Fred Wilson's blog post on Dave McClure's investment thesis a few weeks ago reminded me…
Marketplaces / Social / Collaboration / Network Effects
Over the years, we have invested in almost every category out there: from ad tech and content, to gaming, hardware, marketplaces, e-commerce, and SaaS. We’re constantly revisiting the types of businesses we should be investing in and refining our investment thesis driven by three key questions: Which markets/business types do we understand the best? Where can […]
Fred Wilson's blog post on Dave McClure's investment thesis a few weeks ago reminded me…
These days, we’re hyper-focused on marketplaces, communities and social platforms. We love these platforms for…
Over the years, we have invested in almost every category out there: from ad tech and content, to gaming, hardware, marketplaces, e-commerce, and SaaS. We’re constantly revisiting the types of businesses we should be investing in and refining our investment thesis driven by three key questions:
Looking back, we feel that we made the best decisions with (and hopefully provided the most help to) businesses displaying strong network effects. This brings us to our refocused thesis: we like to invest in businesses with potentially large network effects built around people and/or data.
We think that network effects can provide a long-lasting competitive advantage and can be very capital-efficient. Connecting people and data over the web and mobile also creates something that wasn’t possible before – the end result is new and unique, not just something faster, cheaper, or better. Network effects can be found in many categories, from marketplaces, to (social) platforms or SaaS, and in many products built specifically around (big) data.
Since we’re typically investing at the seed stage, and companies usually don’t have network effects this early, we’re taking a higher risk that our investment may not work out the way we imagine. But, we’re happy to take this risk in exchange for a greater upside potential.
Important businesses can be built in many verticals and with many different approaches – but we believe we are better investors in network effect businesses than in any other business.
Portfolio
It’s been an eventful quarter (when has it not?), and somehow we’ve already crossed the halfway mark of 2025. We wanted to take a moment to highlight just a few of the wins, milestones, and momentum we’ve seen this past quarter. As always, there’s a whole lot happening behind the scenes that can’t be shared […]
The V1 family kicked off the new year with fresh energy and no shortage of…
At the end of Q1, we anticipated that a tech sector slowdown is ideal for…