Both Sides of the Table

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Praying to the God of Valuation

Both Sides of the Table

Something happened in the past 7 years in the startup and venture capital world that I hadn’t experienced since the late 90’s — we all began praying to the God of Valuation. It wasn’t always like this and frankly it took a lot of joy out of the industry for me personally. What happened? How might our next phase of the journey seem brighter, even with more uncertain days for startups and capital markets?

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Density & the Future of Real Estate

Both Sides of the Table

Nearly six years ago, I was thrilled to invest in Andrew Farah and the team at Density when they had a vision for building anonymous tracking of how people use office buildings, rentals and other public spaces. And today, as the company announces their latest funding round of $125M at a $1B+ valuation , I’m still thrilled to back Density as they are growing massively with customers like Uber, Shopify, Delta, and Cisco, among many others.

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The Changing Venture Landscape

Both Sides of the Table

The world around us is being disrupted by the acceleration of technology into more industries and more consumer applications. Society is reorienting to a new post-pandemic norm?—?even before the pandemic itself has been fully tamed. And the loosening of federal monetary policies, particularly in the US, has pushed more dollars into the venture ecosystems at every stage of financing.

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On Funding?—?Shots on Goal

Both Sides of the Table

On Funding?—?Shots on Goal Being great as a startup technology investor of course requires a lot of things to come together: You need to have strong insights into where technology markets are heading and where value in the future will be created and sustained You need be perfect with your market timing. Being too early is the same as being wrong. Being too late and you back an “also ran” You also need to be right about the team.

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What Mistakes Do VCs Make When Fundraising?

Both Sides of the Table

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of talking to Samir Kaji on the Venture Unlocked podcast about a wide range of topics that we as venture capitalists think about everyday, including: How to build a generational firm?—?retaining partner talent and finding the complimentary networks and skillsets firms need to succeed over time The state of venture today and how COVID crammed 10 years of technological change into one accelerated year The human psychology of decision making and one book I think

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Playing the Long Game in Venture Capital

Both Sides of the Table

Silicon Valley and the media industry that surrounds it values youth. The culture is driven by the 20-something irreverent founder with huge technical chops who in a “David vs. Goliath” mythology take on the titans of industry and wins. It has historically been the case that VCs would rather fund the promise of 100x in a company with almost no revenue than the reality of a company growing at 50% but doing $20+ million in sales.

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How You Can Achieve a Step Change in Your Fitness Before Summer

Both Sides of the Table

Just 21 months ago I couldn’t have jogged 2 miles in under 20 minutes and now I can run 3 miles in 21 minutes or more to the point I can pretty easily run 7.5 miles in an hour. I’m not super human and while I’m a decent athlete I wasn’t born with super genetics, extra doses of motivation or an unusual ability to tolerate suffering. I was in pretty good athletic shape until 35 but after kids, starting my own companies, travel and age I slowly lost the habit of working out enough to consider mysel

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