Timing, Luck, and Surviving
This moment we have been living through over the last two months has put pressure on many companies to figure out how to keep the lights on and stay in business. It has also been a second wind for some [...] Read more
Not All Gross Margin Is The Same
I wrote a blog post in September of last year arguing that gross margins and operating margins really matter when valuing companies. I argued that “software companies with software margins” are better businesses than tech companies that are not really [...] Read more
Funding Friday: ROAR
Yesterday, Gabrielle Hamilton, the chef/owner/creator of Prune , a tiny twenty-year-old restaurant in the east village that The Gotham Gal and I and our family have always loved, wrote a piece in the New York Times that really captures the [...] Read more
Event Driven Growth
I realize that most businesses are suffering greatly in this pandemic. Many have been shut completely. But there are some that are experiencing the opposite situation. They have a growth spurt as a result of this moment. Businesses in food [...] Read more
The Duolingo English Test
I wrote about our portfolio company Duolingo’s English Proficiency Test back in August of last year. I have always loved the idea that a company that helps people learn a language can also help people prove their fluency in a [...] Read more
The AVC Cap Table Template
I woke up to this tweet this morning: @fredwilson someone has hijacked your cap table link in this post – it now goes out to some random company rather than your template https://t.co/UzzIWcAtob — John Henderson (@johnhenderson) April 21, 2020 [...] Read more
Still Open For Business
I wrote a blog post on March 12th called Open For Business and thought I would return to the topic. If you search for “vc open for business” on Twitter , you will see almost universal scorn for the idea [...] Read more
Video Of The Week: Stand With Small
You may have seen this short advertisement called Always Open on television over the last few days. It is part of a larger campaign called Stand With Small that Etsy (where I am Chairman and a large stockholder) is running [...] Read more
A Plan for Rapidly Ramping COVID19 Testing
Since I wrote my post on “The Road Back from COVID19 ″ we have made lots of progress on two out of the three pillars: masks and tracing. Masks went from a discussion of their merits to being mandatory to wear [...] Read more
