My top newsletters if you want to be up-to-date on the VC / Technology industry
In Finance, information is the most important commodity. Hedge fund analysts have for a long time used different mediums ranging from legacy providers such as the Bloomberg Terminal to next-gen real-time news analytics using the Twitter firehose, blogs and RSS feeds such as Dataminr.
In the Venture Capital industry, instant information is not as important as in the hedge fund industry. However, being daily / weekly up-to-date on current transactions, market trends and people moves is very useful. Imagine that you are working on a due diligence and you miss that the direct competitor of the company you are looking at just raised a HUGE series B from a Tier I VC. Or you are on a panel in front 1,000 people and someone asks a question about a recent transaction which you missed completely. It does not look good, right?
When I first started in the VC industry, the first thing I would do in the morning was to check 10+ Tech news websites. Then at lunch I would do the same. After dinner, same thing. Quite quickly, I realized that I could not cover all the interesting Tech blog / websites. Hence, I started to subscribe to much more intelligent and tech savvy people than me. This proved to be a huge productivity gain and it has helped me to be up-to-date.
Recently, few people have asked me what newsletters I read to keep myself updated on the recent Tech news. So I compiled a list of my top 9 newsletters that I check on a daily / weekly basis. Scroll down for more information on each newsletter. Do not hesitate to let me know if I missed any interesting ones.
Daily
Weekly
Others
- Daily blog posts by Fred Wilson
- A digest of artificial intelligence and machine learning news by Nathan Benaich
Job Newsletters
Hope this helps :)
Daily
- Who is writing the newsletter? Connie Loizos, founder of StrictlyVC and Silicon Valley Editor of TechCrunch. Writes about the VC industry since 2006.
- What is it about? Daily major information on the venture industry. The newsletter is divided into different sections including: Top News in the A.M., New fundings, New funds, Exits, People, Data, Essential Reads and Detours.
- Who is the audience? Venture capitalists, Tech bankers, Tech companies and VC-backed companies. The main audience is US-based readers but it does include EU news.
- What section do I recommend to read the most? I highly recommend the New fundings section.
- Who is writing the newsletter? The team behind the awesome Tech market intelligence platform, CBInsights.
- What is it about? New CBInsights products / features, heavy data sector deep dives, chart about funding / M&A trends and trending and world class infographic.
- Who is the audience? Venture capitalists, Tech bankers, Tech companies and VC-backed companies.
- What section do I recommend to read the most? I really like their timeline infographic such as this and company mapping like that.
- Who is writing the newsletter? Started by Dan Primack in 2010, the newsletter is now written by Erin Griffith, senior writer at Fortune.
- What is it about? The newsletter does not only cover the Tech VC industry but also the private equity sector and other segments such as Healthcare and CleanTech. The newsletter has seven main sections: Et Cetera (equivalent to the daily topic), The latest from Fortune, Venture Deals, Private Equity deals, IPOs Exits, Firm+Funds.
- Who is the audience? Anyone interested in recent Tech M&A & Financing.
- What section do I recommend to read the most? Private Equity deals and Firm+Funds.
Weekly
- Who is writing the newsletter? The team behind Tech.eu
- What is it about? Each Friday, the newsletter gives a free round-up of the week’s European technology news and must-reads.
- Who is the audience? Anyone interested in the European Tech sector. Most newsletters are targeted towards the US market, whereas Tech.eu offers the most comprehensive newsletter on the European market. The newsletter offers different segments including: What happened this week in European tech?, Upcoming technology events in Europe, M&A deals, IPO filings and rumours, Funding rounds, The big tech companies, Startup news, Investor news, Government(s) and policy, Great reads and opinion pieces, Ecosystem news, Interesting facts, lists and figures
- What section do I recommend to read the most? The big tech companies and Government(s) and policy sections are great.
- Who is writing the newsletter? Anna Irrera, Fintech Correspondent at Reuters and former Trading & Technology Reporter at Financial News, Dow Jones.
- What is it about? FinTech and InsurTech. Though most of the news are related to B2B FinTech — in relation to the Sell-side and the Buy-side.
- Who is the audience? CIOs, Innovation labs, FinTech VCs, Consultants etc.
- What section do I recommend to read the most? Large institutions FinTech announcements.
- Who is writing the newsletter? Alexander Danco & the team at Social Capital — Since its founding in 2011, Social Capital headed by Mamoon Hamid and Chamath Palihapitiya has become one of the most important west coast VCs.
- What is it about? Insights and commentary on a recent Technology topic, Weekly Internet trendy news, Social Capital family (Portfolio Companies, Team etc.).
- Who is the audience? Anyone interested in technology from startup wannabes, VCs, Co-founders etc…
- What section do I recommend to read the most? The first section on the deep dive on a recent topic is always very good. Highly recommended.
- Who is writing the newsletter? Benedict Evans, “Partner” at Andreessen Horowitz, and also famous author of the presentation: “Mobile is eating the world”.
- What is it about? Tech News, Blog posts, Statistics with a focus on mobile, social network, AR/VR, new trends etc…
- Who is the audience? VC, Equity Research, Startups with a focus on mobile, social network, AR/VR, deep tech etc…
- What section do I recommend to read the most? Benedict is a fantastic blog writer and its Statistics session is also always refreshing.
Others
Daily blog posts by Fred Wilson
- Who is writing the newsletter? Fred Wilson, Managing Partner at Union Square Ventures. He has been a venture capitalist since 1987 and is one of the most successful VC with previous investments including Twitter (IPO), Tumblr (Sold to Yahoo) and Zynga (IPO).
- What is it about? Almost everyday, Fred writes a short post about something related to technology or current affair ranging from a new app or podcast / video to check out and thoughts on the industry as well as VC-topics such as “The Three Terms You Must Have In A Venture Investment”.
- Who is the audience? Everyone with an interest in Technology.
- What section do I recommend to read the most? Recent Tech trend posts are always worldclass.
A digest of artificial intelligence and machine learning news by Nathan Benaich
- Who is writing the newsletter? Nathan Benaich, Partner at Playfair Capital — a London based early stage venture capital fund. Past investments include Mapillary, Appear Here and DueDil.
- What is it about? A digest of artificial intelligence and machine learning news from the technology industry, research lab and venture capital market. Nathan discusses and gives his point of view on the recent affairs in the AI / ML space.
- Who is the audience? Anyone interested in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Though the “ Research, development and resources” does often require a Scientific background…
- What section do I recommend to read the most? Technology news, trends and opinions.
Job Newsletters
- Who is writing the newsletter? John Gannon, former VC at L Capital Partners and now Product Manager at DigitalOcean and CEO and Co-founder at BEMAVEN. Also would recommend to check out GoingVC, a paid membership group ($1299 paid upfront per member per year) that helps people get a job in venture capital — and is designed to tackle all of the challenges I just mentioned.
- What is it about? The biggest collection of venture capital job postings and VC job tips on the web.
- Who is the audience? VCs looking for new hire, anyone wanted to break-in into the industry
- What section do I recommend to read the most? Amazing source of information regarding new jobs in the industry and also highly recommend the blog posts, very insightful!
2. European Venture Capital Jobs
- Who is writing the newsletter? Stephan von Perger, former Principal at London-based Wellington Partners and now Co-Founder & CEO at Zenjob, On-demand staffing platform, matching talents and businesses for casual jobs
- What is it about? List of roles in European Venture Capital funds ranging from more junior positions such as Intern, Analyst, all the way up to Associate, Investment Manager, and Principal but can occasionally also include Entrepreneur in Residence
- Who is the audience? VCs looking for new hire, anyone wanted to break-in into the industry
- What section do I recommend to read the most? Great source of information for European roles
Etienne
