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Recent Posts
Entrepreneurship
We’ve been spending significant time on emerging tech lately. From the frenzy surrounding blockchain applications to the surge in medical research projects that are coming out of academia, it’s clear that disruption potential is high on the barometer right now. I’ve never felt more excited about our work as VCs than I do today. I […]
Crypto / Blockchain
With both Bitcoin and Ether surging to record highs this week, everyone – entrepreneurs, investors, consumers, businesses and governments – have been caught up in the flurry surrounding cryptocurrencies. Many are trying to understand what’s happening now and where all this is headed. It’s always hard to predict how a new computing platform will play […]
Crypto / Blockchain, Marketplaces / Social / Collaboration / Network Effects
In recent years “Data is the new oil” has become a frequently used phrase in tech and investor circles to describe the incredible rise in the importance of data for today’s economy. Some of the world’s most valuable tech companies are built on tremendous data network effects and access to unique data: Google, Facebook, Amazon, […]
Version One
“It takes 10 years and $30m to become a great investor.” This quote has stuck with me from the first time I saw it. I believe the legendary investor John Doerr said it at some point, but I can’t track down the original quote anymore. Of course, I thought it was a complete exaggeration when […]
Entrepreneurship
A few years ago, we began to see SaaS companies integrate payment processing into their software. This push to integrate payments was due to a couple of factors. First, it offers a better user experience – why send somebody off-platform to pay for a product or settle an invoice? Next, adding payments to a platform […]
Version One
As a partnership evolves, you begin to formulate some basic rules and philosophies (whether formally or informally) to help guide long-term and short-term decision-making. It has been over four years since I’ve joined Version One, and just like any company, Boris and I need to continually take a step back and ask ourselves why we […]
Data / AI / ML, Entrepreneurship
“Technological innovation should give us hope, not despair.” Those words were a key part of the G7’s first-ever Innovation7, which was held last month in Turin, Italy. The Innovation7, or I-7, is a gathering of industry representatives from the G7 countries to help bridge industry and government. The theme of this summit was on making […]
Crypto / Blockchain, Marketplaces / Social / Collaboration / Network Effects
Cryptocurrencies have strong network effects, built around the concept of mining. The more miners participate, the cheaper mining gets and the more quickly transactions are validated. (On a side note, this has actually not be true as of late for Bitcoin as it ran into scaling issues which is driving up mining costs). In fact, […]
Data / AI / ML
A month ago, we hosted the second virtual hangout with data teams across our portfolio. Our goal is to link up our data teams to build a peer network, share best practices, collaborate on solutions and push the bar on data science innovation. In case you missed the summary of our first session, here’s a recap. […]
Portfolio
Another quarter has come and gone… We continue to invest in blockchain companies and funds such as Coinbase and Metastable Capital, which join our existing crypto portfolio (Blockstack, Citizen Hex and Polychain Capital). Here’s a quick recap of our other funding announcements, portfolio news, and product updates (the things we can announce publicly): Funding announcements We announced our investment in Manifold, the […]
Entrepreneurship
Recently, someone asked me about my principles for engaging with my portfolio entrepreneurs. The question was a good trigger to think about what drives my interactions with entrepreneurs and how my relationships have evolved over time. Three guiding principles provide the foundation for all my communications and engagement with entrepreneurs: 1. Listen and ask questions […]
Portfolio
We are very happy to announce our investment in Manifold, the easiest way to find and manage essential developer services. Manifold’s value proposition is to give developers a better way to find and manage all the various cloud services that can help them build and scale their applications. Today, you don’t need racks of servers […]
Crypto / Blockchain
These days not a single meeting with a fellow VC goes by without talking about Blockchain and how to invest in this space. We are all a bit puzzled by how quickly this market has evolved. With a combined market cap of all crypto currencies now topping $170b, crypto has become more than a third […]
Data / AI / ML
This week marks my fourth year at Version One. And to celebrate, I want to share the story of my interviews with Boris, my first endeavour to build a sourcing model, and his incredible leap of faith. In the summer of 2013, I was introduced to Boris by a fellow Canadian, Brendan Baker. I had […]
Crypto / Blockchain
Initial coin offerings are a phenomenally successful way of raising money. Through ICOs, startups have raised a record $1.27 billion in the first half of 2017. When I wrote the post “Will Initial Coin Offerings Fund the Future?” back in May, the total tally was around $100m. In the few months since then since then […]
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 […]