Agile VC

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Denouement

Agile VC

Reading Time: 5 minutes. Like many things in life, the VC/startup ecosystem is one of cycles. Looking back over the last decade it’s remarkable to see how the emphasis has shifted across cycles and what the overarching narrative was. I believe we are in a denouement ( the final part of a play, movie, or narrative in which the strands of the plot are drawn together and matters are explained or resolved ) that will both signal a high water mark for many startups but also create an opportunity for

IPO 100
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Lyft S-1: Kicking Off the Decacorn Bonanza of 2019

Agile VC

Reading Time: 7 minutes. This post also appears on NextView’s blog. I’ve been looking thru S-1s for many years, out of intellectual curiosity to better understand how remarkable businesses work. This includes blockbusters like Alibaba ( in three parts ) and Facebook but also the likes of Square , Dropbox , Twitter , Blue Apron and going many years back Kayak and Groupon.

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Why Do Consumer IPOs and B2B IPOs Get Treated Differently?

Agile VC

Reading Time: 3 minutes. This post also appears on NextView’s blog. 2019 is off to an exciting start for IPOs of VC-backed startups. In just the last month or so we’ve seen Lyft go public ( my analysis of the company’s S-1 here ) and more recently, Zoom and Pinterest. Zoom is a B2B company Pinterest and Lyft are obviously B2C companies. All three have different business models… SaaS, media/ad, and consumer transactional.

IPO 100
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Slack S-1: Will APRU Drive Long Term Value?

Agile VC

Reading Time: 6 minutes. This post also appears on NextView’s blog. Slack dropped their S-1 a couple weeks ago. Even before that, we all knew that it was among the most rapidly growing SaaS companies in recent years and a product used (and loved) by millions of people. But now we have a chance to really dig in and understand Slack’s business a bit better.

Retention 100
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Chewy S-1: Category Leadership + Conveyor Belt Into Consumers’ Homes

Agile VC

Reading Time: 7 minutes. This post also appears on NextView’s blog. Chewy has rapidly grown from a startup to a multi-billion commerce company, establishing itself as the leader in pet e-commerce. Chewy sells tens of thousands of products from many 3rd party brands, as well as its own private label brands (though latter remains <10% of sales).

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Friday Funism – “Favorite Future”

Agile VC

Reading Time: 2 minutes. This post also appears at NextView’s blog. Another phrase we use internally at NextView pretty often is that of a “favorite future”. Early in NextView’s history, when we were raising our first fund (e.g. sometime back in 2010 or early 2011) one of the limited partners we met with asked us what our “favorite future” was for NextView.

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Tim Devane’s Next Chapter

Agile VC

It’s hard to believe, but it’s been a bit over two years since Tim Devane joined us as a Principal at NextView. Tim joined our investment team as the first non-founder, and also as the first NextView team member based in our New York office. It’s not easy to pave a path with no one before you, but Tim has done just that and done it admirably.

New York 100