This is Femstreet, a weekly newsletter featuring must-read content by female CEOs, operators and investors. I try to make this one of the best emails you get each Sunday morning. If you enjoy the content, please like it above and share it with friends.
Welcome to issue No. 164. I took a month off from writing our Sunday newsletter, the longest break ever since starting Femstreet in 2017. It felt good to be away, it feels even better to be back with and for you.
Insights
Only 20 women have ever taken US startups public.17 days into the new year and Bumble filed to go public and revealed it has 42m monthly users; dive into the numbers here.And this week, Poshmark more than doubled in an IPO, pushing its valuation above $7B. Here’s what Poshmark's co-founder Tracy Sun learned from her mentors. How you can Rent the Runway in 2021. A founder's guide to not losing your shit this year.The new career stack.One Way Ventures closed it’s second $57.5M fund to back immigrant founders. Nixing the stigmas and taboos around menstruation. Where the world is movingt in the next 12 months.The German Startup Xentral picked up a Series A of $20Mled by Seqouia. Benchmarks leads the $6M Seed of Stytch. Future Ventures, cofounded by Silicon Valley venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson and Maryanna Saenko has closed its second fund of $200M.Tracy Chou launches Block Party to combat online harassment and abuse and help us all feel safe on social media. New Wave is a new $56M European seed fund headed up by ex-Accel VC Pia d’Iribarne.
People
Diane Yu joins fintech Better.com as CTO to lead engineering and technical strategy.
Forerunner Ventures promoted Principal Nicole Johnson to Partner.
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My colleague Wendy Xiao Schadeck dives into the next wave of e-commerce and the attempt to build a more intuitive view through human behavior change, around the way we buy. Web 3.0 companies begin with scaling communities by default and she likes to imagine a world with hundreds of bottoms-up, organic, and naturally evolved communities with trust relationships with brands, similar to bottoms-up brand umbrellas. Dive into the steps to build systems for concretely creating, monitoring, and leveraging communities…Read more.
Why do you work?
As we emerge on the other side of the most transformative year of our lifetimes, might identity, community, inspiration and purpose — principles we’ve traditionally tied to our personal lives — be what the new hybrid workplaces of the future most need to grow into? Meera Clark of Obvious Ventures shares more on why we work. Read more.
Future homes, cities, neighborhoods
We have all spent a ridiculous amount of time these past 10 months in our homes. We have created small communities for ourselves due to the pandemic. How will all of these changes look when we get back out? Angel investor Joanne Wilson argues we should all asking ourselves what is it we want from our homes, cities, and neighborhoods. Read more.
How to get that job in venture in 2021
Thea Knobel of GSV Ventures says you can’t break into VC if you can’t articulate what makes you special, have the skills, and understand the landscape. Once you understand your own strengths and weaknesses and the type of firm you want to work at, you can start to build up your own skills and apply. More here.
Step boldly into your future
You raised a seed and now you want to raise a Series A? figure out who you want to raise from and be prepared. Sophia Bendz of Cherry Ventures and founders who have done it share their advice…Read more.
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“You can't be everything to everyone, but you can be something great for someone.”
How to nail your startup positioning
Marketing is highly tactical. There are frameworks and distinct steps founders can take to define what their company is doing, why it’s important, and why — above all the noise — people should listen to them. It all starts with positioning.Arielle Jackson, formerly Square & Cover, shares easy frameworks and a step by step guide…Read more.
What about a data science career?
It’s the start of a new year, new adventures, new events, and maybe a new career? A substantial number of Femstreet readers work in data science. It’s a challenging field, with a high gender balance and it doesn’t require a degree. But is it for you? More here.
First steps of machine learning for product management
So what are the AI and machine learning essentials for PM in 2021? AI is way older than TikTok or Tesla, many PMs are scrambling to learn and adapt to AI’s democratization. Here are some tips by Maria Ershova of SAGE on how to get on the train of ML/AI. Read more.
All about developer relations
We’ve seen lots of discussion this last week on how to measure developer relations Sometimes you can get lost in the trees and forget about the forest by overdoing KPIs. Companies need to understand that the dev rel function, especially in the early days, is an investment and will take time to build and evangelize your product. No matter what KPIs you have, the founders need to embrace the idea of dev relations and investing for the long term. Sarah Drasner at Netlify is talking about developer Experience and what it means versus just developer relations. Read more.
So what’s the secret to hiring like a startup?
About a third of a founder’s job is building a company people love working for. As a founder your challenge is hiring great people, who fit with the culture of the company, on an aggressive timeline (remember for startups, we think in 12-18 month increments). Here are some of my tips by Allison Kopf of Artemis. Read more.
How to Build Startup Momentum
In startups, you are also solving for x, which is momentum. And a key ingredient to momentum is growth. Growth is essential, but not sufficient. You need growth to get velocity. Velocity creates momentum. Holly Liu of Kabam shares how you get there.
Become a Femstreet contributor
You are a startup operator or investor and would like to increase your reach with your blog posts? We’d love to bring your content to our platform. Each month we will publish a select number of articles written by our operator and investor community. Our subscribers include the most important and interesting women in technology and business. Here are some of them. If you want to join this incredible group of Femstreet contributors, please reach out.
Future VC Diversity VC’s mission is to support talented individuals learn about and work in VC, and in doing so improve the inclusiveness of the Venture Capital industry. Their Future VC internship programme is open to those who are able to work full-time for 8 weeks during either of the cohorts and in the locations listed below. The development programme is fully remote and available globally. There will be two cohorts this year and you can find out more here. Apply now.
Newton Venture Porgramme LocalGlobe and London Business School have just launched a new Venture Capital training program called the Newton Venture Program. Their mission is to increase diversity in VC and train you to become the venture capitalist of tomorrow. Apply here.
Lead Artis/Visual Designer @Hidden Door (remote) Hidden Door, co-founded by Hilary Mason is a NYC based company that is building a new kind of online social narrative game for kids to imagine and explore limitless story worlds together with AI, is looking for a Lead Artist/Visual Designer. If you have hands-on experience including art direction, visual design, and user experience in the gaming or entertainment industries…Apply here.
If you want to be part of the fastest-growing company of the decade, our portfolio company Hopin is hiring for various remote roles. Happy to make intros to the right hiring managers.
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