Read more about how we’re thinking and where we’re investing here.
Recent Posts
Crypto / Blockchain
There’s a lot of excitement surrounding the decentralized Internet and cryptocurrencies. Technological advancements plus tokens are shaking up traditional business models, enabling organizations to emerge outside the form of traditional companies that we know of today. There’s great promise to build large scale platforms to run open source projects among other things. But how exactly […]
Data / AI / ML
George Psiharis (the awesome VP of Business Operations at Clio) reached out with a great suggestion: connect the data teams across our portfolio companies with the goal of building a peer network to share best practices, and together push the bar on data science innovation. A few weeks ago, we had our first virtual hangout with […]
Crypto / Blockchain
Nearly two years ago, we published our first ebook, A Guide to Marketplaces. Towards the end, we touched briefly on emerging marketplace types and included decentralized marketplaces in the mix. At the time, OpenBazaar was still in beta. Since then, we’ve been closely following the evolution of blockchain technology and looking at the potential impact […]
Data / AI / ML
This is the last in a series of posts summarizing our speakers’ insights from the Data-driven Marketplace Meetup in May. You can check out previous posts summarizing talks from Bala Ganapathy on pulling levers to reach supply-demand equilibrium and from Jamie Davidson on Winning with Data. Every company wants to be data-driven. But what exactly does […]
Health / Biology
I’m scheduling my fourth knee surgery. But Ange… how is that possible when you only have 2 knees? Many years of playing Ultimate Frisbee… As I’m heading into this surgery, it has occurred to me that personalized medicine cannot come soon enough. Below I’m going to share my own health story and struggles associated with […]
Portfolio
As Ada Support launches its automated chat platform from stealth and announces an impressive $2.5 million seed round, we’re looking back at our journey with founders Mike Murchison and David Hariri. The story underscores the importance of perseverance and having the right founding team. Just after closing Fund II in October 2014, Boris took a […]
Health / Biology, Portfolio
Today, we’re excited to announce our first investment in the genomics space. We welcome Gencove to the Version One portfolio: they’re making genomics accessible and useful to all. We first met Joe Pickrell, the founder of Gencove, a year ago when he shared that he was building an inexpensive technology that actually sequences the genome […]
Portfolio
We hope everyone had a great Canada Day and/or Fourth of July! It’s hard to believe that another quarter has flown by. Q2 has been busy for Version One and our portfolio companies – here’s a quick recap of select news coverage, funding announcements, and product updates (at least the things we can announce publicly): […]
Entrepreneurship
Blue Apron went public today. It was not the easiest road for them as they had to cut the originally proposed price range of $15-17 to $10 and closed the first day just around that at $10.01. As one can imagine, the media commentary was not pretty, calling the IPO a disappointment, the stock stale out […]
Data / AI / ML
This is the second in a series of posts summarizing our speakers’ insights from the Data-driven Marketplace Meetup on May 16. You can check out our post detailing Bala Ganapathy’s talk on pulling levers to reach supply-demand equilibrium here. Anyone who works with data knows that collecting it is one thing, but then finding meaning […]
Crypto / Blockchain
The original thesis for cryptocurrencies was that it would be a winner-takes-all game due to the strong network effects around mining. And Bitcoin’s first few years seemed to prove this thesis true. Its share of the total market cap for cryptocurrencies was as high as 90% and was still holding at 80% at the beginning […]
Entrepreneurship, Marketplaces / Social / Collaboration / Network Effects
This is the first in a series of posts summarizing our speakers’ insights from the Data-driven Marketplace Meetup on May 16. Today, we just need to pick up a phone to order groceries or a fully cooked meal, or hire someone to do our laundry or walk the dog. The rise of on-demand service apps […]
Data / AI / ML, Entrepreneurship, Marketplaces / Social / Collaboration / Network Effects
A few weeks ago, we hosted our second marketplace meetup in San Francisco. The night centered around data-driven marketplaces and we connected with and learned from many smart members of the marketplace community. We had a diverse group of people attending, from founders and product and growth leaders, to data scientists, data engineers, and investors. […]
Entrepreneurship
On May 26th, I attended the C2 conference in Montreal, joining my good friend Harley Finkelstein (Shopify), along with Magaly Charbonneau (Password Box), Wesley Chan (Felicis) and Eric Boyko (Stingray) on a panel. The theme was: “Entrepreneurial ecosystem: it takes a village to build a startup”. Harley asked about my experiences growing up in Toronto and […]
Crypto / Blockchain, Portfolio
It has been no secret that we have been actively researching and pursuing blockchain companies, particularly those in the Ethereum ecosystem. A few months ago, I wrote that 2017 could finally be the year when cryptocurrencies start delivering on the huge potential that many have been predicting for a long time. Bitcoin, and the underlying […]
Version One
A few weeks ago, Forbes released their annual Midas List of Top Tech Investors, recognizing those investors who have backed unicorns and seen strong returns for their funds. For these investors, their success is partly due to the fact that they are good pickers and can see opportunities like Uber and Airbnb. But there’s more to […]
Crypto / Blockchain
One innovation we have seen in Blockchain has been the rise of app coins as a way to monetize protocols and open source projects. Most launches were through Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), basically crowdfunded app coin sales. And boy, has it taken off! In 2017 alone, ICOs raised more than $100 million in 15 deals. Cosmos […]
Entrepreneurship
Sometimes there’s a disconnect between investor sentiment and the product’s value. The same thing happens in the market: good companies can have a lower stock price due to public sentiment and market factors outside of their control. Not every start-up can play in a vertical that’s an investor darling. For example, you may be in […]
Version One
Back in October, we hosted our first marketplace-themed meetup on the topic of The Holy Grail of the Marketplace: The Virtuous Cycle. More than 75 marketplace founders and investors attended and made it a great evening. In case you missed it, you can read some of the key takeaways from the evening’s talks, including a fireside chat […]
Entrepreneurship
Conventional wisdom, at least in VC land, is that no start-up sees a reacceleration of growth. Once the growth curve starts heading down, it only sees a downward slope. This is partly due to the law of big numbers: a bigger denominator makes it harder and harder to keep up year-over-year growth rates. Things get […]