PayPal's $1.5B exit produced 20 breakout founders. In contrast, Minnesota's $30B in exits this century produced 4.
I dug into tech clusters going back to the 1950s: Silicon Valley, São Paulo, Bogotá, Salt Lake City, Denver-Boulder, and Minnesota. The ability to attract breakout founders, and in turn their efficiency in recycling capital locally across technology waves.
New piece on Substack: https://t.co/L2O2v0s6kB
So @TechCrunch is searching for 200 early-stage companies for Startup Battlefield at Disrupt this September. Comes with a chance to win a $100,000 in equity-free $$ and cool kid creds. Apply by May 31: https://t.co/mCqJpwDtPw
From healthcare to education, foundation models are powering AI tools that are rapidly transforming multiple industries. But what exactly are they? Here, we explain them in under 2 minutes: https://t.co/p8yEV9VdRN
We had our annual meeting back in November and one of the themes was the changing path from pre-seed to Series A. I wrote a short post with some of the data we shared at the meeting.
https://t.co/a4ISD28Pqc
Making every decision quickly doesn’t require much skill. It is easy, especially when you are the big boss. The real skill is in correctly judging which decisions should be made very quickly, which decisions can be made slowly, and which decisions will eventually be self-evident.
⚽ Mac Allister jugó con Maradona en Boca y en la selección de Argentina, donde su hijo comparte ahora equipo con Messi, y tiene claro cuál de los dos es mejor https://t.co/IZAaZaca9O
Negativity is boring. What’s needed is for more people to get excited about what could exist in the world, and then go and make it happen. There are still so many interesting problems to solve!
How can you combat this natural force?
The only ways I’ve seen:
1. Have extreme focus and clarity, saying no to many great things that are nice (and can be done with excess bandwidth).
2. Have people be willing to do tasks that feel “below” their level.
Heard from VC LPs - had a top VC consultant/advisor/FoF share their fresh power law data:
As of Q2, for Fund Vintages 2008-2019, they had exposure to 8,350 companies. 2,700 were realized. Of those exited companies, 5% of the companies (150) drove 70% of the value.
$RDFN: "For a $2,500 monthly mortgage payment, buyers can now afford a $379K home compared to a $534K home last year when mortgage rates were 2.65%"
[@Redfin]