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 […]
The promise (and risk) of pre-emptive funding
If you run a hot start-up, you’ll probably have VC’s ask if you are interested in getting a pre-emptive term sheet – you don’t have to do a full fundraise but can get similar deal terms as if you had done one. It sounds like a win-win for everybody. You can get back to building […]
The risks of scaling too fast, too soon
While preparing for some recent LP presentations, we took a close look at all of the companies that we exited in Fund I. There were ten exits out of a total of 20 investments. These were all “early exits” with mostly unsatisfactory outcomes for everybody involved, especially the dedicated and talented founders who had poured […]