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Recent Posts
Entrepreneurship
A few weeks ago I shared some important leadership lessons from Stewart Butterfield, including investing in your own growth to make sure that the founder scales as fast as the company. Growing with your start-up can be a very tough undertaking for a founder. It requires reinventing yourself dramatically in very little time. When you […]
Entrepreneurship
One of the most important decisions for a founder of an early stage company is deciding who should be on the cap table. We’ve written about doing your due diligence on investors and funds to make sure you find the right partners for the journey. Lately, we have seen more founders grappling with the question of […]
Version One
The beginning of September is an important time for me as it marks my “VC anniversary.” Five years ago, I was hired as an analyst at Version One and now it’s an absolute privilege to be joining Boris as a General Partner. I’m so grateful for everyone’s congratulatory wishes and kind words last week. These […]
Version One
When I started Version One over six years ago, I started it as a single GP firm with no defined plan to ever add a partner and build a “franchise.” So it is with tremendous happiness that I can announce today that Version One now consists of two General Partners with Angela joining me in […]
Entrepreneurship
Last week, I had the pleasure of sitting down for an intimate fireside chat with Slack’s Stewart Butterfield as he was honoured with C100’s Icon of Canadian Entrepreneurship (ICE) award. This award is presented yearly to a Canadian who has played a historic role in technology and innovation, as well as demonstrated a commitment to giving […]
Health / Biology
Our first investment in healthcare was five years ago in Figure 1, a platform for viewing and discussing real-world medical cases with healthcare professionals. This investment shaped our original thesis in the category. Figure 1 plays outside the healthcare care system; it’s permissionless innovation, like Yammer or Slack in the enterprise. As we wrote in our Digital […]
Crypto / Blockchain
I’ve always thought that the concept of a decentralized prediction market like Augur or Gnosis is one of the most interesting and crypto-native ideas. Just imagine creating millions of small markets around any potential outcome in the world…from sports to elections, weather and stock prices. So it was great to see Augur go live a […]
Entrepreneurship
The predominant narrative among Silicon Valley start-ups has been: don’t open a second office until you have reached 100+ employees. Yes, there are tremendous advantages when everybody works out of one headquarters. However, the pressure of sky-high housing costs, salaries and competition for suitable candidates is causing start-ups and investors to rethink their approach to […]
Version One
VC is an apprenticeship industry. When I joined Version One five years ago, I would have never guessed that I would be where I am today. So much of who I am today has to do with the fact that Boris spent a ton of time teaching and mentoring me, despite our different locations. From […]
Version One
Last week, Boris and I were in Toronto for our quarterly offsite. I suggested the CN Tower EdgeWalk as a good break from discussing all things Version One related. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the EdgeWalk, it is an attraction where participants in suits and harnesses circle the exposed top of the […]
Marketplaces / Social / Collaboration / Network Effects, Entrepreneurship
Here’s a question that we have been getting a lot lately: Do you still invest in marketplaces? The answer is YES! We love their network effects and continue to invest in them. In a tweetstorm last week, our friend Andrew Chen listed the 20 best links he’s seen on marketplaces and included us on the […]
Version One
We’re excited to announce that our new and refreshed website is live! This update was designed to make the experience of our site better with a stronger sense of who we are, what we do, and why we do it. In addition, we aimed to re-surface evergreen content so we spent some extra time revamping […]
Portfolio
Happy Canada Day and Fourth of July to our friends and colleagues on both sides of the border. We hope everyone is having a great start to summer. Here’s a quick recap of the key activities, news coverage and announcements that occurred in Q2. Keep in mind that these are just the things that have […]
Entrepreneurship
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 […]
Data / AI / ML
A few weeks ago, I attended Rev, a summit for data science leaders and practitioners organized by Domino. I have previously shared blog posts on the key takeaways from last year’s event (which was one of the best data science conferences I’d been to), including how to define a data scientist and the differences between data science and data […]
Entrepreneurship
I recently wrote about how to build an ideal investor base if you find yourself in the fortunate position of being oversubscribed in the round you are currently fundraising for. In that post, I mentioned “help in hiring” as a quality that might be potentially valuable to you when considering the right investors. When we talk […]
Entrepreneurship
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, […]
Version One
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 […]
Entrepreneurship
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 […]
Crypto / Blockchain
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 […]