Where are the opportunities for the next venture-scale marketplace business?
Here’s a question that we have been getting a lot lately: Do you still invest in marketplaces? The answer is YES! We love their network effects and continue to invest in them. In a tweetstorm last week, our friend Andrew Chen listed the 20 best links he’s seen on marketplaces and included us on the […]
How to balance judgment and process when you start to scale
In the early days of a start-up, almost all decisions in the company are driven by the judgment calls of the founding team. During this stage, there’s a limited set of experiences to draw from and no playbook. Most of the situations and questions are occurring for the first time, and founders need to quickly […]
The close: How your investors can help you bring top candidates on board
I recently wrote about how to build an ideal investor base if you find yourself in the fortunate position of being oversubscribed in the round you are currently fundraising for. In that post, I mentioned “help in hiring” as a quality that might be potentially valuable to you when considering the right investors. When we talk […]
VCs rarely make exceptions to their investment scope
Part of the job of a VC is to deliver on the promises they made to investors when raising the fund. Every VC defines their investment scope by a combination of thesis (e.g. invest in network-effect driven business), thematic interest (e.g. invest in AR / VR companies), stage (single stage versus lifecycle investment), ownership targets, […]
The “reverse” pitch: Who should you have on your cap table?
When we think about pitches, most of the focus is on entrepreneurs pitching investors for capital. But VC can be competitive, particularly for interesting deals, and in many cases, the pitch meeting is a two-way street. Some of the best later-stage investors walk founders through an institutionalized “reverse” pitch. If you find yourself in the […]