On becoming American
On April 19th, I swore in as an American citizen after living in the US for nearly eight years. I am lucky that my immigration process was pretty frictionless. Those of you who know me understand that I’m a proud Canadian. I’ll likely never give up the “u” in words like colour and behaviour. And […]
The “reverse” pitch: Who should you have on your cap table?
When we think about pitches, most of the focus is on entrepreneurs pitching investors for capital. But VC can be competitive, particularly for interesting deals, and in many cases, the pitch meeting is a two-way street. Some of the best later-stage investors walk founders through an institutionalized “reverse” pitch. If you find yourself in the […]
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 […]