It started with this LinkedIn post that theorized about the benefits and pitfalls of a top VC firm’s employee co-investment program. There was a DM from someone who was a part of said program along the way. And it ended with me interviewing the person who sent me that DM, Mackey Craven. He started at … Read more
Endeavor Catalyst has closed the largest fund in its history, and the people who will invest it won’t earn a cent of carried interest. All of the carry the fund generates goes back to Endeavor, the nonprofit that serves as Catalyst’s GP. The investment team draws salaries as employees of that nonprofit. Allen Taylor, Catalyst’s … Read more
If you spend any time around late-stage private companies, you’ve seen the pitches: an SPV with an allocation in Anthropic, a platform listing for Stripe, a forward contract on SpaceX. They can look interchangeable. They aren’t. The same company can welcome one path in and treat another as if it never happened. If you’re a … Read more
Long before I knew Kyle York, I was a DynDNS user. If you were part of the early DevOps crowd, you probably were too. So when our mutual friend Brian Brady offered to connect us, I came in with a long list of questions about how a free dynamic DNS service became infrastructure that some … Read more
Almost every VC uses AI. Very few can name a job an agent now does for them from start to finish. That was the starting point for our latest virtual event, How VCs Are Putting AI Agents to Work, presented with our friends at Carta. We brought together three people who see agents from different … Read more
I first met Molly Fowler about six years ago, when I spoke to a class of Dorm Room Fund’s student investors. Last week, her firm announced a new $50 million fund. That is ~4x the size of the $12.5 million fund they raised after spinning out of First Round Capital, and roughly 30% of the … Read more
Here are some things that I do to keep my web of connections warm, growing, and feeling appreciated. Many of them are things you can do right now, regardless of how big or small your network is… Remember it’s about them, not you. So bring to that Zoom or that coffee meeting 1, 2, 3 … Read more
“Relationships will always separate signal from noise.” I’ve known Jeff Wald for more than a decade. When I was building a company in the human capital space, he was one of the people I leaned on for advice. So when BoomerangHR announced its $12.7 million seed round on September 14, I wanted to hear the … Read more
This reader email landed in my inbox 👇. As a VC guru, I thought you might be the perfect person to ask for some advice on finding startups that fit my investment thesis. I’ve been doing a lot of database searching on sites like Crunchbase, but I feel like I’m missing out on the real … Read more
Founders are rarely “One and Done”. Most of them will start another company someday. You should keep this in mind. Especially when you see that their last company was acquired. Why? Most founders who go through an acquisition have an earnout period. So once the dust settles, a few months after the deal closes… …it … Read more
