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Vertical Marketplaces and the Durability of Craigslist
TweetLately I’ve seen a resurgence of the conversation around disrupting Craigslist and other marketplaces. One of the better new ones to this meme is Fabrice Grinda’s post. Earlier contributions to...
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The Potentially Divergent Paths for Facebook and Twitter Mobile Ads
TweetMobile ads, particularly app install and direct response ads, have become a big business for Facebook and are likely to become a big business for Twitter very soon. Much of the focus has been on...
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3 Ways Deep Linking Could Play Out
TweetI’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about how deep-linking is going to play out. For those who are not familiar, deep-linking is a technology that allows app-to-app communication to function...
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Competing with LinkedIn and the Case Against Unbundling
TweetI’ve been thinking about LinkedIn quite a bit lately. I think LinkedIn is really interesting because in many ways I think it is one of the most durable and hard to disrupt companies that sit at...
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False Positives, False Negatives, and Reading Decks in Advance
TweetAs a VC, I take the majority of my meetings without seeing a presentation or “deck” in advance. And when I do get slides, I tend not to study them closely in advance. I’ve never explained why and...
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Valet Parking Startups and Non-Consumption as the Real Competition
TweetIn the past few months I’ve met, read about, or been introduced to a number of companies that are working on solutions to make parking in cities a much easier experience for consumers. Most of...
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Early Thoughts on Lyft Line and Ridepooling
TweetEarlier today I took my first ride on Lyft Line, Lyft’s brand new twist on ridesharing. The concept is simple – you as the rider get a discount on your fare in exchange for being willing to share...
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iOS8, Mobility and Making Consumer Security Convenient
TweetConsumer security has been a historically hard category to monetize. I’d argue that desktop anti-virus software market in the 1990s and 2000s was really the heyday of consumer willingness to...
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Competing with B2B Systems of Record with a Mobile-First Approach –...
TweetApp unbundling and mobile first approaches for B2B software are really interesting to me. Awhile back I wrote a post about unbundling LinkedIn. Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking...
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Evernote, Dropbox, Google Drive – The Fractured Way I Store Stuff Online
TweetI’ve had this nagging desire to write about Evernote and the mess that is my online storage life for the last few weeks. I use the product every single day to take notes, scan business cards, and...
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Easing Back Into Writing
My last blog post was over five years ago. A lot has changed since then – I started my own fund and have been pretty heads down focused on building out Precursor and supporting our portfolio companies....
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Is Notion’s Potential Underrated?
I write this recognizing that it sounds crazy to say that Notion, one of the hottest, most high profile startups might be underrated. I’ve been thinking about my experience using Notion and I am...
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We Only Have 100 Points of Equity to Split Up
A few years ago I was chatting with one of the first LPs to ever commit to Precursor and I made a statement to him that I think about more and more every day: At the end of the day, we only have 100...
View ArticleLiving Through the Revenge of Capital
The last year has been a tough time to be a public or private tech investor or tech company CEO. We have spent a lot of time discussing the quantitative elements that have contributed to a pretty...
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The Journey from Pre-Seed to Series A – Sharing Some Slides from the 2022...
Every November, we host an annual meeting for all of our investors (limited partners) in the various Precursor Ventures funds. We typically don’t share any of the content we present outside of that...
View ArticleHonest and Naive Questions from a Generalist Seed VC Grappling with the...
I’ve been sitting on this post for a while, and I finally feel ready to post it. I have been a generalist VC for my entire career. I’ve invested through the early days of SaaS, the shift from desktop...
View ArticleTips for Talking to Your Investors about Bridges and Extensions
Discussing a bridge round or extension is one of the most challenging and important conversations between founders and investors. In the current environment, these conversations are happening daily. I...
View ArticleWhy Principles Are More Important Than Rules In Times Of Great Uncertainty
Many conversations I’ve had with limited partners, fellow investors, and portfolio company founders have centered around navigating the current environment. Given the level of uncertainty, many of...
View ArticleWhy We Aren’t Seeing More Down Rounds
Public market valuations for tech companies are down significantly from where they were at the heights of 2021. Given the pullback in public market valuations, we have not seen as many down rounds in...
View ArticleAngel Vibes or Institutional Vibes in Venture Capital – Choose One
I have had the pleasure and opportunity to work on my own fund, Precursor Ventures, for almost 9 years at this point. I have also had the opportunity to talk to a lot of people who want to start their...
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