With the year coming to a close, we wanted to pull out some of the awesome, thought-provoking guest posts written by investors, founders, and entrepreneurs for VentureBeat in 2013. Make sure you check these out before the year comes to a close:
Above: Porch cofounder Ronnie Castro and his family.
I have brain cancer. What’s your excuse?
By Ronnie Castro. If you think your entrepreneurial journey is tough, just read this guy’s story and put your own life in perspective. From the article: “When you come close to dying, and survive, a lot of things change. Decisions become more black and white, trivial problems disappear, time becomes precious.” Read more…
Above: Image via Women Who Code
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30 years of being the only woman in the room — and how that’s changing
By Ellen Leanse: “As an investor, barely a day passes that I don’t hear a pitch from a bright, ambitious, woman founder addressing anything from dementia care to easy connectivity for the Internet of things. Again and again, they say they’d rather work with a female VC, rather have women advisers and board-members. I’m frequently told that they would prefer to collaborate with other women in a single-gender setting. For the first time in a long tech career, I’m starting to think they have a point.” Read more…
Above: Image by Tom Cheredar
R.I.P. Boxee: 3 lessons to learn from Boxee’s demise
By Nathan Betzen, XBMC community manager: “For a long time, many of us at XBMC were big fans of Boxee. The company led the good fight against content providers on behalf of consumers. Boxee spoke before congress in favor of unencrypted signals and consumers everywhere. It pushed XBMC semi-mainstream. Boxee did many things right. But as time went on, it started doing more and more things wrong.” Read more…
Why I can’t work at Google
By David Hardtke, Bright.com chief scientist: “Every year or so a clever Google recruiter contacts me. I’d really like to work at Google at some point. Google’s like Mecca for an information retrieval specialist. But each and every time they contact me, I still get the same question: Who do you know at Google? They beg me for names. Herein likes the problem – I don’t know anyone at Google.” Read more…
Why we haven’t reached digital music’s golden era
By Charles Caldas, CEO of Merlin: “Hypothetically, digital music fans should currently be living through a golden era. But short-sighted interests could be leading us into a dysfunctional new era of the music business instead. Allow me to explain.” Read more…
Above: Image courtesy of 20th Century Fox
What makes a great VC
By Micah Baldwin: “Every year as the newly minted VCs begin to settle in and blog/tweet, there is a bevy of posts about how venture capital as it stands today is broken, and they, with their new insights and operational histories, are going to fix it. Of course, most of them become what they rail against over the course of the next few years. As I have started to think more and more about jumping the fence full-force into the investing side of the entrepreneurial equation I keep asking myself two questions…” Read more…
Why hiring B players will kill your startup
By Jon Soberg: “B players and C players are far worse than D’s and F’s. In fact, in my experience, B players are the worst hires you can make. Before getting into the details, it may be useful to level-set and explain what I mean by these employee stereotypes (although there have been some differences of opinion over the years.)” Read more…
Above: Original unicorn image via Sari ONeal/Shutterstock
Why hiring unicorns will kill your startup faster than ‘B players’
By Nicholas Holland: “Regardless of their level of experience or expertise, most entrepreneurs can agree that unicorns are majestic, magical creatures that absolutely do not exist — never have and never will. So, it seems a little ridiculous when I hear people talk about stacking their startup’s roster with only unicorns — aka A Players — while completely dismissing anyone for employment that’s considered a ‘B player.’ Those people need a reality check when it comes to hiring.” Read more…