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Recent Posts
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 […]
Portfolio
Another quarter has flown by and we’re quickly moving into spring. Q1 was a busy time for our firm and portfolio companies, and here’s a brief recap of some of the various news clippings, fundraising announcements, and other happenings across the V1 community. As we’ve said before, we’re just writing about the things that have […]
Data / AI / ML
Two months ago, I first introduced my vision to create a startup data repository. Since then, I’ve chatted with many of you who share the desire to democratize access to information on startups and bring transparency to what’s been a traditionally private ecosystem. I’ve been blown away by the response and appreciate every like, share, tweet, […]
Data / AI / ML
Last week, I shared some lessons learned from a Domino Data Science Pop-up that I attended a month ago. There were some very important discussions surrounding the world of data science today. One thread explored the differences between data science and data engineering. I’ll admit that I was completely unaware of the engineering behind data science when we […]
Data / AI / ML
Three weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending the Domino Data Science Pop-up, which was one of the best days of talks on data science that I have attended. You can check out recordings of the talks as well as copies of the presentations on SlideShare. I won’t dive into all the nitty-gritty discussions on math and […]
Entrepreneurship
When founders, investors, and the whole team are aligned around a common vision, it’s one of the most powerful things that can happen to a start-up. Everybody works toward the same goals. It’s much easier to attract investors, teammates and partners to join your efforts. And, decisions are made much more efficiently since no one […]