Startup CEOs Should Test Strength of Cap Table Every ~6 Months To Know Where They Stand I really liked Jason Lemkin’s “Do You Have a Weak Investor Syndicate” blog post from earlier in the summer. Go read it and then come back here…. Ok, so there are two different types of ‘weakness’ that Lemkin mentions […]
Ellen DaSilva’s Journey, from Banking to Twitter to Hims and Now, Her Own NewCo! Like many relationships these days, mine and Ellen’s began online. But we successfully converted it to an NYC IRL coffee this past summer. I really enjoyed that chat so wanted to learn a bit more about my new friend, as well […]
God bless Gené Teare for now I have something which explains what I do all day in a format my parents can grok. As part of Seed Series for Crunchbase News, Gené wrote up an extended interview with me and Satya. She told us we were the first time in the series that two partners […]
“There are now more seed funds whose names begin with the letter ‘F’ than there were seed funds [in total] when we started our firm!” A great line uttered at dinner last night by one of the senior GPs at one of the best early stage funds. Also, a partner who is transitioning into a […]
[Stefon voice] “The hottest club in Silicon Valley is ‘Scouts.’” Yup, after Sequoia and a few others funds debuted a ‘Scouts’ program several years back, many firms have lined up their version. The format differs but let’s generally describe Scouts as, individuals using money fully or partially fronted by another VC fund to make investments […]
Blake asked for a follow-up to my post on the two deals we lost in 2013. Thanks for bringing up such painful memories! 2014 was a great year for Homebrew (or at least I *think* it was – check back in 10 years and I’ll tell you definitively). Bunch of new companies (currently 17 core investments) […]
Today, Pillow announced their seed financing which we led in 2014 along with a great syndicate including our friends at Sherpa Ventures and Homebrew advisor Lee Linden. Pillow works to solve some pain points for the short-term property rental market, namely how to make it easier for home owners to earn predictable income from their […]
Yesterday The Skimm (everyone’s favorite morning newsletter) announced their $6m+ Series A. Homebrew led their seed financing in 2013 and enthusiastically continued our participation in this latest round. As an investor I’m often asked about my “favorite” companies and have written before about how much I dislike the question. That said, The Skimm does belong […]
Gil Penchina doesn’t appear in TechCrunch or Valleywag often. He tweets infrequently. Maybe you haven’t heard of him until now. But he’s raised the largest syndicate on AngelList, turning himself effectively into a one-man fund for, if not the masses, at least the 270 people who have already committed nearly $3.4m for each investment he wants […]
10x, as in “10x Engineer,” is a well-trod expression used to suggest there are classes of people who are so much better than average that the results you get from them are an order of magnitude higher. There’s appropriate debate around whether the concept is true enough to turn into a hiring principle and if […]
