I recently gave a talk on lean financing and thought I would share the presentation…
Entrepreneurship
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). Several companies in our portfolio have […]
I recently gave a talk on lean financing and thought I would share the presentation…
In an effort to spur on their local economies, many provincial and city officials have…
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).
Several companies in our portfolio have opted for Shopify’s path, and I wanted to understand what those companies have learned so far about the challenges and opportunities. Here’s what they shared about their “digital by default” experiences.
The advantages:
The challenges:
From what I have seen so far, the pros largely outweigh the cons for most companies and I think that a majority of tech start-ups will become digital by default companies, except for in three situations:
But we can expect that even “digital by default” companies will start incorporating offline elements once a vaccine is available. For some, this could be quarterly or yearly in-person meetings, either with individual teams or the whole company. Some will keep offices that enable socializing, in-person meetings and whiteboard sessions (think more SOHO house than corporate office). And some will do in-person onboarding.
It took a pandemic to challenge our assumptions for how to build and run a company. And while offices and in-person interactions will continue to play an important part, digital by default is here to stay and thrive.
Portfolio
It’s been an eventful quarter (when has it not?), and somehow we’ve already crossed the halfway mark of 2025. We wanted to take a moment to highlight just a few of the wins, milestones, and momentum we’ve seen this past quarter. As always, there’s a whole lot happening behind the scenes that can’t be shared […]
The V1 family kicked off the new year with fresh energy and no shortage of…
At the end of Q1, we anticipated that a tech sector slowdown is ideal for…