Announcing our latest investment: Clio
At version one, we are big believers in the vertical SaaS opportunity. Small to mid-sized businesses have long been underusing technology. A mobile-first approach, combined with a laser-like focus on a specific vertical, can create the right toolset to help SMBs achieve huge productivity gains (I wrote about this nearly a year ago for TechCrunch). […]
New investment: Upverter, a cloud-based platform for the hardware revolution
Over the past few years, numerous innovations (Arduino, Raspberry Pi) have made it easier for anyone to develop hardware. Faster prototyping and cheaper manufacturing are empowering a new generation of hardware experts to gain hold in an industry once ruled by large corporations. We are at the beginning of a new hardware revolution, and at Version […]
The programmable web and the future of platforms
Virtually every start-up dreams of becoming a platform at some stage. After all, it is the most powerful position in the ecosystem. What has been the one rule to becoming a platform? Develop a killer app that gets you to scale: and then open up the platform once your reach is attractive enough for other developers […]
The investor’s role in a founder’s three key priorities
It’s often said that a CEO should focus on three key things: Do I have the right people on the team? Are those people working on the right thing? And is there enough cash in the bank to keep the lights on? The right investor should help a founder with all three of those questions: […]
Does free/freemium work in the enterprise?
When developing a business model, every software and app start-up eventually faces the same core question: Should we focus on monetizing customers or driving usage? For consumer apps, this question has been answered (or mostly answered): the best approach is to offer a free service to help attract and retain users. As Fred Wilson put […]