Stripe, Twillio, etc. provide access to commodities.
The "API as a marketplace" concept postulates that there are situations in which the supply is differentiated and you care about with which supplier you get connected.
As we mention in the intro to the guide, we don't address product-market-fit questions in the handbook (or other things you need to figure out in the earliest stages of your company creation) - we are really focused on the time between seed and Series B and hiring is a key aspect of that phase.
Why do you think that? Compare it to the type of customers you attract at different stage of building a product: your first customers are always the most passionate, most valuable customers. As you broaden the customer base, you attract people that are way less into your product. Female founders are still a very small group, only the most passionate, most courageous, most talented ones are currently considering becoming entrepreneurs. Once being a female founder is the new normal, pitch to funding rates between males and females will be much closer again. Having said all that, this is just a theory based on anecdotal experience.
My (anecdotal) experience is that the success rate of female founders to convert a pitch to funding is significantly higher - might be due to the fact that only the most talented female founders have currently the courage to think about starting a company.
I might be biased as I run a venture fund myself (Version One Ventures) but I think there are a handful excellent investors up here in Canada, most of which invest across North-America. Here is a good overview: http://www.techvibes.com/blog/state-of-venture-capital-in-ca...
Great template - most of my SaaS portfolio companies use very similar metrics templates. One addition would be YoY numbers so that you can better account for seasonality.
There are a few really successful companies here in Vancouver (Hootsuite, Clio, Unbounce, A Thinking Ape, Indochino), a healthy early-stage ecosystem (LaunchAcademy, GrowLab) and a great pool of developers and designers (that's why you have Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple all having development offices in town)
Not a Canadian angel but an early-stage fund (www.versiononeventures.com) - would love to talk to the start-ups you are mentioning - thx for making an intro.
Agreed - just went through the list of product that pass the toothbrush test for me and Gmail is on top: Gmail, Google Search, Google Drive, Twitter, Facebook, Dropbox, Skype, Evernote, New York Times, Si.com. Commerce: Amazon, Frank & Oak.