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 […]
Announcing our investment in Drover, a new way to get a car
We’re pleased to formally announce our prior seed investment in the London-based car subscription company, Drover. And we’re even happier to announce that Drover has just raised a £5.5 million Series A round. We co-led the £2 million seed investment with Forward Partners, and today Drover is announcing they’ve closed a Series A round, which […]
Introducing the Second Edition of “The Guide to Marketplaces”
Note: We’ve updated this handbook — read the latest and greatest 3rd edition here! About two years ago, we put together The Guide to Marketplaces. It compiled many of the insights we’ve learned from working with great marketplace companies and analyzing the industry. One third of Version One portfolio companies are marketplace companies, and with […]
Data is the New Oil
In recent years “Data is the new oil” has become a frequently used phrase in tech and investor circles to describe the incredible rise in the importance of data for today’s economy. Some of the world’s most valuable tech companies are built on tremendous data network effects and access to unique data: Google, Facebook, Amazon, […]
The Redistribution of Network Effects in Cryptocurrencies
Cryptocurrencies have strong network effects, built around the concept of mining. The more miners participate, the cheaper mining gets and the more quickly transactions are validated. (On a side note, this has actually not be true as of late for Bitcoin as it ran into scaling issues which is driving up mining costs). In fact, […]