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Month: November 2020

How Israel and the Arab World Connect Through Technology

by David
This post is by David from David Teten's blog

One of the greatest missed opportunities in Middle East business is no longer going to be missed.

Back in July, I wrote an essay in Geektime on “The Anti-Israel BDS Movement Will Fail“. Little did I know how quickly that would prove true!

Many Israeli companies build technologies which could be very valuable to the broader Middle East region, particularly in water tech, agriculture technology, and cybersecurity.  However, Israeli companies historically did not focus on marketing to their immediate neighbors.  However, Israel and the United Arab Emirates recently announced that they will normalise diplomatic ties and forge a broad new relationship. Other Arab countries are rumored to be working on similar initiatives.

The MENA region has a population of nearly 500 million people, with a growing young population. The average GDP per capita is approximately $35,000. It’s a major opportunity.

I have a longstanding interest in this nexus. Back in early 2017, I worked with ABANA (network of financial professionals with ties to the Middle East/North Africa); Harvard Arab Alumni Association; and Harvard Business School Alumni Angels of NY (which I founded) to launch an annual Tech Summit in New York focused on the Middle East/North Africa region (“MENA”) .  I previously lived in Israel for 3 years and was CEO of an Israeli startup.

I’ve identified a wide range of organizations who are working on bridging the economic, cultural, and political gap between Israel, the Arab community, and the Middle East/North Africa region (“MENA”) through technology. (Read more...)

Interviewing Designers and PMs: The Design Challenge

by Giff Constable
This post is by Giff Constable from giffconstable.com

It’s really hard to interview product designers and product managers. The most effective step I added to my cycles several years ago is a design challenge.

The challenges themselves are a 2-hour take-home challenge, and then a 1-hour presentation with cross-functional members of the team. Because of the time commitment, it is best saved for late in the interview cycle. Why take-home? Because I don’t think asking people to think on their feet is an accurate simulation of how we work, and creates an unfair bias for/against certain personality types.

With the design challenge, you get exposure to several big questions about a candidate:

  • how do they think through product design?
  • can they effectively time-box a problem?
  • are they comfortable sketching and sharing a rough sketch?
  • can they coherently communicate their ideas and lead a room?
  • can they handle questions and effectively riff / collaborate with the group?

For product managers, I’m often looking to get a sense of their product design chops and creativity. I’ve found that it’s easier to understand strategic, analytical and process chops in more classic interviews, but if I only wanted analytical and process skills, I’d hire a technical project manager. You might be looking for something else in a PM, and so alter the design prompt for your purpose. For product designers, I’m trying to get a sense of their interaction design thought process. For both, I’m looking to get a taste of their communication and collaboration styles.

I’m always adjusting and (Read more...)

Tony Hsieh

by Jo Tango
This post is by Jo Tango from jtangoVC.com

I never met Tony Hsieh (pronounced “shay”). But we were in an investment together decades ago, before there was a Zappos, before he was famous, and during the Dot-Com Bubble. When I was working on an investment (Ask Jeeves, which went IPO), I saw “Venture Frogs” listed on the cap table. I asked Rob Wrubel,

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The post Tony Hsieh appeared first on jtangoVC.com.

259. Developer Tools, The Surge of European Tech, and Why Founder Needs Differ Across Regions (Reid Christian)

by Nick Moran

Reid Christian of CRV joins Nick to discuss Developer Tools, The Surge of European Tech, and Why Founder Needs Differ Across Regions. In this episode, we cover:

  • Walk us through your background and path to VC
  • What’s the thesis at CRV?
  • $600M closed in July... any change to approach or thesis?
  • What are some of the focus areas that you're leaning into amidst the circumstances?
  • How do you evaluate teams?
  • What type of founders excites you to invest?
  • Centralization — the shift from consumers to creators
  • Why is your focus on SAAS/CLOUD/ENTERPRISE IT/BIG DATA?
  • What does the future look like for Enterprise SaaS companies?
  • How has your sourcing of startups changed?
  • In another lifetime, would you like to be a professional basketball player or a venture capitalist?
  • Three data points question

 

259. Developer Tools, The Surge of European Tech, and Why Founder Needs Differ Across Regions (Reid Christian)

by Nick Moran

Reid Christian of CRV joins Nick to discuss Developer Tools, The Surge of European Tech, and Why Founder Needs Differ Across Regions. In this episode, we cover:

  • Walk us through your background and path to VC
  • What’s the thesis at CRV?
  • $600M closed in July... any change to approach or thesis?
  • What are some of the focus areas that you're leaning into amidst the circumstances?
  • How do you evaluate teams?
  • What type of founders excites you to invest?
  • Centralization — the shift from consumers to creators
  • Why is your focus on SAAS/CLOUD/ENTERPRISE IT/BIG DATA?
  • What does the future look like for Enterprise SaaS companies?
  • How has your sourcing of startups changed?
  • In another lifetime, would you like to be a professional basketball player or a venture capitalist?
  • Three data points question

 

Thank you, Tony

by dunkhippo33
This post is by dunkhippo33 from Elizabeth Yin

Coincidentally enough, I had decided that I wanted to write a letter to my mentor Tony this weekend, thanking him for the huge impact he’s had on my life. But I suppose that has now morphed into a more public letter.

Being in a zombie, half blurry-eyed state, it’s a little tough to articulate well what Tony has meant to me. We go through life, and a lot of people have an impact on us, and it’s often hard to say that a particular person caused you to take a particular path. But, Tony is one of the few people whom I can definitely say my life would not at all be what it is without him.

I first met him many years ago in Dec 1996 when I was just starting high school. My best friend Jennifer asked me what I was doing for winter break and if I wanted to help out her cousin Tony with his new internet startup. I had no idea what an internet startup was, but I had nothing going on, so I agreed to go.

On the first day of our holiday break, Jennifer and I hopped on the Caltrain from the peninsula (Silicon Valley) to head to his office in SOMA (San Francisco). It was exciting! We couldn’t drive, but we could go to a startup office all by ourselves! I followed Jennifer to the address. I think their office was actually someone’s apartment. And when we got there, there seemingly was (Read more...)

Conflicting Advice

by David Cohen
This post is by David Cohen from Hi, I'm David G. Cohen

I’ve had several conversations recently where the idea came up that advice is situational. And, for any often used piece of advice, it’s sometimes easy to give exactly the opposite advice. The hard part is deciding what advice (if any) to take in your situation. As I was saying this, I kept remembering a table I had read somewhere of “exact opposite” advice. I finally found it when revisiting a great book called The Happiness Equation. Here’s the table from that book.

Defense wins championships.The best defense is a good offense.
Birds of a feather flock together.Opposites attract.
You’re never too old to learn.You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
Clothes make the man.You can’t judge a book by its cover.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder.Out of sight, out of mind.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.Better safe than sorry.
You get what you pay for.The best things in life are free.
Good things come to those who wait.The early bird gets the worm.
The pen is mightier than the sword.Actions speak louder than words.

“Advice is never objectively true in all situations.”

What other pairs can you add? Please do so in the comments!

The post Conflicting Advice appeared first on Hi, I'm David G. Cohen.

How to Talk About the Arc of Your Career

by Charlie O'Donnell

Not everyone’s career moves up and to the right from beginning to end.

In fact, I don’t think that actually happens to anyone—but some people are just better at hiding the wrong turns, u-turns, and downturns than others. The key isn’t skipping over them—because a recruiter or potential employer can sniff out a story that doesn’t make sense from a mile away. The key is repositioning everything that doesn’t go perfectly as a learning experience—something that reaffirms that you are a better potential employee today than you have ever been.

Everyone leaves a job for a reason—and that reason is that something came up short of expectations. Either you did, or the job did, or both. If a job continuously surpassed your expectations everyday, and you did the same for the people you worked with, you’d never leave.

For some reason, people feel the need to fit their careers into some kind of neat little explainable timeline—and when there’s a bump along the road, they get all bent out of shape because it no longer sounds like a Disney story.

People are afraid that mistakes will reflect badly in a way that won’t make people want to work with you going forward, so they try to avoid talking about the past. No one should have to feel like that.

No matter what the situation there’s a way to share how you are better for having the experience—because you are.

Let’s take all the possible scenarios, based on this chart:

Screen Shot 2020-11-27 at 6.39.29 PM.png

There (Read more...)

How to Talk About the Arc of Your Career

by Charlie O'Donnell

Not everyone’s career moves up and to the right from beginning to end.

In fact, I don’t think that actually happens to anyone—but some people are just better at hiding the wrong turns, u-turns, and downturns than others. The key isn’t skipping over them—because a recruiter or potential employer can sniff out a story that doesn’t make sense from a mile away. The key is repositioning everything that doesn’t go perfectly as a learning experience—something that reaffirms that you are a better potential employee today than you have ever been.

Everyone leaves a job for a reason—and that reason is that something came up short of expectations. Either you did, or the job did, or both. If a job continuously surpassed your expectations everyday, and you did the same for the people you worked with, you’d never leave.

For some reason, people feel the need to fit their careers into some kind of neat little explainable timeline—and when there’s a bump along the road, they get all bent out of shape because it no longer sounds like a Disney story.

People are afraid that mistakes will reflect badly in a way that won’t make people want to work with you going forward, so they try to avoid talking about the past. No one should have to feel like that.

No matter what the situation there’s a way to share how you are better for having the experience—because you are.

Let’s take all the possible scenarios, based on this chart:

Screen Shot 2020-11-27 at 6.39.29 PM.png

There (Read more...)