Seven years into Fund I: charting the return multiples
We raised our first fund in summer 2012. It was a $15m early-stage fund that we invested in 20 portfolio companies over the course of two and a half years. We’re now seven years in and the portfolio is maturing. I plotted the return multiples (as of June 30, 2019) for all 20 portfolio companies […]
Do distributed teams need new tools?
A question I have been pondering for some time now, especially since a lot of our portfolio companies are now distributed organizations… This tweet sparked a lot of thoughtful reaction and discussion. Here’s where things have landed at the moment: According to the responses, entrepreneurs running remote organizations seem pretty happy with the current software […]
Balancing the upside and downside of data sharing
This year we have seen privacy become top of mind for the general public, the media and “big tech.” The business model of Google and Facebook (collect as much data as possible about users for highly targeted advertising) is under attack. Europe’s legislators were addressing some of these privacy concerns when they put into effect […]
Finding and turning your flywheel
Good to Great is one of those iconic business books that every founder, CEO and business leader should read at some point. In the book Jim Collins identifies eight common traits that “good to great” companies share. It has been a decade since the book was published, and not every company that Collins used as a […]
Announcing our investment in Dolly, a peer-to-peer marketplace for on-demand moving and retail delivery
We are excited to announce our investment in Dolly, where we participated in a $7.5M funding round alongside Unlock Venture Partners and Maveron. Like other peer-to-peer marketplaces, Dolly connects people in need of services with people who are ready to provide them. Dolly’s app connects individuals and businesses with local truck owners (“helpers”) to […]