Our 2014 in review
Just like last year, 2014 has been busy and eventful here at Version One. We added 8 new companies to our portfolio: Clio, a cloud-based practice management platform for the legal industry; Dwellable, a mobile-first vacation rentals marketplace; HandUp, a donation platform that lets you give directly to a person in-need; Mattermark, an analytics platform […]
Announcing Version One Fund II
On behalf of our team at Version One, I am incredibly excited to announce that we have just closed our second fund. Version One Fund II is $35M, slightly larger than our initial fund. In many ways, Version One Fund II is identical to Fund I. It’s the same investing team (myself in Vancouver and […]
Community building: How to give up control without losing control
A community can make or break a marketplace. I owe much of the success of my former company, AbeBooks, to the passionate community of book lovers that came to our site. Considering more than 1/3 of Version One’s portfolio are marketplaces, I appreciate just how much a strong community can be one of the most […]
The future of online marketplaces: “complex” transactions
The most successful online marketplaces today facilitate relatively simple transactions. There’s eBay and Etsy for buying/selling goods, AirBnB for short-term accommodations, and Uber for local transportation. While reputation mechanisms (i.e. user reviews) play an important role on these platforms, the price tags involved are typically low enough that customers are ready to deal with strangers […]
How we can improve the odds of finding unicorns
It was my first day at Version One when I realized that finding “VC-fundable” startups would not be easy. Aileen Lee, founder of Cowboy Ventures, posted a brilliant analysis on why VCs have to look for billion dollar companies (“unicorns”) to deliver acceptable returns, and how rare it is to invest in one: “The odds […]