Fund Size Is Still Strategy – The Growing Disconnect Between Founders and VCs
I have been working on Precursor for over nine years at this point. I got a lot of very good advice when I was getting started. One thing that has stuck with me since the beginning was some feedback I...
View ArticleDo You Want to Manage or Do You Want to Invest?
I’ve spent the last few months talking to many other VCs who are founders of their own VC firms or have ascended to leadership roles in firms they joined. Each of them seems to have his or her own...
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Finding the Right Burn Rate for Pre-Seed Companies – The Relationship Between...
Many of the founders we’ve backed ask us one key question early in their company-building journey – what is the right burn rate, or amount to spend per month, for a company still searching for...
View ArticleThe Rebundling Cycle Has Begun in B2B SaaS
“Gentlemen, there’s only two ways I know of to make money: bundling and unbundling.” – Jim Barksdale, Netscape The background for this quote was the question of what Netscape would do if Microsoft...
View ArticleWill We Ever See Another Renaissance in Consumer Investing?
For nine years, I have invested in a roughly equal mix of B2B SaaS and consumer startups at the seed and pre-seed stages. At Precursor, we define consumer fairly broadly – we include CPG, consumer...
View ArticleWhat Happens When Small and Large VC Firms Decouple and Have Less in Common?
For most of my career in venture capital, I have felt that small firms (<$100M in fund size), medium-sized firms ($100M-$500M in fund size), and large firms ($500M+) are all part of the same venture...
View ArticleAll Venture Booms End with a Return to Governance
It feels like we are in the very early stages of seeing what happens at the tail end of the latest venture boom. Stories are written about companies that falsified data, misrepresented financials, and...
View ArticleThere’s No Such Thing as Series A Metrics
I spend a lot of my time helping founders in our portfolio plan for future fundraises. Given that we focus on pre-seed and seed-stage companies, much of the fundraising focus is on what it takes to...
View ArticleIt’s Not Your Fault, But It’s Your Problem
Early in my venture career, I worked with someone who gave me a lot of great advice about how to think about being an entrepreneur and an investor who supports entrepreneurs. We had just finished...
View ArticleSuccession in Venture Capital is a 3-Legged Stool
This year I’ve spent some time talking to more experienced GPs and founders of venture firms about the things I should start thinking about now that I have a few funds under my belt. I’ve been very...
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