One of the most common and cringe-worthy boardroom phrases is “… I think we need to hire a world class C[x]O or VP of [X].” I am still waiting for the day when the CEO replies “thank you for flagging the world class piece, I would have hired a mediocre candidate!” Joking aside, the less catchy… Continue reading →

You may have noticed a significant decay in my blogging activity recently. My excuse is that over the last few months Jason Whitmire and I have started a new venture firm called BlueYard Capital and that took up a fair amount of attention and time. With the help of our entrepreneurs, our co-investors and a whole… Continue reading →

If you know what this is about and want to take action – scroll down to the end. One of the greatest accomplishments of the web has been permissionless innovation – anyone can build & distribute services and products over the web; consumers and companies are free to choose and pay for whatever web services and… Continue reading →

When I hear one of our CEOs say “everything is awesome at our company right now; the entire team is in a great mood” – my first thought is “uh-ho”. Because at great companies things are happening so fast, things are being questioned all the time, things are so at / over capacity – things… Continue reading →

  A few weeks ago I moderated a panel at Tech Open Air. The topic was the shifting venture landscape and how entrepreneurs can navigate it. There are a bunch of new VC firms – some offer services some don’t; there are a bunch of old VC firms now offering a lot of services, some… Continue reading →

This morning when I checked Instagram I had notifications that an account called eatingberlin had liked two of my pictures I had taken at Berlin restaurants. It reminded me that I had seen others like berlinfoodguide or berlinfoodstories – so I followed all 3 of them to make sure I’m in the loop on new food hotspots… Continue reading →

“We’re early stage” doesn’t really mean much because it can be stretched to mean a whole range of phases as a company grows up. And that’s OK – VC firms come in all shapes and sizes and folks are successful with all kinds of models. We could have a long debate about what “early stage” is… Continue reading →

There’s a startup in Berlin called Jobspotting – if you’re looking for a new job you must check them out. They run a series of interviews, and a while back I had the pleasure of having a chat with Carrie King about how I became a VC and a bunch of other things. We had that conversation many… Continue reading →

Every now and then VC folks should remind themselves of where the capital they raise is coming from. The capital we get fees and carried interest on. The capital we get the opportunity to build wealth on. And I mean the ultimate source of capital: behind every pension plan that invests in a VC fund are… Continue reading →

In a day and age of valuations as  score card there are in some cases extraordinary efforts being made to forcefully make certain milestone valuations happen (100m, 500m, 1bn etc). The right way to make a high(er) valuation happen is of course to have someone just pay that price with fair and appropriate growth / later… Continue reading →