Both Sides of the Table

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Remind Me Why I Love You? (Why “In Person” is Everything)

Both Sides of the Table

It’s predictable, there is no reason to get mad about it and with a well-designed play book you can overcome this much of the time. After my board meeting I had to do an interview with a CFO candidate that one of my portfolio companies asked me to speak with. I call it, “Remind me why I love you again?” But it’s only Tuesday.

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GRP Announces $200 Million Fund. Rebrands as Upfront Ventures

Both Sides of the Table

Our portfolio companies value us as sparring partners. Like many modern VCs, we’re committed to investing in the community and in our portfolio companies. We have invested in building an associate program that seeks to work operationally with our portfolio companies rather than looking to source new deals.

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Does a VCs Culture Really Matter? The Upfront Story

Both Sides of the Table

.” The reason is that at a VC you have a group of partners who often have different focus areas of excellence, each pursues deals in their respective field, each makes investments and sits on boards and each spends their most difficult hours tackling problems at portfolio companies vs. solving the challenges at the VC itself.

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A Seriously Great Story and Why We Funded Them

Both Sides of the Table

On August 26th I had an equally effusive intro from Ynon Kreiz, also a friend, trusted source and also the CEO of portfolio company Maker Studios. It is what Seriously was designed to do. So this was definitely an introduction I was going to take. This is so clearly our future.

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Doing the Right Things is More Important than Doing Things Right

Both Sides of the Table

One of the most important movements in software design in the past few years has been a return to simplicity – a move away from the Microsoft era of every release adding a new 150 unused features. Similar with product features. I love that saying.

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Why You Should Embrace Opposing Views at Your Startup

Both Sides of the Table

I called a bunch of portfolio companies and asked them to check it out. Let’s see if there is anything we can learn about our behavior – good lessons or bad ones – that will inform our product design in the future.” I think that’s pretty cool in the way Pandora helps me explore new music. Check it out.

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My Pal Dave: A Triumph of Substance Over Style

Both Sides of the Table

He had a philosophy that the future competition for startups would be design led and based on data analysis. He really only needs a DropBox or Airbnb in his portfolio to do so. I wish more people knew that it isn’t just Dave. People like Paul Singh, Christine Tsai and my old pal Christen O’Brien are great. Sounds obvious.

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