Strategy

This was seven years ago. I went back and watched it recently and it has stood the test of time

A hallmark of startup companies, the tech sector more broadly, and certainly our portfolio companies, is that they include equity in their compensation packages for their employees, often all employees. If you work for a tech company, chances are good that you will get options as part of your...

A number of our portfolio companies that have free web/mobile apps that are monetized by advertising have offered a low-priced subscription offering that removes the ads and, often, offers offline sync on the mobile apps. Here are some examples: Quizlet Go Duolingo Plus SoundCloud Go I am sure...

Mark Suster just put up a long post on this topic . His message is “it depends” and he explains the rationale for investing in growth vs getting profitable. I have come to think about this differently. If you are bootstrapping your company without the help of outside investment (ie angels, VCs,...

Last month, I went to the (most beautiful city in the world) Amsterdam, to speak at The Next Web Conference .  I did two talks, one at a sub-event focused on tech & social issues, on the topic of Data & Power, which I will post when it comes online, and a main stage talk on the topic of Purpose,...

Elon Musk famously posted Tesla’s long term strategy in 2006 and ended the post with “don’t tell anyone.” That has led may entrepreneurs around the world to follow suit and be transparent about what they are up to and why. I think its a great practice for companies to follow. It helps the outside...

We spent the first week of our NYU Stern class talking about value creation. The goal is to ask the seemingly simple question as to how a given company creates value. The first step of course is to ask what we mean by value. Some students wanted to jump immediately shareholder value. But shareholder...

This dynamic - with incumbents making what appear to be aggressive, risky and expensive moves and at the same time new entrants chipping away at the margins and edges - is also being replicated in other industries.

I was flying from NY to SF the other day and at one point the gentleman I was sitting next to asked me if I was flying towards or away from home. I told him NYC was my home and I was on a business trip. He then said, "let me guess, Internet business." I was momentarily self conscious (was it my...

...But I find it's also helpful to sometimes zoom in closely, almost microscopically, at the companies themselves. To forget about portfolio diversity (or even returns), or the ups and downs they go through, and remind myself of what it is they do at a discrete level, and why they use the Internet...

In my last post on failure rates in early stage venture capital, I made the point that every portfolio is going to have failures. I’ve made 32 direct investments (the deals I’ve sourced, led, and managed myself) over the past 17 years. Of those 32 investments, 5 of them have...