Read more about how we’re thinking and where we’re investing here.
Recent Posts
Entrepreneurship
As we all know, the pandemic has forced companies to become remote organizations virtually overnight. While some CEOs and companies cannot wait until the conditions are safe for everyone to return to the office (e.g. Reid Hastings from Netflix), others have chosen to become “digital by default.” (e.g. Shopify). Several companies in our portfolio have […]
Version One
In recent posts, we’ve outlined our updated thesis around backing mission driven founders and explained why we’ve doubled down on searching for such entrepreneurs. There is no substitute, however, for letting these exceptional founders speak for themselves. In that spirit, please see the short video below highlighting a handful of our newest mission driven founders […]
Marketplaces / Social / Collaboration / Network Effects
In a recent Invest Like The Best podcast, the guest, who goes by the pseudonym Modest Proposal, described a 2×2 matrix for segmenting marketplace types. It’s a simple, yet very effective way to think about the differences in online marketplaces, from the original product marketplaces like eBay to the emerging services marketplaces. One axis represents […]
Version One, Portfolio
We updated our investment thesis a few months ago…we invest in mission-driven founders at the earliest stages. Since that time, we’ve been asked how we define a mission-driven founder. It’s not just some vague buzzword to us, so we thought it would be helpful to provide more context on our definition of mission-driven and why it’s […]
Portfolio
Today, we are excited to announce our investment in Jam, a tool that brings Google Docs style collaboration to a live product/website. With Jam, you can comment on, or soon even suggest a change to your live product, from within the product itself, turning your live product into an all-encompassing workbench. Jam’s mission has inspired […]
Crypto / Blockchain
While Ethereum based DeFi has stolen the show for most of 2020 – and rightly so, the amount of innovation and experimentation happening there is insane! – there have also been some major breakthroughs on Bitcoin’s native layer 2 scaling solution, the Lightning Network. I believe that this progress, while less flashy, will ultimately prove […]
e-Books
We’re thrilled to announce the third edition of “A Guide to Marketplaces.” We published our first edition five years ago and the second nearly three years ago. So much has changed since then – from the rise of B2B marketplaces to new crypto-native platforms. Even as we explore emerging sectors like climate and crypto, we […]
Portfolio
It’s hard to believe that it’s already October and time to recap another quarter. While we are all focused on staying safe (whether from Covid-19 or an unprecedented fire season), we are also looking ahead – working hard to build great companies and hopeful for 2021! As we do at the end of every quarter, […]
Energy/Climate
Few launches have been as timely. Over the past month, those of us on the west coast have been dealing with forest fires… if anyone ever doubted climate change, let us be the first to tell you that the orange, fiery, smokey skies and the ash raining down from it are all very real. At […]
Energy/Climate, Crypto / Blockchain
I’ve spent the majority of the last decade working in two fields: solar energy and cryptocurrency. At first blush, these may seem pretty different. In my mind, however, they have a lot in common and are converging by the day. Both are based on principles of decentralization. Both are disrupting antiquated, opaque industries with large […]
Energy/Climate
It’s been exciting to see so much renewed investor interest in climate tech and clean energy startups. As Peter Thiel documented in detail, the last wave of late 2000s cleantech VC excitement ended in a trough of despair as many of the more well-funded companies went bust (with the notable exception of a few big […]
Crypto / Blockchain, Portfolio
We are very pleased to announce our investment in Uniswap, the leading decentralized crypto exchange. We participated in the $11m Series A raise, alongside our friends at a16z, USV and Paradigm. Exchanges have been the most important piece of infrastructure when it comes to building out crypto networks. The first generation of exchanges were centralized […]
Crypto / Blockchain
Since the early days, crypto has had four core promises: 1) Enabling trust at scale. Transactions are executed by code, rather than a single gatekeeper like a bank or other financial middleman. 2) Permissionless innovation. Crypto’s open source nature enables anybody to build on top of existing code. 3) A decentralized governance model. Power rests […]
Version One
Technology changes. The startup market evolves, and so do we as VCs. Over the past few months, we’ve reflected on our journey over the past decade, who we are and what we invest in. We’ve quietly made changes to our website. And here’s the official unveiling, with a quick synopsis of our new messaging and […]
Marketplaces / Social / Collaboration / Network Effects
I’ve been thinking a lot about the future of education lately. It’s clear that our current model is beyond broken. The very young are taught to grin and bear twelve years of compulsory passive absorption. Upon graduation, they’re then incentivized to take on >$30k in debt to study random subjects which may or may not […]
Portfolio
Happy Canada Day & Happy (early) Fourth of July! Here we are, halfway through 2020 and what an unprecedented year it has been. As we focus on staying safe and healing, we continue to look forward, keeping our heads down to build great companies. At the end of every quarter, we publish a quick recap. […]
Data / AI / ML, Portfolio
Today, one of our newest portfolio companies, Cape Privacy, announced their seed fundraise in conjunction with the public launch of their privacy platform. You can read more details about the launch here. We co-led the seed round with our friends at boldstart ventures with participation from Haystack, Radical, and Faktory Ventures. Privacy and machine learning […]
Portfolio
We are very excited to announce our investment in Opyn, a decentralized options marketplace. If you invest in ETH (or just follow it), you’re used to prices going up and down. Opyn lets you protect your DeFi deposits and hedge ETH risk. The platform allows you to purchase put and call options on the price […]
Marketplaces / Social / Collaboration / Network Effects, Portfolio
Today we’re excited to announce that we led DemandStar’s $2m seed round. The Seattle-based company provides an online marketplace for business-to-government commerce – it connects local and national suppliers with government procurement officers. It should come as no surprise that government procurement is riddled with inefficiency. $1.5 trillion is spent in the local government procurement […]
Marketplaces / Social / Collaboration / Network Effects
As we’ve been spending time on B2B marketplaces and dev tools/platforms, we’ve come to realize that there’s an interesting sub-category that combines elements of both: the API-as-a-marketplace. What is an API-as-a-marketplace? Just like a traditional marketplace, an API-as-a-marketplace has two sides: suppliers and buyers. But, the interface is different. In a traditional marketplace, discovery and […]