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It’s not hard to find people willing to write the narrative that “venture capital is not an asset class” or “venture capital has performed terribly.” I hope to publish that deck and a full write up in the next 10 days in partnership with Dan Primack at Fortune (if my write up doesn’t suck, I guess ;-)).
billion 2013 figure) have been massive financings at Honest Company ($70mm), JustFab ($85mm), ZipRecruiter ($63mm) and lord only knows how much SnapChat has actually accumulated. And of course we have great public companies that have spanned content & communications like J2 Global whose market cap as of this writing is a cool $2.5
So I thought I’d write about out with what I would look for in a VC knowing what I know now and why. Think of web vs. mobile. I’ve sat on ad tech boards with board members who clearly knew little about impressions, fill rates, CTRs, RTB, eCPMs or the difficulties & opportunities of embedded mobile SDKs vs. HTML5.
While many tech startups do this intuitively (say, SnapChat thinking it would be much better if our photos out partying disappeared) it still happens. You might write a piece now and then that catches fire but there is nothing repeatable that would be useful for a business. Simply write a great book? What about mobile?
I know it may feel this way since I’m writing this tongue in cheek. I’d sooner people have my mobile phone number than my email address because as a society we know the social norm that just calling or texting somebody you don’t know isn’t acceptable. It’s why the only rude or unexpected mobile phone calls I get are from telemarketers.
I must admit I discuss this very frequently with portfolio companies but hadn’t thought to write about it. If a company wanted to distribute software on a mobile device it need to sell via a “portal” (US term) or a “deck” (UK term) of a mobile carrier. PR Malloy (@diddly_do_indy) June 13, 2015.
I also found that not having your computer or mobile phone available drastically increasing your engagement and lowers your distractions. If you’re writing and looking up occasionally you’re assumed to taking notes. Knowing you have something you can turn to in a moment of boredom is actually a weakness, not a strength.
As I sit here writing this, I can’t help but think how excited I am about our future. What made Twitter unique was the infrastructure and psychology that coincided with the rise of mobile text messaging. In fact, Twitter was one of the first mobile social media platforms. Dear Twitter, I have always loved you and I always will.
Always-on connectivity of mobile (164m US smartphone users). But it still takes VC to scale a business (thus large capital into industry winners like Uber, Airbnb, SnapChat, etc). Just 3 years ago there was talk of institutional investors “not being able to write small enough checks.” Where are we today? Why is this?
In more than a decade of writing about the Internet and tech-enabled businesses I’ve learned that mobs don’t do nuance well. Currencies only began in earnest about 2,500 years ago and ever since have been a great enabler of democracy and social mobility, not the other way around.
Thus begins Snapchat and why you don’t get it. Snapchat will be used for both like the Internet (and TV) are. I just need to break you of the idea that Snapchat is for one thing – it is not. But since Snapchat uses the frequency above your hearing range it’s nearly impossible to “get” without help.
How I Shifted from Just Counting Calories to Supercharging My Fitness Workouts This is part of a weight loss and fitness improvement series that I’m writing to share how I went from 222 pounds and unable to bike more than 20 minutes on a Peloton to 153 pounds and running 8–12 miles / day in just 18 months.
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