David Mytton

My personal website is now pretty close to bulletproof. Hosted entirely on S3 and Cloudfront Zero backend code Searchable Articles using 100% client-side code No more worrying about my poor little EC2 instance running out of storage or CPU or having services fail -- basically zero devops and nothing really to hack. It's a style of architecture I've been meaning to implement for years and I was surprised how well it actually worked in this case. I wrote up a quick article about it on my spiffy new website. Looking forward to see what actually DOES fail... https://lnkd.in/g64kSsJr #devsecops #webdev #appdev #programming #cloudarchitecture #architecture

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This is a cool project, and another example of the emerging "replace stateful storage with S3" trend. I do wonder at what point someone will package this sort of thing up into a FUSE filesystem to make it generally usable across existing services. Or maybe every service has unique enough needs that it's better to handle it custom each time. https://lnkd.in/etcVBfVf

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Polls can be a cheat code for earned media, and a great way to build authority. But there are levels to this. Here's how one of the best I've seen - Capital One - does it. (And what I'd do differently to increase earned coverage). Led by Shena Ashley, PhD, Capital One's Insights Center is a masterclass in leveraging polls to create unique insights that would do incredibly well via earned syndication. Here’s what they do great: ✅ Content that sticks: Crucial issues > fleeting trends. Focusing on topics like financial stability, mobility, and entrepreneurship, it's easier to rationalize investment on topics with a longer shelf life. Their insights + stories can drive coverage for months to come. ✅ Visual storytelling: Data doesn’t have to be dry, and Capital One presents original insights through clear and eye-pleasing visuals that are easy to understand. Publishers like charts, they love colorful charts, and they LOVE colorful charts that are easy to understand. Check, check, check. ✅ Strong methodologies and extensive polling numbers: Capital One frequently involves 7k+ participants in their studies - they are not half a**ing it. Well explained methodologies are table stakes to get your polls covered, and Capital One does a great job outlining their data collection process, sample size, and research methodologies.   ✅ Easy to steal: Each report has multiple easy to take stories/soundbites, and are also written as full pieces of content, which can be taken as whole. Finally --- if I could change one thing... Add a byline. Brand publishing NEEDS a byline - no news outlet wants to cover a story that can't be credited back to a human. All in all, polls can be incredibly valuable for driving earned syndication - check out Capital One's Insights Center in comments for killer examples.

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Today, while reviewing Layerpath's monthly changelog process, I had an "aha" 💡 moment: we were telling only half the story! 🤔 Like many product-led companies, we've been feature-focused. But our users don't just buy features - they invest in our vision, approach, and community. Here's what I learned from studying companies I admire (Notion, Figma, Canva) and adding our own Layerpath spin: 1. Multi-format storytelling is key. ↳ Fun fact: As a company that helps others create stunning demos and content, we're putting our own tech to work here! 😉) 2. Product updates should reflect company culture. ↳ Shoutout to marketer Swathika who walks the talk - using Layerpath to create our own help docs and resources!) 3. Community insights drive innovation ↳ Your feedback shapes not just what we build, but how we think. 4. User success stories inspire possibilities ↳ Because real impact > feature lists 5. Transparent communication builds trust ↳ Sharing both wins and improvements builds stronger relationships The best updates aren't just about what shipped - they're about the value creation, problem-solving, and community building. Sometimes, the best playbooks need personalization - what works for others should inspire, not constrain, your unique story—taking this learning forward at Layerpath! What's your take on product updates? How do you prefer to learn about new features and improvements? #ProductLedGrowth #StartupLessons #BuildInPublic #ProductUpdates

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Venture Capital Contact Compilation. Explore a detailed list of 1,250+ VC firms, 7,400+ professionals in the VC space (including partners and principals), and 6,400 email contacts. https://payhip.com/b/cs7UQ #startup #startups #vc #venturecapital #investmentbanking #privateequity #managementconsulting #b2b #founders #entrepreneurs

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Can any friends at Google help address this live domain spoofing issue? What if Google is getting spoofed! https://lnkd.in/ggDyy5uG It's unfortunately pretty easy to recreate this given Google allows Display URL to be changed, and not every business name is trademarked so you may not be able to file the ad for a trademark infringement. How did this slip passed business verification though? May need to make that process more robust as it is relatively new and by this example, it is not working as well as it can be.

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"Probably the worst decision that I made as CEO of Loudcloud was to take ona. 10-year lease with a $30M letter of credit. We leased the space right before the dot-com crash. Rents dropped 10-fold in Menlo Park... worse yet, due to the recession, we couldn't hire so the space we already had was sufficient and we never ended up moving into the new building. So I basically lost $30M for nothing." This is from Ben Horowitz's recent interview with Big Think. Even a quarter century ago the typical office lease construct is misaligned with how a company needs to operate. Our industry could get away with this when office spaces had a monopoly on how and where work got done, but those days are dead. As global markets are crashing, we'll be looking at another disruptive cycle for businesses which will create more cost cutting pressure and the first thing to go when they roll will be inflexible leases. CRE needs to develop new offerings and fast. https://lnkd.in/ePuZgzkU

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Chat with Miles Clements about building Linear For me companies are like design problems: you have context, constraints & goals unique to you. Then you look for a solution that has a good fit to your unique problems. The company problem also evolve over times the solution Directly applying what others have done doesn’t work that well, yet there is lot emphasis on playbooks, pattern matching and playing copying what other companies are doing in industry. https://lnkd.in/ghxjJwYU

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One of my favorite advantages of Y Combinator is that thousands of YC veterans have specific advice for you. Sometimes, that advice isn't public. But this essay is one of the best, and anyone can read it. Paul Graham's "Do Things That Don't Scale" describes a common thread between almost every successful company. Here are a few of his examples: Recruiting - "You can't wait for users to come to you. You have to go out and get them." He describes Stripe (one of the most successful YC companies ever) not waiting to onboard users who wanted to sign up in the early days. If they agreed, one of the Collison brothers (the founders) would simply use their laptop to sign them up on the spot. Instead of being shy and lazy about it, they were bold. Initial fragility - "Almost all startups are initially fragile. Founders ... unconsciously judge larval startups by the standards of established ones." It's fine if reporters and juggernauts dismiss your startup, but dangerous if you start to dismiss or doubt your own. Delight your users - "Your first users should feel that signing up with you was one of the best choices they ever made." Wufoo (one of the early YC startups) sent each new user a hand-written thank you note. This is one of many ways you can delight them - try to make them TOO happy. Experience - "The feedback you get from engaging directly with your earliest users will be the best you ever get." Laser focus on an "insanely great" attention to users. He explains that the product doesn't have to be insanely great at the beginning, but the user's experience does. That means over-engaging, which is fine. It promotes a tight feedback loop. Fire - A narrow focus is critical. "It's like keeping a fire contained at first to get it really hot before adding more logs." Startups who build things for themselves ("I was so sick of experiencing X, so I created Y solution") will do this without even thinking about it. Manual - "There's a more extreme variant where you don't just use your software, but are your software." Essentially, do things manually that you would automate later. A feature doesn't have to be code complete if you can get away with it at the beginning. There are more in the article - I highly recommend reading it. But my main takeaway is the most successful companies didn't automate and scale every single action from Day One. In PG's words, "startups take off because the founders make them take off. There may be a handful that just grew by themselves, but usually it takes some sort of push to get them going." That usually means manually doing things that don't scale.

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🏛 PredictAP, Inc. is an AI-powered invoice capture platform to codify tribal knowledge and modernize software tooling in a traditionally “offline” real estate industry 🏛 It's W5 / Q4 / 2024 & this week in our MGMT Boston startup series we’ve got PredictAP, a team building the product they wished they had reconciling invoices, tax IDs, and payment flows to help real estate managers better allocate resources and capture efficiencies. Founder & CEO David Stifter worked for Colony Capital for almost 20 years and is an accountant by background (having studied locally at BU). He became an in house real estate technology leader and led a major ERP integration to Yardi, the industry standard real estate accounting software. His career was advancing. The migration went smoothly. Then Chrissa, who was a key player in Colony Capital’s AP process, retired (with her institutional knowledge). Colony ($43B in assets) moved a lot of money around and had an internal system that helped them reconcile payments, approvals, and invoicing through a complex ownership structure. Accounting rules vary depending on whether a property in their portfolio was a multi-family asset or an industrial asset. AP isn’t glamorous, but you can imagine the complexity as it relates to cash flows, invoicing, tracking, etc. So when Chrissa retired, poof! A lot of context went missing. David & his team built an internal “invoice coding system” tool and, a couple years later, David bought out the rights to the internal tool with his partner Russell Franks to build a proper technical infrastructure and see if this tool could help real estate managers more broadly. A year later the product was ready, and PredictAP hit the market running in 2021 to solve a very specific pain point: properly coding multi-line real estate invoices. So real estate teams can spend more time in the facility and less time manually updating spreadsheets and reconciling data. Today they have 80+ customers and can show clear 4-5x ROI on the time savings, let alone the resiliency they are building. The platform processes nearly 3M invoices annually, demonstrating its scalability. In November of 2023 they closed their $8M Series A and are on track to grow from six figures to mid seven figures of ARR in 2024. They expect to close the year at over 100% revenue growth and have seen existing customer revenue growth grow by 25%. With a team of ~20 employees, PredictAP is positioned at the intersection of real estate, accounting, and AI technology as a crucial player in the real estate accounting technology stack. Operators to Know (Locally): -Greg Achenbach, VP of Product -Kristina D., Software Engineer -Ethan Neidhart, Software Engineer -Ali Noel, Director of GTM Enablement -Tony Scalese, VP of Customer Success -Emma D Whitman, MPH, Product Manager If you're interested in learning more, the full post is linked in the comments And sign up for the newsletter to see who we bring you in the weeks ahead!

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A cautionary tale for any entrepreneur including warrants in their fundraising efforts. Techcrunch ran a story yesterday on the collapse of Newchip and how warrants flowed through the bankruptcy proceedings. I am guessing in this situation, there were NO clauses protecting the startups from the insolvency of Newchip. If true, my heart aches for these startups now fighting to protect their equity pool/CAP tables from unknown outside investors coming into their company at likely ridiculous valuations via bankruptcy actions. It's a cautionary reminder to get solid advice from legal counsel—or, failing the ability to afford outside counsel, seek advice from experienced entrepreneurs who know their way around term sheets and investment terms. Best of luck to those companies mentioned in this article. And for anyone reading this who is a startup founder or entrepreneur, worth a read! #startup #entrepreneur #fundraising https://lnkd.in/gsvzQ_wT

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Setting a vision is just the start. Think about the bold moves needed to make it happen. Sundar, Google's CEO, set a daring vision to tackle climate change. That's where the real work begins. Executing a vision requires bold and tough decisions. Google is buying nuclear energy to feed its AI data centers. Other big tech companies are following this lead. This is a big kudos to Sundar and his leadership team. They are executing on a sustainability vision. Leadership is about taking action. And Sundar is showing the way.

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At Proplens AI we are building vertical AI (LLM) agents for real estate! 🏢 At times we do see skepticism around application of Gen AI to reimagine customer journeys in traditional industries like real estate, specifically in Asia. "Customer interactions in real estate will always be a high-touch human only workflow, how will AI add value here?". Proponents of these old school arguments tend to ignore the fact that AI is not all about automation, but also about enabling and empowering human professionals to deliver significantly better, faster, cheaper outcomes🎯in ways never imagined earlier. These arguments also ignore the evolving consumer behaviour in favour of transparency, information authenticity, responsiveness & personalization - areas where AI can directly amplify customer experience (CX) for real estate firms.✨ Sales and customer support professionals in RE firms spend significant amount of time in routine tasks like follow-ups, personalizing customer communication, information lookup & coordination tasks. Our AI agents make their lives simpler, enabling them achieve more! Win for businesses, employees & end consumers💪. #proptech #GenerativeAI #AIforRE

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We Should be Investing in #Femtech https://lnkd.in/gkjeqiPp via Kera DeMars and Eric Bahn Hustle Fund nice read and Esmé SX agrees with Chelsey Moss and Christine May, Ph.D. 😉 Women's healthcare is an industry that traditional VCs often miss out on, despite the fact that the market encompasses, oh, half the world's population. So why are so many VCs missing the boat? It could be because the male-dominated VC industry thinks of women's health as icky. Or it could be a lack of awareness about the market potential. Whatever the reason, this blind spot is leaving billions on the table. In today's issue of Small Bets, we're going to dig into the opportunities around women's healthcare. Just how big is the women's health market? 3.9 billion That's how many women there are in the world. And about 3.4 billion of them are over the age of 14. We're talking about a market that encompasses nearly half of the global population. Yet, when it comes to VC funding, women's health startups are consistently passed over. For comparison, SaaS companies get about 30% of all VC funding, and fintech startups receive around 18%. Women's health startups... they get less than 2% of VC funding. But here's where it gets interesting: The global women's health market is projected to reach $51.3 billion by 2025. And the companies that will win are the ones that integrate seamless into women's daily lives. The Future is Female (Health) So, where does this leave us? We have: - A massive, underserved market - Glaring gaps in the current healthcare system - Hungry companies ready to disrupt the status quo - The potential for significant financial returns and positive social impact Sounds like a perfect storm of opportunity, doesn't it? Here's my prediction: Women's health tech will be one of the fastest-growing sectors in the coming decade. The VCs who recognize this now will reap the rewards in years to come. Susan Bratton Melissa Barall, CFA Jessica Karr Karin Dahlstrom Erin Orden Collette Willow Tibbetts Arlan Hamilton ⭐️ Dr. KaT Zarychta ⭐️ April Pride Brianna Makówka, MSEd, MHC-LP Desiree Almodovar Dr. Anna Hushlak Jacqueline Buckingham Bobbi Bidochka Mal Harrison Sunbal (Somi) Javaid Kathrin Folkendt Dominnique Karetsos Karina Vazirova Cindy Gallop Rachel Kimelman Fara Bakare A.G. Breitenstein Cat Jordan Ellen Wilcox Andrew MacPherson Erin Greenman Maria Milendorf Silvia Mah PhD, MBA Wendy Anderson Cristina Ljungberg Kerry Rupp Abbie Strabala Kelly Chen  

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Excited to share the launch of Verix from Virtualness! As we embrace the AI era, the need for authentication, transparency, and security is more critical than ever. That’s why Virtualness has developed Verix—a self-serve platform designed to simplify the verification of skills, tickets, certificates, products, and content. Powered by blockchain and GenAI, Verix allows businesses to effortlessly manage verification processes, complete with real-time analytics and alerts. With a product that offers dynamic verification badges, design customization, global digital shareability, enterprise-grade workflow, and engagement and personalization, their mission is simple: to build a future where everything real can be verified, trusted, and celebrated. If your business thrives on trust, verification, and recognition, now is the time to get involved. Sign up today at https://lnkd.in/g_g2sUUW #Verix #NewBeginnings #DigitalTrust #Blockchain #Innovation #ProductLaunch #Virtualness

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It's been 10 days since I started working alongside Gabe Naviasky to build the GTM approach for Leadbeam. (The guy is a legend - give him a follow!) Earlier this week, I caught up with the other co-founders Soham Tikekar and Kennan Murphy-Sierra too - they walked me through the vision, the roadmap, and gave me a glimpse of what they've been cooking up (some super cool updates coming soon). Also been chatting with some sales leaders in the space this week, and their feedback is a testament to what the team is building. When Gabe and I talked about outbound and getting the brand out there, one thing I insisted on was getting us on Dimmo 🦖. Big fan of what Sarah Brazier and Troy Munson are building. LeadBeam is now on Dimmo - https://lnkd.in/gSXeSfX2 If you manage a field sales team, you definitely want to check us out and safe to say we're here to change the CRM adoption game for Field Sales teams :) . #leadbeam #fieldsales #outsidesales #salesforce #hubspot

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With Velt (YC W22) we provide features that boost engagement and growth within your product. You can add full-stack features like contextual comments, recording, notifications and more. You can fully customize these components. Make them feel native. Make them your own. Match your brand. Developers have full control: * Custom component layouts * Your own CSS * Dynamic template variables * Conditional component rendering * Custom behaviors and functionality * Component variants * Or build your own UI with our APIs. Learn more👇

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LLM is a crowded and very expensive place. And what strikes me is that everyone is raising more and more money for compute. What a fantastic race. But none of the runners actually tell us what this tech will do. The promises are vague. If you ask the basic question that Christian Clayton deems the most important - for what job would you hire this technolgy?, the answers is usually that it will be so powerful that it will do everything. In other words, we do not know yet the jobs for which we will hire these tools. For some people the power of AI means cutting jobs as fast as they can, and for others it is the dream of not having to work anymore. To sum it up, the expectation is that it will replace jobs but we do not know how or which ones. Everyone has a different bague prediction on that topic. What amazes me is how great expectations create exuberance and lack of common sense. We keep throwing money at more and more furure oriented tech with the mindset that when you build it, they (I mean the expected solutions/customers) will come, while no one seems to be paying attention that it takes twice longer to get things done today compared to when we didn’t have these technologies. It appears that we listen more to the drumbeat rather than to the grapevine. And if we look back at the history of evolution of technology productivity always wins over futurism, and the biggest danger for any company and the economy is a bright future that obfuscates the problems of today. Sooner or later flying stock valuations are anchered to productivity and revenues and this is why the present exuberance reminds many futurists of the past AI winters. https://lnkd.in/ev_vTRnw

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