Six months ago I wrote a post about how I think about competition which included a list of topics that summarizes my philosophy. I covered the first item, Be The First Mover, but then went on to other things, like thinking about competitors every single day. I’m back today with the second topic, “Resegment If You Aren’t In The Top Three.”

If you look at the Foundry Group portfolio, you’ll notice a lot of market leaders. Zynga is the obvious one, but I’ll assert that there are many others, including AdMeld (now part of Google), Cheezburger, Fitbit, Gnip, Makerbot, Oblong, SendGrid, Topspin, Trada, and Urban Airship.

Now that I've completed three posts on The Management Team over the last three MBA Mondays, it's time for four or five guest posts on this topic. The first one is from Matt Blumberg, CEO of our portfolio company Return Path. I've been on Matt's board for over a decade and I've watched him develop into one of the finest managers I've had the pleasure to work with. Here are Matt's thoughts on this topic.

This post should be sung to the tune of The World Is A Vampire by the Smashing Pumpkins

“the world is a vampire, sent to drain
secret destroyers, hold you up to the flames
and what do i get, for my pain
betrayed desires, and a piece of the game
even though i know-i suppose i’ll show
all my cool and cold-like old job

Venture capitalists are notorious for not telling companies when they won’t invest, and worse, being enthusiastic about the company and the prospects of a deal for an extended period and then simply going quiet. It is unfair on startups when VCs behave like this as it wastes time (an entrepreneur’s most precious resource) and makes it harder to know when a fundraising process is failing and the company should change tack. Giving up on a fundraising process too late can be fatal for a business if it then doesn’t have enough cash left to pursue a different strategy.

Raising money is hard. And when you’re relatively new to the process it’s easy to be confused by the process. There is all sorts of advice on the Internet about how to raise capital. Of course much of it is conflicting.

I’ve raised money as a “hot company” and I’ve raised capital when no one would return my phone calls. I’ve raised in boom markets and when everybody thought the Internet was a fraud. I’ve raised seed rounds and A-D rounds. I raised money as an entrepreneur, like you, in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003 and 2005 for two different companies.

AlwaysOn has officially kicked off its third annual OnDemand Top 100 Private Companies Competition. We're looking for the top emerging on-demand and SaaS companies that are creating new business opportunities in high-growth markets. This includes private companies that are demonstrating significant market traction and pursuing game-changing technology in the following sectors:

Netflix, Hulu, Youtube and Amazon, companies at the forefront of web delivered TV are increasingly resembling the traditional TV companies they seek to displace. They are now all complementing aggressive licensing strategies with large budgets for developing original content in recognition of the age old truism of TV – content drives subscribers. This leaves us in a situation where, like the old guard of TV, the new guard controls both content and distribution, but unlike the old guard they don’t bundle access (i.e. cable or satellite) in with the package. The access element is now commoditised and adds nothing to the package.

This is the third and final post on the subject of the management team. The final phase of company development I am going to cover is "building the business." Building the business largely means building the management team. They are one and the same.

Many founders are naturally talented at building product and building the user base. But building the company comes harder to them. I once discussed this with Roelof Botha and he made a fantastic suggestion.