don’t raise VC too early

‘Merican factory jobs

Hi there,

Just got back from India and am headed out to San Fran (ppl love it when I call it that) to speak at SaaStr on the morning of Wed, Feb 9th.

If you’ll be there, stop by and say hi.  I’ll be speaking about mistakes we’ve made in building and revenue-funding a SaaS company to 8-figure revenues.

We’ll get into why you should not: 

• raise VC early
• hire a PR firm
• pay attention to competitors
• hire salespeople unless you can sell the isht out of your product

I promise you that it will not be the worst presentation of the conference.

From virtual nurses to drug discovery

We updated our list to over 100 companies that are applying machine learning algorithms and predictive analytics to reduce drug discovery times, provide virtual assistance to patients, and diagnose ailments by processing medical images, among other things.

The FinTech 250

At this year’s Future of FinTech Conference, we’ll be unveiling the FinTech 250 — the 250 most promising, private fintech companies.

If you want to nominate a company, do that here by Feb 15th.

A select group of FinTech 250 founders will also be invited to speak in front of all 1000+ attendees.

Customized babies?

We released a report on the 13 “N+1” trends, or future tech trends that will shape business and society in the next 5-10 years, including lab-grown diamonds and custom babies. Yes, you will be able to use the marvels of science to engineer yourself a smarter, more handsome baby in the future. Good lord.

You can get the entire presentation here.

What a game

After last night’s Super Bowl, I’m looking forward to all the pieces on Medium about “what your startup can learn from the Patriots”. Please do not send them to me as I will be proactively seeking them out.

Also, we tracked Super Bowl ads by tech/startup companies during the game. SoFi probably played it the best as they took an option for an ad if the game went to overtime and boom. Airbnb was a new entrant as well. You can compare the list vs last year’s ads here.

And finally, Amazon hinted at their drone delivery ambitions again during an ad last night. Looks like their warehouse in the sky is coming sooner than later.

Friends vs. foes

A helpful dataviz from the NY Times in understanding the US’ allies and enemies.

Best email ever

Last week, I shared the best feedback email I’d ever received from a reader named Ted which many of you referred to as a “Ted Talk” (I love our subscribers).

5 of you also suggested that we’re not open to feedback and thought Ted had good points. For those of you who suggested this, I’d encourage you to read Ted’s email again cuz you read a different email than everyone else.

Sativa-as-a-service

We looked at the sectors within the cannabis industry that have been most attractive to investors. From 2012-2016, cannabis-focused healthcare companies took the lion’s share of deals at 31%.

About those factory jobs

Here’s some straight talk from Eric Spiegel, former CEO of Siemens North America, on the skills required of the new factory worker. (see blurb for article)

A little bit of this, a little bit of that

In 2016, investors made 132 investments in bitcoin and blockchain companies, fewer deals than in 2014, and an 18% drop from 2015′s high of 161 investments.

Chemical wine

In our Game Changers report, we identified 8 categories of innovation that are solving big, important problems, including synthetic biology, a category comprised of companies focused on re-engineering biological products. From produce to wine to genes, we’ve identified 5 startups that are redesigning the way biological products are made.

The Industry Standard

CB Insights data is the most trusted by those in the industry and the media. A few recent hits.

Quartz. Alison Griswold (@alisongriswold) digs into Snap’s claim to IPO with entirely non-voting stock and cites CB Insights exits data.

Bloomberg. Edward Robinson reports on Portugal’s startup scene and refers to CB Insights investment data.

Deal Street Asia. Tanu Pandey writes about China-based unicorns and cites CB Insights data on the subject.

VatorNews. Steven Loeb (@stegrelo) on IPO activity in 2016 with a reference to data found in the CB Insights 2016 Global Tech Exits report.

Happy Monday.

I love you.

Anand
@asanwal

P.S. Know an amazing FinTech company? Apply for the FinTech 250 Award which will be revealed at The Future of FinTech Conference.