Read more about how we’re thinking and where we’re investing here.

A well-timed funding announcement is your introduction to the world. It’s a way to increase your visibility with prospective investors, talent and customers. It’s also a signal that your company is gaining traction and momentum – you’re putting a stake in the ground for competitors.

Over the past 18 months, we’ve been increasingly focused on investing in climate and energy startups.

We’re excited to announce our investment in Arweave, a decentralized platform that enables anyone to store documents and applications forever.

Today, we are thrilled to announce our investment in Preemadonna, a consumer hardware startup that is powering creative expression in beauty. The company’s first product is the Nailbot – a connected, at-home manicure device that instantly prints on nails any photo, emoji, image or self-created design from the user’s camera roll.

We’re excited to announce our investment in Cap Hill Brands, a Seattle startup with the mission to build a next-generation CPG company by acquiring and operating digitally-native consumer brands. Combining the investment capital of a private equity firm and the deep operational experience of a startup accelerator, Cap Hill can lead brands to new levels of growth online.

Happy new year! We hope you’re well rested and recharged from the holidays! While 2020 brought unprecedented challenges, it’s also been a time of great innovation and perseverance. We’ve seen our startup companies find new ways to keep moving forward.

Two weeks ago, Boris recapped our fund and portfolio activity in what has been a year of unprecedented hardship, innovation and human accomplishment. If you haven’t seen it already, take a look at our post, The Version One year in review and looking ahead. We also like to send off each year by sharing some of the most popular blog posts from the past 12 months.

2020…the year of the pandemic. We’ve seen a tremendous amount of human loss and hardship, but it’s also been a year full of hope and innovation.

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).

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 products or services, and the other axis represents homogenous or heterogenous.

We updated our investment thesis a few months ago…we invest in mission-driven founders at the earliest stages.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

Since the early days, crypto has had four core promises:

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 the thinking behind it.

Happy Canada Day & Happy (early) Fourth of July!