How to balance judgment and process when you start to scale
In the early days of a start-up, almost all decisions in the company are driven by the judgment calls of the founding team. During this stage, there’s a limited set of experiences to draw from and no playbook. Most of the situations and questions are occurring for the first time, and founders need to quickly […]
VCs rarely make exceptions to their investment scope
Part of the job of a VC is to deliver on the promises they made to investors when raising the fund. Every VC defines their investment scope by a combination of thesis (e.g. invest in network-effect driven business), thematic interest (e.g. invest in AR / VR companies), stage (single stage versus lifecycle investment), ownership targets, […]
The Twenty Minute VC with Boris Wertz
I recently returned to Harry Stebbings’ 20 Minute VC Podcast, where we chatted about all things crypto…where the crypto market is today, how it compares to the Dotcom bubble of 2000 and why crypto is the biggest disruptor to hit VC in a decade. You can listen to the episode here. We covered a wide […]
Purity versus Greed in Crypto
We recently organized another crypto dinner in Toronto, bringing together the local community and a bunch of people that were in town for EDCON (the Community Ethereum Development Conference). Most of the dinner conversation centered around recommendations on how the Ethereum Foundation can play a more active role in developing the ETH ecosystem. Throughout the […]
Skip level conversations: the benefits of board members speaking with senior managers
In the past year, a few of our portfolio companies have introduced regular skip level meetings into the organization. These are direct meetings between managers and team members who are one or more levels below them… for example, board members meet with senior managers (without the CEO) or the CEO meets with team members (without […]