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Day: June 15, 2020

232. Network Effects; 9 Days Until a Funding Decision; Software as the Foundation for the Modern VC firm; and the Future of Social Media (James Currier)

by Nick Moran

James Currier of NFX joins Nick on a special Crisis Coverage installment to discuss Network Effects; 9 Days Until a Funding Decision; Software as the Foundation for the Modern VC firm; and the Future of Social Media. In this episode, we cover:

  • Background and path to venture
  • Thesis: Overview of the thesis and your specific focus at the firm
  • Pandemic: Unique outcomes or behaviors you are observing as a result of the pandemic?
  • Overview of Software: You're a huge inspiration to me...  I love that you're bringing innovation to venture -- building software and tools that help founders and allow them to access more investors. For those in the audience that don't know, can you give a brief over of the major software and tolls that you've built.
  • FAST Program: You launched the FAST Seed Financing Program ($1M, $1.5M or $2M for 15% of their company) which ran April 16-May 22.... were you allowed startups to apply for funding and you committed to responding in 9 days. Why'd you launch the program?
  • What did you learn that was surprising?
  • Will you do it again and, if so, what will you change?
  • All this software focus could run the risk of investing in startups that look great on paper but could underestimate or not fully assess the founding team's mindset.  How do you consider the qualitative?
  • Creators vs. Opportunists: How do you insure that the founder's you are backing on true creators with the right motivation instead of just opportunists with (Read more...)

232. Network Effects; 9 Days Until a Funding Decision; Software as the Foundation for the Modern VC firm; and the Future of Social Media (James Currier)

by Nick Moran

James Currier of NFX joins Nick on a special Crisis Coverage installment to discuss Network Effects; 9 Days Until a Funding Decision; Software as the Foundation for the Modern VC firm; and the Future of Social Media. In this episode, we cover:

  • Background and path to venture
  • Thesis: Overview of the thesis and your specific focus at the firm
  • Pandemic: Unique outcomes or behaviors you are observing as a result of the pandemic?
  • Overview of Software: You're a huge inspiration to me...  I love that you're bringing innovation to venture -- building software and tools that help founders and allow them to access more investors. For those in the audience that don't know, can you give a brief over of the major software and tolls that you've built.
  • FAST Program: You launched the FAST Seed Financing Program ($1M, $1.5M or $2M for 15% of their company) which ran April 16-May 22.... were you allowed startups to apply for funding and you committed to responding in 9 days. Why'd you launch the program?
  • What did you learn that was surprising?
  • Will you do it again and, if so, what will you change?
  • All this software focus could run the risk of investing in startups that look great on paper but could underestimate or not fully assess the founding team's mindset.  How do you consider the qualitative?
  • Creators vs. Opportunists: How do you insure that the founder's you are backing on true creators with the right motivation instead of just opportunists with (Read more...)

News by the ton: 75 years of US advertising

by Benedict Evans

There are two ways you can talk about newspapers. You can talk about the ‘fourth estate’, and newspapers’ role in culture, politics, governance, the exchange of ideas and civil society. But you can also talk about newspapers as a specialised light manufacturing industry, that aggregated attention to sell advertising. There’s a common line about Google and Facebook that ‘if you’re not paying, you’re the product’, but this is pretty much what newspapers did: if you read old accounts for, say, the New York Times Company, you can see that they were giving the product away at close to cost and making the money from selling your attention.

Misc slides.048.png

(‘Wages’ in this chart includes both editorial staff and production & delivery staff - the New York Times was delivering 45% of its circulation, and the Boston Globe 70%, and charging a premium for this.)

I picked 1994 because that’s the year Netscape launched and kicked off the consumer internet, and as we all know, that has been somewhat material for newspapers’ print ad business.

Misc slides.028.png

I wrote recently about the way the numbers in this chart didn’t really change until the financial crisis in 2008, almost 15 years after the consumer internet began, but it’s also worth looking at how those numbers have changed over a longer period.

Misc slides.022.jpeg

There are two interesting stories here - the collapse in the last two decades, but also the earlier growth.

First, the collapse. Let’s add the internet to the chart, and let’s show all the rest (Read more...)

News by the ton: 75 years of US advertising

by Benedict Evans

There are two ways you can talk about newspapers. You can talk about the ‘fourth estate’, and newspapers’ role in culture, politics, governance, the exchange of ideas and civil society. But you can also talk about newspapers as a specialised light manufacturing industry, that aggregated attention to sell advertising. There’s a common line about Google and Facebook that ‘if you’re not paying, you’re the product’, but this is pretty much what newspapers did: if you read old accounts for, say, the New York Times Company, you can see that they were giving the product away at close to cost and making the money from selling your attention.

Misc slides.048.png

(‘Wages’ in this chart includes both editorial staff and production & delivery staff - the New York Times was delivering 45% of its circulation, and the Boston Globe 70%, and charging a premium for this.)

I picked 1994 because that’s the year Netscape launched and kicked off the consumer internet, and as we all know, that has been somewhat material for newspapers’ print ad business.

Misc slides.028.png

I wrote recently about the way the numbers in this chart didn’t really change until the financial crisis in 2008, almost 15 years after the consumer internet began, but it’s also worth looking at how those numbers have changed over a longer period.

Misc slides.022.jpeg

There are two interesting stories here - the collapse in the last two decades, but also the earlier growth.

First, the collapse. Let’s add the internet to the chart, and let’s show all the rest (Read more...)

Learning to Take Inventory as Part of Your Life Discipline

by hypermark

Take-Inventory-2

Everyone should 'Take Inventory" as a basic part of their life discipline. 

I have been formally Taking Inventory for 20+ years, and am a huge believer in its simplicity, specificity & iterative nature in helping me to codify my personal truths. 

So, what is inventory and how do you take it?

At its most basic, Taking Inventory is “taking note” of your observations.

The decision to write an item down is the point when a moment of thought becomes inventory taking.  

(Sidebar: With the free Notes app that comes with iPhones and Macs, whenever a moment of insight strikes, regardless of where I am, I can jot down the thought, and it syncs to all of my devices, so I always have one master version. This makes it brain dead simple to take as much or as little inventory as comes to me.)

The types of thoughts that you can Take Inventory on are limitless. 

  1. Observations about people
  2. A statistic or fact that gets under your skin 
  3. Beautiful images that made you happy
  4. Something you ate that doesn’t agree with you
  5. Something you read that inspired you

From these raw nuggets, many will be written down and forgotten, but the ones that stick, that bubble up again and again for you, these ideas can be categorized into buckets, such as:

  1. Work
  2. Sports
  3. Relationships
  4. Self
  5. Ideas
  6. Topics of interest

Over time, you can develop these categories as areas of focus, change or growth. 

This can be items like writing down, or Taking (Read more...)

Learning to Take Inventory as Part of Your Life Discipline

by hypermark

Take-Inventory-2

Everyone should 'Take Inventory" as a basic part of their life discipline. 

I have been formally Taking Inventory for 20+ years, and am a huge believer in its simplicity, specificity & iterative nature in helping me to codify my personal truths. 

So, what is inventory and how do you take it?

At its most basic, Taking Inventory is “taking note” of your observations.

The decision to write an item down is the point when a moment of thought becomes inventory taking.  

(Sidebar: With the free Notes app that comes with iPhones and Macs, whenever a moment of insight strikes, regardless of where I am, I can jot down the thought, and it syncs to all of my devices, so I always have one master version. This makes it brain dead simple to take as much or as little inventory as comes to me.)

The types of thoughts that you can Take Inventory on are limitless. 

  1. Observations about people
  2. A statistic or fact that gets under your skin 
  3. Beautiful images that made you happy
  4. Something you ate that doesn’t agree with you
  5. Something you read that inspired you

From these raw nuggets, many will be written down and forgotten, but the ones that stick, that bubble up again and again for you, these ideas can be categorized into buckets, such as:

  1. Work
  2. Sports
  3. Relationships
  4. Self
  5. Ideas
  6. Topics of interest

Over time, you can develop these categories as areas of focus, change or growth. 

This can be items like writing down, or Taking (Read more...)