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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...

Wil Schroter: Baremetrics did the unthinkable – it showed the rest of the world what other companies were doing in revenues – publicly. It pulled back the most sacred curtain. Why in the hell would you have ever thought that would be a good idea when so much common business practice does the opposite?

Josh Pigford: Our transparency is rooted in laziness! Back when I first launched Baremetrics I felt strongly about having a live demo instead of some screenshots. I could have generated an infinite amount of fake data, but that’d have taken a lot of time and I don’t think it’d have felt as authentic.

On top of that, my friends at Buffer and Groove and clearly had some success in being transparent, so figured what the heck!

At that point Barem...

So much has been written about startups and founders, it’s challenging to sort through it all and make sense of advice that often ‘depends’. Here’s my guide to entrepreneurial sins from 2 decades of entrepreneurship.

Taking an honest look at your startup — never an easy thing to do.

But you must.

Being too Early

A startup needs to be early to market, to disrupt while an early market is not yet conducive to incumbent self-disruption. But being too early is often deadly. No amount of brilliant entrepreneurship will save a venture that is too many years ahead of the convergence of factors necessary for success.

How many years is too many? This depends largely on capital, but a few years of prematurity may suffice.

What makes this business sin...

It’s a key buzzword of our time. What worrying over ‘The Age of Distraction’ really reveals is our great anxiety about maintaining focus and meaningful interactions, when we’re saturated with opportunities for immediate and trivial communications.

In 2017, we commonly understand that this ‘saturation anxiety’ is inextricable from our modern relationship to smartphones. One recent study shows that the average 18–33 year old checks their smartphone a shocking 85 times a day, while another reveals that the average attention span has fallen a third since 2000 (or around the time of the mobile revolution.) Clearly, any present-day solution to these problems has to take into account the smartphone question.

But distraction anxieties have been on...

First-Mover Advantage is an idea that just won’t die. I hear it from every class of students, and each time I try to put a stake through its heart.

Here’s one more attempt in trying to explain why confusing testosterone with strategy is a bad idea.

First mover advantage — great bad idea

The phrase “first mover advantage” was first popularized in a 1988 paper by a Stanford Business School professor, David Montgomery, and his co-author, Marvin Lieberman.[1]

This one phrase became the theoretical underpinning of the out-of-control spending of startups during the dot-com bubble. Over time the idea that winners in new markets are the ones who have been the first (not just early) entrants into their categories became unchallenged conventional wi...

A deep rumble filled the boardroom. Tchotchkes and Star Trek figurines jitter along the desks and fall to the floor. Instinctively the executives climb under the table for shelter. It’s Seattle, 2001, during the Nisqually Earthquake. To everyone’s amazement, Tom Killalea emerged to retrieve his laptop from the top of the desk, and proceeded to check whether Amazon.com was still live.

If Jeff Bezos had a “Mars Group” — Tom Killalea would be in it. But, I’ll get to that, later.

I’m fascinated by Amazon. Its stock price has risen 6,000% since 2001. Amazon has same-day online shopping — even at Christmas, powers a good chunk of the Internet with its web services and in 2016 won 5 Emmys and was nominated for 11 Golden Globes. Jeff Bezos has undo...

When I first left my full time job to try my hand at being an entrepreneur, I thought it would be helpful to join a women’s business networking group. The membership included a subscription to their women’s business magazine which provides exclusive content, advice, and tips for being more business-y.

I won’t name the organization, but I won’t be surprised if anyone recognizes it. I joined just over 6 months ago and every time I have received an issue of this quarterly magazine, I become a little more enraged.

The very first red flag is that inexplicably and despite the fact that the women’s magazine is only available to pre-paying members and can’t be bought in store, it has a price tag on it (but no barcode), presumably to convince the po...

Thanks to the internet, we’re riding the wave of a communication boom that makes the printing press pale in comparison. And during a time when inflation and economic instability has hit America’s working class the hardest, this boom has created huge opportunities for more people to claim their financial freedom — and to do so from the comfort of their couches.

Whether you telecommute, you sell products on Etsy, or you have started a new web-based business, an internet connection is the new cornerstone of commerce. However, the secret to success in this new frontier is not a secret at all. Hard work, persistence, and planning are still critical to taking your business from a pie-in-the-sky dream to a profitable business endeavor.

Success Sta...

Jennifer Justice is as much of a bad-ass as her Marvel Superhero name implies. She’s the current President of Corporate Development at Superfly, producers of festivals like Bonnaroo and Outside Lands. Before that, she spent 17 years as the personal entertainment lawyer for Jay Z. She’s also a single mom of twins, who has been outspoken about the power she gained after becoming a mother.

Her journey is all the more impressive when you understood where she came from: The daughter of a single mom who didn’t even finish high school, raised in poverty. Her story of clawing her way into the inner circles of superstardom and how her children made her even more ambitious is one of my favorites.

Sarah Lacy: You’re a lawyer. Now, did you feel like, ...

Entry-level workers are no longer U.S. college grads—in fact, some aren't even human anymore.

The world of entry-level talent has completely changed in the past decade, particularly for startups. Not too long ago, startups raided colleges with an implicit understanding that among college grads, you could find someone who was smart (the college part), willing to work hard (lots of free time), and relatively cheap (first job).

I know this well because I was exactly that—young, relatively smart, insanely hungry, and freakishly cheap to hire. Since then, I've been trying to find my 19-year-old clone every single day of my Founder life. What has changed, though, is that the most fertile hunting grounds for those folks are no longer U.S. colleges...