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 […]
Can a sinking start-up reaccelerate growth?
Conventional wisdom, at least in VC land, is that no start-up sees a reacceleration of growth. Once the growth curve starts heading down, it only sees a downward slope. This is partly due to the law of big numbers: a bigger denominator makes it harder and harder to keep up year-over-year growth rates. Things get […]
Thoughts from the road: building startups and collective ambition outside Silicon Valley
Just a few years ago, if you wanted to do something big, you needed to go to Silicon Valley. It meant frequent flights or moving your company to San Francisco to raise money from Bay Area VCs. Times are changing, and these geographical barriers are beginning to break down. Waterloo has another unicorn with Kik. […]
Understand learning profiles before hiring
The average 25-year-old has already worked 6.3 jobs, and will have 12-15 jobs before their working career is finished. The portrait of the job-hopping millennial is a stark difference to Gen X and Boomer workers who may have stayed with the same job and employer for decades. Another study found that millennials have almost twice as […]
Move fast: it’s your biggest competitive advantage
Last week I attended the NFX demo day. For me, it is one of the most fun demo days to attend as NFX, like Version One, focuses on network effect businesses, particularly marketplaces and social platforms. During the day, NFX partners shared their insights from having worked with dozens of businesses over the first 2 […]