Two weeks ago, Mitt Romney wrote an opinion piece in The Atlantic titled, “America Is in Denial”. The piece highlights numerous potentially “cataclysmic events” facing the nation, namely droughts out west, inflation, rising debt levels, profligate government spending, melting ice caps, illegal immigration, and the events of January 6th. Interestingly though, Romney argues that the most significant threat is actually not the events themselves, but rather Americans’ refusal to address them.

The question is why?

Romney believes it is due to our “powerful impulse to believe what we hope to be the case — We don’t need to cut back on watering, because the drought is just part of a cycle that will reverse. With economic growth, the debt will take care of itself. January 6th was a false-flag operation.”

You may or may not agree with Romney’s causes for concern, but for the moment let’s assume that at least a few have merit. If so, why do people so rarely act before a crisis occurs? Why do we instead choose to bury our heads in the sand and hope for the best?

The answer is actually quite simple — no one knows when something will break. It could be imminent or many years away. No. One. Knows. As a result, people tend to push the throttle until it does.

History is full of examples. It’s why governments don’t reform until it’s too late, real estate developers believe there is always room for one more building….theirs (Read more...)

It is always nice to ring the bell when a great person joins our investment team – this time we get to ring the bell twice.

Venture capital firms simply do not need to hire a lot of people. While we will make at least several dozen investment decisions together over the course of a fund, we might only make a handful of hiring decisions. Each addition to the team is important and well-considered with an extensive interview process and a long courtship. Notwithstanding that, recruiting Uma Veerappan and Kelly Scherrer were easy decisions and are two more important pieces to the puzzle.

Uma is well-known to the Flare Capital team. While earning her MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business last year, she was a Flare Scholar in the great Class of 2021. She did terrific work on a number of projects, including the closing of our investment in Elektra Health. As soon as we first met Uma, we knew she was special. Her passion for healthcare and deep understanding of this sector’s many complexities and nuances were immediately evident. While in business school, Uma both worked with a few healthcare technology start-ups and held roles at two venture firms.

Earlier in Uma’s career, she was a Strategy Consultant at EY with a particular focus on launching next-generation products at the intersection of healthcare and technology. Specific areas of interest included applications of artificial intelligence and surgical skills assessment. Prior to her time at EY, (Read more...)

If you hand a good spec to three providers, you’ll get three variations back in return.

The way you know your spec is worthwhile is that you can live with the differences between them.

If it’s worth caring about, it’s worth writing down.