Skip level conversations: the benefits of board members speaking with senior managers
In the past year, a few of our portfolio companies have introduced regular skip level meetings into the organization. These are direct meetings between managers and team members who are one or more levels below them… for example, board members meet with senior managers (without the CEO) or the CEO meets with team members (without […]
Is crypto investing different from VC investing?
Six months ago, Boris wrote an important post about why the blockchain is disruptive to VC. As a quick summary, here’s why: It requires a new investment thesis: where is value accrued in a decentralized platform? It requires a new way of investing: tokenization by nature makes projects more liquid It might inspire a new […]
The promise (and risk) of pre-emptive funding
If you run a hot start-up, you’ll probably have VC’s ask if you are interested in getting a pre-emptive term sheet – you don’t have to do a full fundraise but can get similar deal terms as if you had done one. It sounds like a win-win for everybody. You can get back to building […]
The risks of scaling too fast, too soon
While preparing for some recent LP presentations, we took a close look at all of the companies that we exited in Fund I. There were ten exits out of a total of 20 investments. These were all “early exits” with mostly unsatisfactory outcomes for everybody involved, especially the dedicated and talented founders who had poured […]
Women in Tech: Improving balance in the workplace with more creative hiring
With March being International Women’s Month, I had the honour of moderating an event, “Women Shaping the Valley: A Celebration of Female Technologists” at the Computer History Museum (where I sit as a member of their NextGen board). We had an incredible panel of female technologists: Julia Grace (Senior Director of Infrastructure Engineering, Slack) Amber Feng […]