'venture capital' Category
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A synopsis of Japan’s covid-19 stimus measures
May 24, 2020Those paying attention to the Covid-19 impact across geographies will know that Japan has escaped relatively unscathed in terms of adverse health ramifications. There are a variety of fascinating hypotheses for this, but the fortuitous “x-factor” still remains elusive. Economically, however, the toll is reverberating up and down the value chain. A number of domestic […]
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You can’t coach ambition.
May 17, 2020Red Auerbach. winning basketball coach of the Boston Celtics for 9 NBA championships in the 1950s and 60s, famously remarked that, “You can’t coach height.” He made the statement in response to a reporter‘s question on why he drafted somebody who turned out to be a fantastic player but didn’t possess much in the way […]
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10 Crisis initiatives for startups
April 14, 2020A fair bit of ink has been spilled with VC recommendations to startups on how to best confront the business challenges catalyzed by the covid-19 crisis. In fact, it’s practically compulsory writing for any VC on social media these days. Rather than write yet another of one of those posts, I’m taking a different angle. […]
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Recessionary impact – fx version
April 7, 2020Following up on last week’s Recessionary impact word jumble, here is the same matrix applied to currencies, at least based on my current view of the world. Foreign exchange is definitely not my specialty, and I invite any fx experts to set me straight here. [Note: this should not be construed as trading advice.]
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Recessionary impact word jumble
March 31, 2020The tragedy of covid-19 is the proximate cause of the onsetting economic downturn, not the underlying fundamental cause. I’m not smart enough to determine how long or deep this oncoming recession will be. Accordingly, although we remain ‘open for business’ for our current portfolio — indeed, our portfolio companies’ health remains our primary objective right […]
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Innovation from crisis
March 23, 2020During turbulent times like these I find it helpful to keep in mind how some of the most successful tech startups are created during economic crises. Here’s a list my partner sent me (original reddit thread and article). I’ve made an extract of those which particularly match our investment scope. Okta SaaS Security software Launched […]
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Circling back to that formerly trendy C-word
March 14, 2020The first topic of conversation on every business conference call these days seems to be the C-word (covid-19 or coronavirus, of course). Covid-19 has dislodged another C-word that was common talk just a couple short years ago, i.e. Crypto. With the recent steep declines in global stock markets (and as an aside I’m still not […]
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Leaving money on the table
March 3, 2020Last week I wrote a piece about playing to your strengths. Because I’m not a macro trader, I wasn’t exactly playing to my strengths when I decided to bet against the S&P 500 a few months ago. Although I was directionally right, my timing was a bit off, so I wound up leaving money on […]
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Playing to your strengths in investing
February 27, 2020Four months ago I purchased a handful of long range Put options on the S&P500. It felt like the market music had been playing for too long, plus the experts were suggesting that a correction was overdue. If there’s one thing I learned over the years, it’s that my market timing is consistently wrong (which […]
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Non-obvious tech consequences of the coronavirus
February 12, 2020I like to think about unintended or non-obvious consequences of external forces on venture investing (and I’ve written about this before). External forces could be regulatory, geopolitical, or health-related. Much speculative ink (or digital print) is being spilled over the impact of the coronavirus epidemic, its potential to cause a global pandemic, and its impact […]
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The unicorn club – update 2020
January 23, 2020My intern Patrick kindly designed this infographic on the current batch of tech unicorns. The figures represent private, venture-backed tech companies with $1 billion valuations. The volume of realized unicorns (i.e. exits for the VCs via IPO or trade sale) are indicated in the sub-text.
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France’s new record for VC investment
January 16, 2020In 2019, 736 French startups raised over $5 billion in venture capital financing, a new record. This figure compares favorably to Germany ($3.5 billion raised in VC) and the UK (about $8 billion). The full study from EY can be found here. Notably, France’s top five on this list include Ynsect, an innovative insect-based animal […]