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Editors Note: Earlier this month Etsy revealed in its Q1 earnings report that the board is replacing Chad Dickerson, who has been CEO since 2011 and took the company public in 2015.

Josh Silverman, who joined Etsy’s board in November, will take over as CEO, while fellow board member Fred Wilson will be taking over Dickerson’s role as chairman of the board. Etsy is also losing CTO John Allspaw.

Dickerson said in a statement: “It has been an honor to lead Etsy as CEO for the past six years and the three years before that as CTO, the Board decided that it was time for new leadership to take Etsy forward and I support that decision.”

Here’s something you don’t hear in today’s unicorn “crushing it!” era of startups: “There’s something about los...

It was only a few short months ago that I jumped out of my steady job airplane in lieu of a parachuteless descent to San Francisco. With virtually no meaningful savings or product development experience, I started to frantically fabricate my company, Pronto Concepts Inc., into a parachute on the way down.

All I had was an idea for a product I thought people would like but I never imagined I could do it alone. I started my journey with a search for a co-founder, only to find out it could have been my biggest mistake.

Why would you want a co-founder?

The typical first step for any potential venture is to congregate a core team of co-founders. This is not done without merit, for there are several reasons for wanting to go at it with teammates...

80% of Resolutions Fall Short in the First QuarteR

Usually, after the third month of the year your crisp new running gear and fitbit has been designated to the back of the closet as a guilty reminder, and you are counting your steps to the subway station as your day’s exercise. You are not the only one. In fact, according to U.S. News, nearly 80% of resolutions fall short by the second week of February

While Millennials are better than their parent’s generation at sticking to new year’s resolutions, their frantic work and social lives make it hard to stick to plans on the long term. Millennials are ‘experience motivated’ and take up new hobbies and regimes with great intentions, but according to Statistic Brain only 8% achieve their resolut...

Unfortunately, my site (SujanPatel.com) was hacked again, but I’m happy to report that everything is back up and running – no data lost and no personal information compromised.

I wish I could say that this was the first time somebody messed with my site, but what I’ve come to learn is that getting hacked is part of the price of admission for running on WordPress.

Don’t get me wrong – I love WordPress. The fact that it’s open source and widely adopted means tons of great templates, plugins and add-ons, many of which I use to power this blog. But those same pros turn into cons when you take into consideration the fact that hackers have the same amount of access as you do.

Dealing with the potential for WordPress hacks requires two things – be...

It’s a common locker room scene: Before the big game, the team scrutinizes video of its upcoming opponent, trying to suss out the other team’s biggest strengths and weaknesses. Companies analyze their competitors, too, but they rarely turn that same analytical eye inward. That’s a mistake.

Why? Because, quite frankly, your company’s weaknesses can do far more damage than your competitors, and your strengths are reminders that you have the capacity to improve in other areas.

Think of it this way: How can you contrast your organization with another if you have no idea what value you bring to the table or where you stand? It’s time for an internal audit.

Evaluating Your Company in 3 Steps

Step 1: Conduct a Thorough Internal Assessment

Conduct...

It is critically important for the founders of a company to intimately understand the company’s Key Performance Indicators (“KPIs”). Founders cannot hope to grow a company in any meaningful way without an almost obsessive focus on its KPIs. Why? Because KPIs, if constructed correctly, give management and potential investors a cold, analytical snapshot of the state of the company, untainted by emotion or rhetoric. This focus must not be limited to the KPIs themselves, for they are merely measurements of outcomes. We look for founders to have an understanding of what levers can be pulled and what tweaks can be made to improve the business, which will then be reflected in its KPIs. So the focus should not be on the KPIs themselves, but the mea...

Startup failure statistics vary widely, but even the rosiest numbers show more than 50 percent failing within five years. Startup founders often have obligations to many stakeholders, including family, employees, investors, and perhaps customers. So when they are forced to face the reality of their business’s failure, they have a responsibility to these groups to do everything in their power to optimize the process of exiting. This starts with understanding the various paths available to you before you have $0 cash in the bank. By that point, many potential exit opportunities will be off the table.

It all starts with communication. It is critically important to communicate regularly and consistently with your stakeholders from the day you l...

Partha Unnava is the CEO of Better Walk, a company focused on developing a new type of crutch that improves the experience of a crutch user. Partha broke his ankle and had to hobble around on crutches for six weeks, he decided to develop a better set of crutches that wouldn’t kill his armpits. I spoke to Partha about his experiences launching the venture and his journey as an entrepreneur.

Determination

Q: What are some challenges you faced when developing your venture?

I’ve faced issues from cofounders leaving the company to fluctuations in funding and flat out denials from investors. I think I’ve been through almost every single up or down you can go through when you start a company, but I learned that the only limiting factor is the inf...

In 2014, my friends and I set out to build the best possible web design tools. We built UI kits, Admin Dashboards, Templates, and Plugins. We’ve always tried to create web products that are helpful in the development process, and that we would use ourselves for building websites for clients.

From a revenue’s perspective, if we don’t take into consideration the Black Friday sales (which doubled the amount that we made in November 2016), we are grossing around $22,000 per month. Part of that goes toward paying our affiliates’ commissions, collected VAT, payment vendors’ taxes, and other expenses. We end up netting around $17,000 each month.

In this case study, I’ll share exactly how we built our products and grew our business. You’ll hear all...

Aditi joined Crosslink in 2014, focusing on Mobile, Fintech and Internet Services investments. Prior to joining Crosslink, Aditi was an analyst in the technology, media & telecom investment banking group at Deutsche Bank in San Francisco providing M&A advisory and capital raising services for Internet & digital media and software clients. She has prior experience working at Allen & Overy LLP in Singapore and J.P. Morgan Private Bank in Hong Kong. Aditi holds a BA in Psychology from Stanford University, where she cultivated her interest in the human aspect of technology and the way it impacts lives.

What startup verticals interest you most right now?

Companies disrupting our current financial services infrastructure: changing the way we thin...