Read more about how we’re thinking and where we’re investing here.
Recent Posts
Entrepreneurship
If you’re building a software/social/ecommerce startup, then at one point or another, you have been advised to start in a niche market and expand into the masses. This is solid advice: when your product is focused on a slice of the market, it’s much easier to customize your solution for the specific needs of those […]
Data / AI / ML, Entrepreneurship
Over the past decade, startups and enterprises have devoted hefty resources to collecting and analyzing huge volumes of big data. For some, data is used to fine-tune a product; in other cases, data forms the foundation of the product itself. When it comes to building a startup around data, the more unique that data, the […]
Data / AI / ML, Entrepreneurship, Marketplaces / Social / Collaboration / Network Effects
There has been an explosion in machine learning activity, and Shivon Zilis recently mapped out the current machine intelligence ecosystem as we enter 2016. This is one of the key areas that we’ll be following this year. While the opportunities here are tremendous, the exuberance surrounding machine learning distracts startups from a key hurdle: it’s […]
Version One
As 2015 comes to an end, it’s time to reflect on what we’ve done and where we’re headed. It’s hard to believe that it has been just a little over a year since we launched Fund II with $35M in commitments. Since then, we’ve accelerated our pace – backing exceptional entrepreneurs, feeding their growth, and […]
Entrepreneurship, Marketplaces / Social / Collaboration / Network Effects
Messaging platforms are gaining more and more mindshare. Michael Wolf’s deck on the Future of Tech and Media shows that messaging will soon blow past social media as the dominant media activity and will add 1 billion new users by 2018. Given these numbers, the opportunities for messaging platforms are getting very interesting – particularly […]
Entrepreneurship
We know that companies are successful (or not successful) because of their people. Over the past few years, it has become relatively acceptable to work with a leadership coach and investors typically have a handful of good coaches in their rolodex ready to support and develop young founders. Yet even with this rise in popularity, […]
Entrepreneurship, Marketplaces / Social / Collaboration / Network Effects
It has been twenty years since Ebay arrived on the scene and showed what happens when you bring people together over the Internet to do commerce. Since then, there has been tremendous innovation within online marketplaces. Startups have honed in on every vertical imaginable, branched out from product to services, and tested out new paths […]
Data / AI / ML, Entrepreneurship
Nearly four years ago, I joined the Insight Data Science team and we launched an intensive 7 week post-doctoral training fellowship bridging the gap between academia and data science. Since then, over 400 Insight alumni have been hired as data scientists or data engineers at top tier companies like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Airbnb, and Google. Although I formally […]
e-Books, Entrepreneurship, Marketplaces / Social / Collaboration / Network Effects
Note: We’ve updated this handbook — read the latest and greatest 3rd edition here! At Version One, we love marketplaces. Just look at our portfolio, and you’ll understand how important we think marketplaces are to the future of commerce. Over the past year, we have focused much of our blog content on helping marketplace founders […]
Entrepreneurship
Given the frequency of media stories focused on a handful of startups with billion dollar valuations and high profile rounds, it’s understandable that founders get impatient with their own company’s natural pace of growth. This sense of urgency is intensified by the fact that growth is an elemental part of being a startup. Paul Graham […]
Data / AI / ML, Entrepreneurship, Marketplaces / Social / Collaboration / Network Effects
Over the past two weeks, we have introduced our social platform KPI dashboard to track the key metrics for social platform startups. We first covered the high-level metrics (such as DAU, MAU and stickiness) and then took a deeper dive into content engagement. When we talked about engagement, we related it to a specific action […]
Data / AI / ML, Entrepreneurship, Marketplaces / Social / Collaboration / Network Effects
Last week, we introduced our social platform KPI dashboard to help provide a framework for founders to think about their businesses and preempt the inevitable questions that arise during the fundraising process. In the first post, we talked about the high-level metrics to track – such as DAU, MAU, and your stickiness ratio. In the […]
Data / AI / ML, Entrepreneurship, Marketplaces / Social / Collaboration / Network Effects
A few months ago, we wrote about the data we focus on to evaluate marketplaces and later shared a marketplace KPI dashboard that we created to guide founders on the important metrics they should track. As we have been developing our investment thesis on social platforms, we want to provide the similar information and tools. There are […]
Crypto / Blockchain
The Blockchain is such an innovative and fundamentally transformative technology, but Bitcoin and Blockchain apps have not yet scaled as much as I would have liked. This slow traction is likely due to two things. First, Bitcoin startups that focus on commerce/payment solutions in North America are competing with existing products with strong network effects. […]
Marketplaces / Social / Collaboration / Network Effects
Back in July, we wrote about network effects in marketplaces and social platforms and how they are critical to defensibility. In the post, we talked about the difference between direct and indirect network effects, and how they may or may not relate to virality. Since then, we have been further developing our investment thesis on […]
Version One
Sean Silcoff had a thoughtful article in Saturday’s Globe & Mail on my path from entrepreneur to investor. It is a well-written piece with many great quotes and anecdotes and included the most important lesson about early-stage investing that I learned over the past 8 years: “If the fail rate of our companies is not high enough, it’s […]
Entrepreneurship
When you’re in the midst of building a company, it’s hard to fully assess the significance of various activities and decisions- particularly for first-time entrepreneurs who don’t yet have the wisdom learned from prior mistakes. As an investor (who was also once a first-time entrepreneur), I have noticed several key areas where founders either overestimate […]
Version One
One of the most common questions I get is “How can I become a Venture Capitalist?” I suppose this is because to many people, being a VC is a coveted position: you control large amounts of money and can pick and choose where that capital goes. [But let me tell you that the VC business […]
Entrepreneurship, Marketplaces / Social / Collaboration / Network Effects
As you’re building your marketplace, consider which tools and technology to leverage. There’s no reason to reinvent the wheel as new infrastructure solutions are emerging to help facilitate transactions on your platform, including: payment software, background checks, shipping and fulfillment solutions, and data privacy. With help from the Marketplaces Facebook Group, we have curated a […]
Favorites, Health / Biology
It has been a while since we’ve written about healthcare. Our last update was in June 2014 when we shared what we were excited about: patient-doctor networks and patient health data. This hasn’t changed but we’ve certainly learned more from the many founders and physicians who we have spoken to over the past year. We […]