The Version One year in review and looking ahead
2020…the year of the pandemic. We’ve seen a tremendous amount of human loss and hardship, but it’s also been a year full of hope and innovation. Technology’s role in the human response to Covid-19 cannot be understated. Hundreds of millions of people suddenly started working from home and attending school/university from home. We shifted a […]
The pros and cons of “digital by default”
As we all know, the pandemic has forced companies to become remote organizations virtually overnight. While some CEOs and companies cannot wait until the conditions are safe for everyone to return to the office (e.g. Reid Hastings from Netflix), others have chosen to become “digital by default.” (e.g. Shopify). Several companies in our portfolio have […]
Classifying marketplaces in a 2×2 matrix
In a recent Invest Like The Best podcast, the guest, who goes by the pseudonym Modest Proposal, described a 2×2 matrix for segmenting marketplace types. It’s a simple, yet very effective way to think about the differences in online marketplaces, from the original product marketplaces like eBay to the emerging services marketplaces. One axis represents […]
Why we look for mission-driven founders
We updated our investment thesis a few months ago…we invest in mission-driven founders at the earliest stages. Since that time, we’ve been asked how we define a mission-driven founder. It’s not just some vague buzzword to us, so we thought it would be helpful to provide more context on our definition of mission-driven and why it’s […]
Announcing our investment in Uniswap, the leading decentralized crypto exchange
We are very pleased to announce our investment in Uniswap, the leading decentralized crypto exchange. We participated in the $11m Series A raise, alongside our friends at a16z, USV and Paradigm. Exchanges have been the most important piece of infrastructure when it comes to building out crypto networks. The first generation of exchanges were centralized […]