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Startup Digest Reading List: Tips for Investor Pitches, Future of Marketplaces, SPACs

Welcome back to this week's edition of Startup Digest Reading List, a curated list of the top stories
Issue #137 — View online — Suggest a link
Startup Digest Reading List
A curated list of the top stories in technology, startups, and venture capital.
Welcome back to this week’s edition of Startup Digest Reading List, a curated list of the top stories in technology, startups, and venture capital.
2021 is not looking any less volatile than 2020 so far, but let’s hope we can return back to some normalcy this year. 
On this note, my two partners at Race Capital - Alfred Chuang (Founder of BEA systems, early seed investor of Slack/Databricks) and Edith Yeung (former GP at 500 Startups, early seed investor at Agora (NASDAQ:API) and Solana - are doing a fireside chat about the investment landscape for 2021 especially for LP’s and capital allocators. 
Event is private but CM Weekly subscribers are welcome to join and listen in. 
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Written by Chris McCann, General Partner @ Race Capital, former Greylock Partners. More about me. 
Feel free to share with others, sign up here: https://startups.startupdigest.com/

Big Tech News Last Week
  • After the riots on January 6th on the U.S. Capitol, tech companies have started retaliating; including Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit banning Trump and Apple & Amazon kicking off Parler from their services.
  • At the same time, privacy-centric messenger app Signal was boosted to #1 on the App Store. Here’s an AMA the team did 3 days ago. 
  • The SolarWinds security hack (across every major branch of government, and every big tech company) was bad, but even worse parts are coming to light including sealed US court records being compromised.
Deep Dive Posts
  • Where does the economic value from SPAC’s come from? Matt Levine, one of the best writers on fintech, dives into the mechanics of how SPAC’s work.
  • Dan Hockenmaier (former director of growth at Thumbtack) lays out the future of marketplaces including the various categories marketplaces fall into and important variables that comprise each type. 
  • SoFi is going public via a SPAC and Jason Mikula reviews their IPO slidedeck with commentary on their business. TLDR: SoFi is primarily an unsecured lending business (personal and student loan refi). 
  • VC’s hear thousands of pitches but only say yes a few dozen times. Here are 10 tips for getting investors’ attention during the first pitch meeting.

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This Startup Digest Reading List goes out to a wide membership base of founders, technologists, investors, and operators. Feel free to share with others, sign up here: https://startups.startupdigest.com/
Techstars Startup Digest Startup Digest Reading List is curated by:
Chris McCann Chris McCann - General Partner @ Race Capital, former Greylock Partners
chris@startupdigest.com
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