Comments
Jun 27
Fred Destin

There are no shortcuts to intelligent Founder – CEO transitions

 Founder transition is one of those tense topics that holds limited upside for the writer, especially when said individual is a venture capitalist. However it’s also very often one of the defining moments in a startup’s life; a moment that, …

5 Comments
Jun 11
Fred Destin

Backing CustomMade, the marketplace for one-of-a-kind goods

 The first investment out of our new fund IX will bring me back to some well trodden stomping ground, and specifically the world of marketplaces, as Atlas Venture leads the new round of financing for CustomMade. CustomMade is a marketplace …

5 Comments
May 7
Fred Destin

Shame on France : the Yahoo – DailyMotion debacle

 I was on the board of DailyMotion for many years, starting with the first round of financing in 2006 and ending with my resignation off the board in January 2013. We made many mistakes along the way but we survived …

23 Comments
Feb 8
Fred Destin

Timbre App: how an odd investment process yields a promising partnership

 I had the funny / dubious distinction of being a headline item today as Techcrunch announced the funding of concert discovery app Timbre.  Timbre is a simple and beautiful app to help you discover great live music around you.   …

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Feb 3
Fred Destin

Ecommerce is a slog — what’s your angle ?

 There a bold piece by Marc Andreessen in PandoDaily announcing the “death of retail“. As an extension to the theme of “software will eat the world” it’s smart statement of intent for a firm that wants to attract the best …

23 Comments
Dec 18
Fred Destin

Instagram : follow your dreams, CANCELLED

The great interweb is in an almighty furore over Instagram’s changes in terms and conditions (thank you NY Times) which allow them to use new user content for advertising (and possibly, licensing) and which they tried to pass off a …

9 Comments