profits are lame & kill culture

The return of the brain

Hi there,

Given all the absurdity within tech these days, there’s a lot of good satire emerging which we’ll feature this week.

Today’s piece is courtesy of McSweeney’s author @bobvulfov. The article is linked in The Blurb and has one of the best titles I’ve seen in a while.  

See some choice quotes below from the article but first some good ol’ CBI research.

AI + robotics in agriculture

We identified robotics and AI companies working in agriculture and divided them into 5 broad categories depending on their area of focus.

We’ll also be putting together a market map covering AI/robotics in agriculture, so if you are a startup or investor in the space, submit your company data here.

Dear NYC devs: How to avoid bad startups

We are starting a free newsletter for developers interested in working at an NYC startup.

Note: To date, 37% of signups for the newsletter have been rejected because they’re not developers/engineers. If you’re a recruiter, VC, or some other non-dev, don’t sign up and waste your time or ours.

We’ll be using the CB Insights Mosaic score to highlight 8-15 promising, high-momentum NYC startups per newsletter.

We’ll break them down by stage so you can find something that matches your risk tolerance. And we’ll also provide insight into their business model, funding, and quality of investors.

Life is too short to work for a crizap startup. If you’re a dev, sign up here and spread the word. We’ll issue our first newsletter when we have 500 devs on it.

Exit only

We analyzed first exits in construction tech since 2012 and created a timeline based on the data. Since 2015, there have been a few corporates that have made multiple acquisitions including JDM Technology Group, Trimble, and Roper Technologies.

Speaking of bad startups

The aforementioned McSweeney’s post has some great lines. Here are a few favorites which are all the more funny cuz they’re so true.

#1 – Profits are stupid & boring. Just like old people.

#2 – We’ll just keep raising VC money. Don’t worry about it.

#3 – We don’t have a 401k, but we have standing desks and a keg.

Corps in pharma

We looked at corporate investment activity in private pharmaceutical startups since 2012. On a quarterly basis, deal flow surged nearly 42% from 36 deals in Q4’16 to 51 in Q1’17.

If it doesn’t kill you…

I detailed out 68 things not to do in your startup based on mistakes we’ve made at CB Insights in this presentation.

I hope it’s useful. If you are having a bad week at your startup, this should make you realize that you can screw up a lot and still be ok.

If nothing else, these 2 slides will show you that you’ll never be as dumb as we were.

Industry Standard

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

Crowdfund Insider. A look at the startups backed by the CreditEase Fintech Investment Fund that made it on to the CB Insights Fintech 250 list.

Digiday. Shareen Pathak (@shareenpathak) writes about the type of data retailers receive from Amazon and cites CB Insights jobs data.

Food Dive. A look at Hampton Creek’s move in to the “clean meat” business with a reference to CB Insights research on well-funded VC-backed food & beverage startups.

Happy Monday.

I love you.

Anand
@asanwal

P.S. CB Insights doesn’t have standing desks, but we do have a 401k with 4% match and we’re growing 8-figure ARR 100% per year. Oh, and we’re hiring in engineering, marketing, research, and everywhere else.