The first week on my first job after college I came into work super early and left super late. At the end of the week my then boss called me into his office and said: “it’s great that you are so enthusiastic about this job, but you are setting a high bar for everyone’s expectation of you — what will they think when you come in a bit later next week?” I have never forgotten that because it embodies a critical lesson: what others expect of us is in no small part determined by our own behavior (...

The first week on my first job after college I came into work super early and left super late. At the end of the week my then boss called me into his office and said: “it’s great that you are so enthusiastic about this job, but you are setting a high bar for everyone’s expectation of you — what will they think when you come in a bit later next week?” I have never forgotten that because it embodies a critical lesson: what others expect of us is in no small part determined by our own behavior (...

This past Saturday was Video Hackday in New York City. It had been organized by the team at Ziggeo with the help from many others, including a great roster of sponsors. I enjoyed participating and wrote a little hack that you can see here. Even though I am pretty rusty as a developer, I managed to write something that let’s anyone ask a written question (which then lives at its own URL – all handled via Firebase) and others can answer by recording a video response (recording and playback from...

This past Saturday was Video Hackday in New York City. It had been organized by the team at Ziggeo with the help from many others, including a great roster of sponsors. I enjoyed participating and wrote a little hack that you can see here. Even though I am pretty rusty as a developer, I managed to write something that let’s anyone ask a written question (which then lives at its own URL – all handled via Firebase) and others can answer by recording a video response (recording and playback from...

I wrote a post not that long ago about how take rate (or rake) is one vector for disrupting incumbent marketplaces. Recently I have seen a number of startups that have taken this to its logical extreme: charge nothing at all. Several of these companies are growing very rapidly. But there is an important catch here: how should they be valued? Several of the startups in question are raising rounds based on a GMV metric, i.e. the size of their marketplace. Now we have a lot of experience with ma...

I wrote a post not that long ago about how take rate (or rake) is one vector for disrupting incumbent marketplaces. Recently I have seen a number of startups that have taken this to its logical extreme: charge nothing at all. Several of these companies are growing very rapidly. But there is an important catch here: how should they be valued? Several of the startups in question are raising rounds based on a GMV metric, i.e. the size of their marketplace. Now we have a lot of experience with ma...

In the current valuation environment many entrepreneurs seem to believe that only two numbers matter in a financing: the amount of the raise and the dilution. This leads them to buy into the idea that more money for the same dilution is always strictly better. Combined with a lot of money being available from investors this is resulting in Series A rounds of $10 million and more. What could possibly go wrong? The number everyone seems to be forgetting about is the post-money valuation. It is ...

In the current valuation environment many entrepreneurs seem to believe that only two numbers matter in a financing: the amount of the raise and the dilution. This leads them to buy into the idea that more money for the same dilution is always strictly better. Combined with a lot of money being available from investors this is resulting in Series A rounds of $10 million and more. What could possibly go wrong? The number everyone seems to be forgetting about is the post-money valuation. It is ...

I have been blogging less recently. One reason is that I have been working on talks such as the one I gave recently at Techonomy in Detroit and the one I am preparing now for TEDxNY. The other reason though is that I have been reading a lot about buddhism, hinduism, neuroscience and physics. I don’t yet have a lot to say about my new insights as I am still learning and digesting but I wanted to share what motivated my interest. Unbeknownst to me it started with a blog post I wrote a while bac...

I have been blogging less recently. One reason is that I have been working on talks such as the one I gave recently at Techonomy in Detroit and the one I am preparing now for TEDxNY. The other reason though is that I have been reading a lot about buddhism, hinduism, neuroscience and physics. I don’t yet have a lot to say about my new insights as I am still learning and digesting but I wanted to share what motivated my interest. Unbeknownst to me it started with a blog post I wrote a while bac...

A big part of our investing at Union Square Ventures is to find businesses that have network effects. Marketplaces fit with that because participating in a marketplace tends to become more valuable as the marketplace grows (that’s assuming the marketplace does a good job spreading liquidity among participants). The reason to be interested in network effects from an investor perspective is that they offer a source of defensible competitive advantage. That in return implies that a company that ...

A big part of our investing at Union Square Ventures is to find businesses that have network effects. Marketplaces fit with that because participating in a marketplace tends to become more valuable as the marketplace grows (that’s assuming the marketplace does a good job spreading liquidity among participants). The reason to be interested in network effects from an investor perspective is that they offer a source of defensible competitive advantage. That in return implies that a company that ...

I have been writing a lot about wealth and income inequality and I am reading Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century (review forthcoming as soon as I am finished). So it seems appropriate to ask how I feel about the wealth being created by tech startups for entrepreneurs, early employees and investors (which of course includes VCs like myself). I have hinted at this here on Continuations in the past in a post about Twitter but it is worth clarifying. I believe that a large component of ...

I have been writing a lot about wealth and income inequality and I am reading Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century (review forthcoming as soon as I am finished). So it seems appropriate to ask how I feel about the wealth being created by tech startups for entrepreneurs, early employees and investors (which of course includes VCs like myself). I have hinted at this here on Continuations in the past in a post about Twitter but it is worth clarifying. I believe that a large component of ...

About once a year there is a headline like this one from Forbes “The Surprising Truth About Where New Jobs Come From” that points to a study showing that most job creation is in startups. Now the only thing that is in fact surprising is that this would be considered a surprise. Why? Because this should be our baseline statistical expectation in any economy that has been around for a while. Any collection of “things” that has a cycle of starting small, then growing and eventually declining and...

About once a year there is a headline like this one from Forbes “The Surprising Truth About Where New Jobs Come From” that points to a study showing that most job creation is in startups. Now the only thing that is in fact surprising is that this would be considered a surprise. Why? Because this should be our baseline statistical expectation in any economy that has been around for a while. Any collection of “things” that has a cycle of starting small, then growing and eventually declining and...

I am generally not a big fan of strategies that involve pursuing business A now in order to pursue B in the future. I tend to believe that you should go for B right away. For example, if you are planning to disrupt textbooks I would likely prefer a strategy that figures out how to peer produce those instead of one that first tries to make the renting and exchange of existing textbooks more efficient. Why? Because there are few businesses that have pulled off the “A now, B later” trick – most ...

I am generally not a big fan of strategies that involve pursuing business A now in order to pursue B in the future. I tend to believe that you should go for B right away. For example, if you are planning to disrupt textbooks I would likely prefer a strategy that figures out how to peer produce those instead of one that first tries to make the renting and exchange of existing textbooks more efficient. Why? Because there are few businesses that have pulled off the “A now, B later” trick – most ...

With the NASDAQ going above 5,000 for the first time since the year 2000 valuations in tech are once again on everyone’s mind, mine included. It has been a long period writing here on Continuations that I have thought valuations were too high and they have only gone higher since. All the arguments I provided back in 2012 are still true and in particular the line that “rates of return available on many other investments are at historic lows” – this is especially true for interest rates. Very l...

With the NASDAQ going above 5,000 for the first time since the year 2000 valuations in tech are once again on everyone’s mind, mine included. It has been a long period writing here on Continuations that I have thought valuations were too high and they have only gone higher since. All the arguments I provided back in 2012 are still true and in particular the line that “rates of return available on many other investments are at historic lows” – this is especially true for interest rates. Very l...