Recently, we got a group of Product Managers from our portfolio together to chat with Fareed Mosavat about all things growth. Fareed is the Director of Product at Slack where he is working on the adoption and growth for their […]

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 […]

Two phrases that often come up in our internal discussion is around value creation and value capture. I think of this on three levels. Does a company’s product/service create value? Is the value jaw dropping? Are customer so excited about […]

An inevitable question that founders face is “how is your product different?” Whether it’s asked explicitly or not, most investors that you speak to have probably seen or heard of a company that does something pretty similar to yours. So […]

It is the one message-space on your phone that you always pay attention to: SMS text messages. Not just “messaging” broadly, as there are numerous apps where people send and receive communications & messages.  Couple that noise with the flurry […]

I generally believe in the adage that there are only two jobs to be done at an early stage company: Building the Product Selling the Product Because of this, most of the early teams we invest in are heavily weighted […]

Five to ten years ago, it was thought that digitally-native brands and e-commerce retailers had a distinct cost advantage because they didn’t have to pay for legacy physical infrastructure (e.g. storefronts with long-term lease commitments), which represents high fixed costs […]

We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. — Bill Gates In some sense, VCs are in the profession of predicting the future. However, […]

The second most common reason why VCs pass on an investment is some version of “it’s not big enough.” For a VC to generate a great fund-level return, they typically need to invest in at least one company that has billions […]

It happened to billboards. TV spots. Direct mail. Banner ads. Now, it’s happening to content marketing. At one point in time, each was the customer acquisition channel du jour — now, it’s oversaturated, expensive, and increasingly ineffective. Lots of ink […]