Read more about how we’re thinking and where we’re investing here.
Recent Posts
Entrepreneurship, Crypto / Blockchain
It was 20 years ago next month that we started JustBooks, creating a marketplace that connected buyers and sellers of used, rare, and out-of-print books. We initially launched in Germany before expanding into the UK and France, and then sold the company to our North American competitor AbeBooks in 2001. My co-founder Hannes Blum and […]
Version One
Last week I blogged about the return multiples for our Fund I and how they perfectly illustrate just how much the power law drives VC return. Alex Norman from AngelList asked how these return multiples have changed over time and what insights could be won from that data. It was a great question and I […]
Version One
We raised our first fund in summer 2012. It was a $15m early-stage fund that we invested in 20 portfolio companies over the course of two and a half years. We’re now seven years in and the portfolio is maturing. I plotted the return multiples (as of June 30, 2019) for all 20 portfolio companies […]
Version One
A year ago, we set out to add to our team. You may recall that we opened a search for an associate last summer. We appreciated spending time with many candidates, as well as the many intros and referrals from our friends. Unfortunately, we didn’t find someone who was the right fit for us – and […]
Entrepreneurship
A question I have been pondering for some time now, especially since a lot of our portfolio companies are now distributed organizations… This tweet sparked a lot of thoughtful reaction and discussion. Here’s where things have landed at the moment: According to the responses, entrepreneurs running remote organizations seem pretty happy with the current software […]
Entrepreneurship
Last week was a rough week. I can be a pretty open book when it comes to my personal and professional life (though I’m not going to delve into the details here). As I shared what I went through, the kindness and encouragement from family, friends, and colleagues helped tremendously. I proactively sought support from […]
Portfolio
Happy Canada Day to our friends and colleagues north of the border, and Happy Fourth of July to those of you south of the border. We hope everyone is having a great start to summer. Here’s a quick recap of the key activities and announcements from this past quarter. Welcome to the V1 family! We […]
Health / Biology
A few years ago, I explored the idea of a healthcare marketplace model. At the time, I imagined it would be pretty difficult to build a true marketplace for several reasons: low frequency and high unpredictability of use (because thankfully, we’re not always sick), the monogamy issue (people prefer to stick to the same doctor once […]
Data / AI / ML
This year we have seen privacy become top of mind for the general public, the media and “big tech.” The business model of Google and Facebook (collect as much data as possible about users for highly targeted advertising) is under attack. Europe’s legislators were addressing some of these privacy concerns when they put into effect […]
Entrepreneurship, Marketplaces / Social / Collaboration / Network Effects
Good to Great is one of those iconic business books that every founder, CEO and business leader should read at some point. In the book Jim Collins identifies eight common traits that “good to great” companies share. It has been a decade since the book was published, and not every company that Collins used as a […]
Health / Biology
Imagine a future, maybe 20-25 years from now, when there’s a smart toilet in every home. Picture it: the smart toilet, a device that collects our fecal matter and provides information about our health via our microbiome. The human gut microbiome is a complex ecosystem (consisting of trillions of bacteria, viruses, fungi) that is receiving […]
Entrepreneurship
I have been on cloud nine since Saturday night. As a long-time Toronto Raptors fan, my hometeam is headed to the NBA Finals for the first time in franchise history. Throughout this playoff run, I have been thinking a lot about high performing athletes, and what we can all learn from a champion’s psychology. One […]
Entrepreneurship
Over the past few months, we have been running a series of posts where we profile one of the many incredible operators in our network. These operators are generous enough to share their expertise and wisdom, and we are lucky to do deep dives into unique topics. We’ve already learned about marketplaces from Bala Subramaniam, Head […]
Portfolio
We are excited to announce our investment in Dolly, where we participated in a $7.5M funding round alongside Unlock Venture Partners and Maveron. Like other peer-to-peer marketplaces, Dolly connects people in need of services with people who are ready to provide them. Dolly’s app connects individuals and businesses with local truck owners (“helpers”) to […]
Entrepreneurship
Bill Campbell has long had a legendary reputation as one of the best coaches of all time, but until now, only the people he worked with got to understand and experience the power of his approach. That’s why it is so great to see that Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg and Alan Eagle have written a […]
Portfolio
We are very excited to announce our investment in Kobalt, a new security as a service company. Security is increasingly on everybody’s mind, with several high profile, large scale hacks over the past few years. Here at Version One, we had our own unfortunate incident (and learning experience) only a few weeks ago. Yet while […]
Crypto / Blockchain, Portfolio
We are extremely excited to announce our investment in Guesser, the easiest way to engage with Augur prediction markets. Among all the crypto opportunities, we are most excited about crypto native opportunities – and prediction markets are clearly native. We spent some time with Augur right after it launched (you can read about that initial […]
Entrepreneurship, Marketplaces / Social / Collaboration / Network Effects
Over the past few years, the term “managed marketplace” has become so widely used that Bill Gurley from Benchmark recently tweeted that it is not clear to him what the difference is between a “managed marketplace” and a “true marketplace.” I think this is an important discussion to have and I am trying to develop […]
Entrepreneurship
Six weeks ago, we kicked off a new series where we profile an awesome operator in our network to learn about his/her work and contributions to his/her organization and community at large. Our inaugural guest was Bala Subramaniam and we asked him three questions on marketplaces. This time, I am very excited to introduce Sin-Mei […]
Crypto / Blockchain, Portfolio
Over the past few days, you may have seen news about Celo cross your newsfeed. Today, we are thrilled to share that we were early backers in the company (since January 2018) as it announces it’s most recent $30M raise led by A16z and Polychain. What exactly is Celo? It’s an open and open-sourced crypto-powered […]