Co-founder & Partner NextView Ventures, previously LinkedIn co-founder and foot soldier in PayPal Mafia. Obsessed with the big picture.
Boston / SF
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Happy Cinco de LinkedIn - 15 years ago 5/5/03 we launched the LinkedIn site publicly. One of our co-founders got original site running on his original laptop
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Some more fun stuff uncovered in my wife's lockdown basement clean-up efforts… paper copies of our two term sheets for LinkedIn's Series A in 2003. This was back when $4.5-5.0M was a typical Ser A and ~$15M post was a pretty good outcome :)
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fundraising for an early-stage startup is about finding the true believers, not convincing the skeptics
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This was the party celebrating PayPal’s original IPO (I was an early employee and David was my 1st boss). February 2002. Party was low key, basically in the parking lot with catering and beer and wine. We had kegs hence the red Solo cups.
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For those chatting about ~$0 oil... you must understand this is specifically the forward contract for physical delivery. Oil (and other commodities) are traded both as physical products and fin'l instruments, and both in "spot" markets for immediate purchase and as futures/tions.
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1) The business of venture capital is going thru more upheaval now than at anytime in my >2 decades as a VC / founder / startup operator. This includes dotcom bubble/burst ’99-01 and Great Recession ’09-10. *BUT* some tenets of VC remain completely true, both now & in future. 💵
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Softbank was the bogeyman of late stage investors in 2018-2019. In 2021 it’s Tiger.
It was a bumpy path, but Softbank’s strategy & portfolio has largely been vindicated. We’ll look back in 2023-2024 and see how Tiger has done.
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There’s a lot of fuss over a $43B offer for Twitter. For the record LinkedIn did $10B in revenue last year and is healthily profitable (unlike Twitter). If it was still a public company easily a $100B+ EV even with decline in tech multiples.
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Watching CNBC now, Jeffrey Katzenberg & @MegWhitman doing long interview talking about Quibi wind down. Props to them... takes strong, confident leaders to publicly dissect an ambitious, expensive failure when it’d be easy to shy away from public view right now.
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18 years ago today we launched the LinkedIn website publicly for the first time. And yeah we used IE back then mostly (image courtesy of LinkedIn) #cincodemayo
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1) Beware the late stage SAFE. A SAFE at a very high cap + discount essentially works like preferred equity with full ratchet anti-dilution protection *and* senior liquidation preference.
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War between Reddit / Robinhood community vs hedge funds over $GME is the 21st century version of Soros / currency speculators vs Bank of England
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My wife was doing some basement box cleaning and unearthed some 20yr old artifacts. #firstjob
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1) My friend Johnny passed away Thursday. John’s on the left here... this was Mar 2022 enjoying a ski day together up in NH. This was one of those magical days that stick in your memory - spring weather but still ample snow, good company, good vibes.
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COVID-19 sucks. But must admit being able to take a 10min break between phone calls and zoom mtgs to play a game of tag w/ my 4 yr old daughter doesn't suck.
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The headline reads Capital One hack exposes data of 100 million+ people. Amazed I had to read to end of article to learn that hacker arrested was AWS systems engineer, whose cloud infrastructure Capital One’s was using. Burying the lead?
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All of us @NextViewVC excited to announce our 3rd fund, so we can support founders redesigning the Everyday Economy nextviewventures.com/blog/ev…
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1) Tech layoffs aren’t all the same. Instead of painting them w/ same brush, worth understanding which category each company is in. Looking at Facebook $META, Twitter, and Stripe individually paints 3 very different pictures. 🧵
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Arguably a non trivial part of Tesla’s economic advantage has little to do with EVs and a lot to do with being able to subvert dealer franchise laws at the company’s inception
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To be clear this is the physical delivery forward contract for May, which expires tomorrow. So owners of these contracts are obligated to take delivery of oil next month and figure out how to transport and store it. Forward contracts June onwards are all >$20/barrel still.
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Fun Valentine’s Day fact, on this day in 2002 PayPal has its original IPO... I still remember our IPO in the parking lot that day
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Sears Roebuck IPO’d in 1906 & was the Amazon of 20th century. It diversified creating Allstate Insurance, Discover Financial, Prodigy (JV w/ IBM). It’s now been dying slow death for a decade. Will AMZN be around in 22nd century?
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Sobering thought. The 2nd largest bank failure (SVB) and 3rd largest bank failure (Signature) in US history have occurred in the last 72 hrs.
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Congrats to @jamesreinhart & @thredUP team on their IPO today. The business they’ve built is both impressive & impactful.💪💵
ThredUP was the very 1st investment Rob, David, & I made together when we teamed up to start NextView just over 10 years ago.
wsj.com/articles/thredup-fet…
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4) There is no subprime model to VC - @peterthiel taught me this. Unlike much of traditional finance, startup outcomes are power law distribution so investing in a basket of mediocre cos at cheap price is generally a very bad outcome. 📈📉
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4) That said, my partner @davidbeisel deserves a special shout out. In the past week @NextViewVC investments David championed have raised massive rounds (@attentivemobile), IPO’d (@thredUP) and seen $1B+ buyouts (@TripleLiftHQ). He’s a humble man so I offer this on his behalf…
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Dude, ’01 and ’09 was a lot worse… this feels more like some combo of taking your medicine and virtue signaling (reorg w/ emphasis towards profitability path). Also get your bad news out now and try to reset for rest of ’20.
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Dinner with @MattVanzz and @MichaelVegaSanz, founders of Lula … coincidentally 2 years to the day we committed to invest. This team is quietly but confidently building the next great fintech / insure tech co.
@lula_____ @NextViewVC
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My Blue Apron S-1 analysis - unit economics, CAC/LTV, marketing efficiency and more medium.com/@leehower/blue-ap…
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The Israel-Hamas war is indeed a complex conflict, but @FT arithmetic of lives lost suggests an equivalence of moral intent.
The democratic state of Israel and its policies towards Palestinians over the years are certainly not beyond reproach. But were Israel given the opportunity to live in a truly permanent peace the left column here would become -0.
Given the means, Hamas would make the column on the right 100% of the millions of Israeli Jews.
All lives lost in war are tragic, most especially innocent civilians. But if we are to live in a just world, we must be clear that just because lives are lost on all sides doesn’t mean moral intent is meaningless.
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I can spend $1 million digging out an ordinary rock from deep underground. The rock is still only worth what the market will pay for it (basically nothing in the case of ordinary rock vs precious mineral), regardless of the input “cost” of digging it out.
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GOOG, FB, AMZN, MSFT were huge acquirers last decade (2010-2019) and IPOs were a much higher friction exit path for startups. This decade (2020+) it appears likely to flip for a bunch of reasons (antitrust, SPACs, etc).
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3) Startup fundraising is not about convincing the skeptics, it’s about findingthe true believers. Even in high velocity + valuation mkt, early stage investing is risky. Only VCs who truly believe get to yes so founders don’t waste time convincing skeptics they’re wrong. 🤔👍
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One of my favorite reflections in Leah’s post is that many VCs are quick to jump on why a company won’t work. One of the best questions to ask as an early stage investor looking for outliers is assuming this does work, will it matter?
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Lightspeed rightly gets plaudits for Snap, but the B2B side has been crushing it (AppDynamics, Nutanix, MuleSoft impending IPO, etc)
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2020 was a tumultuous year, but also pleased to have closed $100M NextView IV, see Skillz go public, and launch our virtual accelerator. Excited for 2021 & beyond and grateful for the partnership w/ the many founders we’re fortunate to work with. nextviewventures.com/blog/an…
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In recent days, the leaders of the 2 most powerful nations and the CEOs of some of the world’s largest corporations have been fixating their energy on the plight of... 15 second dance videos. Welcome to 2020.
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Picked up my daughter from kindergarten.
“Daddy if you pay me $1 I’ll tickle you 20 times.”
“How much to get tickled 0 times?”
“That’ll cost a million dollars.”
Pretty proud she’s already learned value based pricing.
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1) Very pleased for Lula to close and announce their $35M Series B round. Lula is building a next gen insurance platform for businesses to better assess risk, obtain coverage, and efficiently utilize their policies.
techcrunch.com/2023/08/03/me…
@lula_____ @bayareawriter
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5) Helping founders matters as a VC (see #6), but VCs do not fundamentally “add value” to companies they invest in. Successful startups will win regardless of (or even in spite of) what their investors say or do. Companies destined for failure will still fail.
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They’d have to massively increase the premiums charged to banks for FDIC insurance. FDIC isn’t a government funded backstop, it’s theoretically a self-funded as a collective insurance scheme.
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1) One of the things that I think has enabled NextView to be successful as a firm and for us to remain a tightly-knit team after 10+ years together is a strong “all for one” mentality as part of our core ethos
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Happy Cinco de LinkedIn - 20 years ago (5/5/03) we launched the LinkedIn website publicly.
Man how a couple decades have flown by…
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We’re thrilled that @melodykoh (former Head of Product at Blue Apron) is joining our team @NextViewVC nextviewventures.com/blog/me…
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Saw headline that PayPal just launched its 1st credit card. For the record we did this in 2001, I still have physical mockup as memento.
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Everyone is making their assessment of whether this downturn is like 2001+ dotcom crash, 2009+ Great Recession, 2013-2016 taper tantrum / SaaS crash, or something else. What’s ahead is more important to tech world (& everyone) than what’s already happened, but let’s take stock:
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Everyone will be posting hot takes on AirBnB S-1 without having really read thru the whole thing. Takes me a while to read thru them but I’ll try to post my analysis tomorrow sometime.
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Friendly reminder to start 2018... in case you believe first mover advantage is actually a thing
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1) SPACs have enabled deep tech companies to go public with little/no commercial traction in a similar way that pre-commercial biotech companies have gone public via traditional IPO for decades
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The guy who gave me my first job is going to have a conversation with a leading presidential candidate, hosted by the guy who was my first boss. All on this blue internet app.
What a surreal world we live in here in 2023.
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Congrats to @andrewparadise and the whole @skillz team on going public! We're proud to have been a partner going back 8 years to the seed stage, and excited for Skillz to start a new chapter as a public company.
wsj.com/articles/mobile-gami…
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7) Outlier outcomes drive fund level returns. This has always and will always be true. The definition of an “outlier” though is fundamentally based on a range of things including but not limited to entry valuation, concentration of capital, fund size, etc.
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This is a good corollary to something I frequently say which is that startup fundraising is about finding true believers for your business/vision, not about convincing the skeptics.
It's a mistake to treat investors' reasons for rejecting you as a guide to what you need to focus on, for three separate reasons: (a) much of the time they're lying, (b) when they're not, they're often mistaken, and (c) fundraising is not the primary goal anyway.
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Bull markets make everybody feel like a hero. Stay grounded when things are going up and consistent when things are going down.
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Congrats to Lula (@lula_____ ) on their $18M Series A round. API-based insurance, just like Stripe enables pymts via API, and co-founders I’ve been thrilled to collaborate with. 🙏🏼💪 techcrunch.com/2021/07/08/mi… @MattVanzz @MichaelVegaSanz
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The most contrarian thing you can do as a SF VC or NYC VC is actually be in those cities right now
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1/6 As investment cycles for many early stage VC funds have collapsed from 3+ years to ~2 yrs to 12-18mo (or less)… will these funds still be able to successfully recycle capital? Would love to hear perspectives from other GPs and LP twitter either publicly or via DM ♻️💵
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6) VCs *can* & *should* be helpful to founders. Doesn’t mean we always agree, but being a thoughtful sounding board & collaborator is not just the right thing to do morally but makes sense in a multi-turn game. Reputation w/ founders improves sourcing (⬆️ referrals) + winning.
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PayPal (my 1st job) has <50% gross margins. LinkedIn has software like gross margins (~85%). Not every dollar of revenue is created equally.
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Slack's headline figures of $400M GAAP revenue & <100% YoY growth seem a bit underwhelming IMO. Under the covers though some impressive metrics like 143% YoY net $ retention (e.g. massively negative churn). I need to digest the whole S-1 to understand biz more comprehensively
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We live in a no inflation environment. Except for the price of lumber. And bitcoin. And oil. And residential housing.
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Duration risk vs credit risk, two diff things. SVB (and every other institution that purchased long dated bonds during ZIRP era) took the former, not the latter. But sadly the alternative would have been short-dated fixed income with negative real yields. Rock meet hard place.
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Announcing our investment in Optimus Ride, approaching autonomous vehicles with a new lens agilevc.com/blog/2016/10/11/…
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1) We’re excited for our new look, new vibe website at NextView (nextview.vc). The passage of time has been top of mind for us. @NextViewVC 🚀
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I became a parent 8yrs ago. All reasonable ppl abhor violence against children, but once I was a parent seeing it hits you more deeply than before
Hamas’s premeditated slaughter of children is perhaps the gravest injustice in humanity. It is pure evil, without moral equivalence
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As someone in their 40s, watching Brees v Brady gives me hope maybe I still have a few more good professional years in me...
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We ended up taking the Sequoia round as most know and filled in the remainder with some angels who ultimately turned out to be pretty solid VCs - Kopelman, Andreessen, Thiel, Rabois, one or two others I'm probably forgetting now nearly two decades later
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We may be under an omicron wave at present… but I just booked 3-generation family trip to Disney for spring break, which will be my 6yr old daughter’s first time there. Even making reservations is a magical experience. I’m long $DIS
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[blog post] Where Do Venture Capital Dollars Actually Come From? This Visual Explains
agilevc.com/blog/2014/10/29/…
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Whoever setup e-commerce stores to sell bounce houses and kiddie pools over the internet is winning this summer. Says the guy trying to make his daughter’s 5th birthday today special, albeit in single player mode rather than party w/ her friends.
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1) A number of tech companies have announced hiring freezes or very modest RIFs. Growth is slowing for many, off a banner year in 2021, but most of these businesses are still strong and growing. 🧵
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This is what it looks like when a middle aged person goes on vacation without their small kids…
@WHOOP
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Stoked for @melodykoh to be our partner here at @NextViewVC, important new chapter for our firm
Exclusive: the NYC startup scene just gained another female investing partner as NextView Ventures has promoted former Blue Apron product chief Melody Koh. forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/…
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Pro tip - if a VC investor passes on the opportunity to look closely at your startup, they’re probably not the person you want to ask for intros to other investors
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Ser A all over map these days ($3-5M “old school” A’s to $20M+). When describing seed co going for A, I often have to explain what flavor.
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Thanks if you’ve read this far in the thread. Maybe take a break from tech Twitter for awhile and go for a walk to clear your mind or do something productive :)
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It’s not standard, but it’s also not unheard of for a newly formed VC firm to offer some economic benefit to first close or early anchor LPs. Sometimes can be discounted fund level mgmt fee, can even be a piece of firm mgmt company if it’s a large / strategic anchor LP.
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Want practical advice for seed stage? View From Seed is our @NextViewVC blog w/ lots of info goo.gl/u6zpFI
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Congrats to Zach, Ben, and the rest of the @timberdotio team on the acquisition by DataDog. Exciting new chapter for Timber now as part of a dev tools juggernaut. HT to my partner @davidbeisel for introducing the two companies several years back. venturebeat.com/2021/02/12/d…
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We started NextView roughly 10 years ago. Despite the stereotype of VCs taking the late summer off, we've still have never had a “slow” August in the last decade (both new investments & portfolio stuff).
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Feel like I should go long SendGrid (NYSE: SEND)… they’ll prob crush Q2 solely on volume of GDPR emails...
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RIP Henry Kissinger & Charlie Munger. I’m in awe of both not just for their century on earth, but that they both seemed to live with conviction and purpose even in the latter phases of very long and meaningful lives.
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Stoked to formally announce NextView II - our new $40M fund robgo.org/2014/07/17/announc…
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