Nnamdi Iregbulem
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Nnamdi Iregbulem

Nnamdi Iregbulem

Partner @LightspeedVP | DevOps, app infra, and ML nerd. Soft spot for devs ❤️ | Former: Product @confluentinc | VC @ICONIQGrowth | MBA @Stanford | Economics @Yale

49 posts •
We Don't Have Nearly Enough Startups
Investors

We Don't Have Nearly Enough Startups

Where did the explosive growth in venture activity come from?

9 min read
Old Valuations Die Hard
Founders

Old Valuations Die Hard

Private valuations substantially lag public tech valuations

6 min read
It's Valuations (Almost) All the Way Down
Investors

It's Valuations (Almost) All the Way Down

Venture funding hasn't grown as much as you think

7 min read
Beats and Misses Are Forever
Founders

Beats and Misses Are Forever

Revenue surprises permanently shift the trajectory of SaaS companies

8 min read
Layoffs Don't Tell the Whole Story
Founders

Layoffs Don't Tell the Whole Story

Hiring freezes matter more than layoffs

7 min read
COVID Hurt Most Software Companies
Founders

COVID Hurt Most Software Companies

COVID put software companies on a permanently lower growth trajectory.

5 min read
The Dark Matter of Software Valuations
Investors

The Dark Matter of Software Valuations

Exploring the vast "dark matter" of the software universe

8 min read
Series A Rounds Are a Math Test
Founders

Series A Rounds Are a Math Test

Low monetization requires extraordinary traction, and vice versa.

5 min read
Funding Simply Shifts the Bottleneck
Founders

Funding Simply Shifts the Bottleneck

A frothy funding environment means more competition for talent. Funding gets easier; hiring gets harder.

7 min read
Breaking Apart the Rule of 40
Investors

Breaking Apart the Rule of 40

Rules are meant to be broken, and the Rule of 40 is no exception

6 min read
Schrodinger's Balance Sheet: When Equity Becomes a Liability
Founders

Schrodinger's Balance Sheet: When Equity Becomes a Liability

Preferred equity exists in a constant state of quantum superposition. It's neither equity nor debt, until it is.

9 min read
Introducing a New and Improved SaaS Metric: Weighted ACV
Investors

Introducing a New and Improved SaaS Metric: Weighted ACV

ACV isn't as useful a concept as people think. We need a different SaaS monetization metric.

9 min read
Companies Rarely Grow Into Their Valuations
Investors

Companies Rarely Grow Into Their Valuations

Companies don't catch up to their valuations; their valuations catch up to them.

6 min read
WebAssembly-ing the Pieces: Vectorized’s Data Policy Engine
Developers

WebAssembly-ing the Pieces: Vectorized’s Data Policy Engine

Rather than ship data to code, which is expensive and latency-prone, why not ship code to the data?

5 min read
You Can't Eat Relative Growth
Founders

You Can't Eat Relative Growth

In startup land, we talk way too much about relative growth. We'd do better to ground our thinking in absolute growth.

10 min read
Do Wealthy Investors Have an Edge?
Investors

Do Wealthy Investors Have an Edge?

The super-rich earn more on their investments than the rest of us. Something nefarious, or something else?

10 min read
PhDs Aren't Starting Companies Like They Used To
Founders

PhDs Aren't Starting Companies Like They Used To

The burden of scientific knowledge and managerial complexity is crushing our best and brightest.

12 min read
Awesome Developer Advocates Are Hiding in Plain Sight
Founders

Awesome Developer Advocates Are Hiding in Plain Sight

Why you shouldn’t filter for social media following or prior experience

6 min read
The Developer Productivity Manifesto Part 3 — Leaving Software on the Table
Founders

The Developer Productivity Manifesto Part 3 — Leaving Software on the Table

Quantifying the billion dollar impact of developer inefficiency

5 min read
The Developer Productivity Manifesto Part 2 — More (Developers) Isn’t Always More
Founders

The Developer Productivity Manifesto Part 2 — More (Developers) Isn’t Always More

Adding more cooks to the kitchen rarely helps

7 min read
The Developer Productivity Manifesto Part 1 — The Flywheel
Founders

The Developer Productivity Manifesto Part 1 — The Flywheel

Developer productivity is falling. But it doesn't have to. The solution? The Developer Productivity Flywheel

8 min read
Four Challenges Facing Developer Productivity Startups
Founders

Four Challenges Facing Developer Productivity Startups

The biggest challenges facing developer productivity startups today

10 min read
Robinhood Traders are Last to the Party
Investors

Robinhood Traders are Last to the Party

Robinhood traders get fleeced not by HFTs front-running milliseconds before their order hits but by other retail investors, days earlier.

4 min read
Why Developers Love Redpanda
Developers

Why Developers Love Redpanda

Why Vectorized's focus on developer experience will unlock real-time streaming for the great majority of developers

8 min read
There's Nothing Magical About the SaaS Magic Number
Founders

There's Nothing Magical About the SaaS Magic Number

Magic number is a bad metric. Sales and marketing drives much less revenue than this not-so-magical number implies

14 min read
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