Thoughts from the road: building startups and collective ambition outside Silicon Valley
Just a few years ago, if you wanted to do something big, you needed to go to Silicon Valley. It meant frequent flights or moving your company to San Francisco to raise money from Bay Area VCs. Times are changing, and these geographical barriers are beginning to break down. Waterloo has another unicorn with Kik. […]
Our Guide to Marketplaces, now summarized in a deck
Six months ago, we published A Guide to Marketplaces. Marketplace companies comprise an important part of our portfolio and investment thesis and we recognized the shortage of content out there specifically geared toward marketplace startups. We compiled a lot of the insights we learned from working with great marketplace companies and wrote a handbook. It […]
Understand learning profiles before hiring
The average 25-year-old has already worked 6.3 jobs, and will have 12-15 jobs before their working career is finished. The portrait of the job-hopping millennial is a stark difference to Gen X and Boomer workers who may have stayed with the same job and employer for decades. Another study found that millennials have almost twice as […]
Q1 Round-up: Portfolio companies in the news
In the past, we typically wait until the end of the year to recap what’s happened here at V1. But with a group of incredible startups doing great things, we’re determined to provide more frequent updates. If you’re not already familiar with the startups and founders making up the V1 portfolio, here’s a summary of […]
AI is moving mainstream, but are users ready to trust it yet?
When DeepMind’s AlphaGo defeated South Korean master Lee Se-dol, it was a historic stride for AI. The depth of this development, coupled with higher computing power and cheaper data storage, is moving AI into the mainstream. Perhaps the most popular application of AI today comes in the form of virtual assistants and bots, or “agents” […]