What's coming up next week on Caffeine
Plus: Some excellent weekend reading and shots fired at Google from startup royalty.
Good morning Caffeinators,
Read on to take a sneak peek at what’s coming from Caffeine in the next week for our subscribers, your usual Weekend Fuel recommendation and a parting shot.
First up though, a small correction to our post about the BNZ Growth Academy yesterday, the link should have directed you here. Apologies for any confusion.
A reminder that our first in person Caffeine event, The Risk-Reward Equation: How to Innovate Without Derailing Your Startup, is less than two weeks away but there are still a few tickets available.
Remember, it’s free for you Caffeinators using the code CAFFEINEFRIENDS. Just make sure you hit APPLY with promo code. Get your ticket here.
And if you’ve got a story, press release, interview to pitch or just want to tell me I’m wrong about something - send it over to finn@caffeinedaily.co
If you’re interested in working with Caffeine as a partner, flick Georgia an email on: georgia@caffeinedaily.co
Have a great weekend, look after each other and we’ll see you next week.
Finn and the CAFFEINE team
Coming up on Caffeine:
Heather Gadonniex is back with another cracker column: Check back in next Wednesday for the latest from our Beyond Borders series by Heather Gadonniex who is a US born and bred tech executive specialized in GTM. As CMO and Operating Partner at GD1, she’s passionate about translating best practices for growth and scale to the NZ ecosystem. She also serves as an Independent Director and Pavilion Envoy.
Interview with Mahesh Muralidhar, founder of Phase One Ventures: Mahesh is one of the most passionate and ambitious people I’ve ever interviewed in this space. Considering passion and ambition are kinda pre-reqs for startups, that’s saying something. After Phase One announced the final close of their $2.1M NZD early stage venture capital fund, I thought it was worth giving him a bell to hear more about his mission. Launched in April 2021, Phase One Ventures has deployed capital across a portfolio of 14 high-potential technology companies. The fund attracted GD1 as its anchor investor and investment from early team members at Canva and Kami. It’s built an impressive portfolio with 12 out of 14 companies (85%) securing institutional venture capital backing. He was generous with his time and insights and think you’ll love that conversation. Check that out next Thursday.
Part two of our conversation with Bizzy CEO and Insights Driven PM Corinna Stukan: Things are a little in flux last week so now this column will be published Tuesday. People seemed to enjoy my last conversation with Corinna Stukan, founder of Insights Driven PM and current CEO of new fintech startup, Bizzy and I really enjoyed it as well. So much so that we’re getting two piece of content out of it, this second column focused on the bigger picture of how you should think about measuring the metrics that matter at your startup.
Here’s what’s on our radar. Hit us with your own recommendations.
Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green: Anyone who has spent a lot of time on the internet has probably come across one of the Green brothers previously, some of the pioneers of early youtube with their vlogbrothers channel and both just truly delightfully nerdy men. They’re both also wildly successful in their own right and John is the author of many best selling books including The Fault in our Stars and now his latest, with one of my favourite titles of all time - Everything is Tuberculosis.
He writes a poignant, strangely personal and incredibly fascinating account of both the past and present of the world’s most virulent disease. Did you know a million people still die of TB annually and that up to 1 in 7 humans who have ever died, died of TB? He also confronts us with the fact that while we know how to live in a world without TB, yet we choose not to. The reasons for that are complicated and book length but by the end I promise you’ll see the world differently.
Is Google ‘stunting’ the startup eco-system’?: We talked yesterday about how Google is giving back to AI startups through its AI Future Fund so thought it was worth taking a note of the other side of the argument here. Legendary silicon valley VC and accelerator Y-combinator filed a brief as part of the US’ monopoly case against Google saying the tech titan has artificially ‘stunted’ the ecosystem of startups which could have challenged its dominance.
Check out more detail here.
That’s it for today, thanks for reading. Want to get in touch with a news tip, bit of feedback or just to chat? Email hello@caffeinedaily.co. Look after yourselves this weekend and we’ll see you Monday.