Move_fast

Dear founder #8: moving fast, intellectual honesty, and tapping into the “unknown unknowns”

As investors, we enjoy many of our discussions and interactions with founders – probably a good thing – and often gain much happiness (even excitement) when, after “following” founders and … Continue Reading

Going_global

Dear Founder #7: Thinking global from day 1

One of the happy things in my day-to-day life is that we are increasingly seeing founders who are thinking global from day 1.  Substantive thoughts about building a “global” company … Continue Reading

Storm_grey_w_red_fringe

Dear Founder #6: on weather-proofing again (with a note on strategies for the unexpected tornado) ….

  Dear Founder, We feel the need to speak about resilience and being weather-proof again (our part 1 – “building strong and weather-proof companies” – is here).  For those of … Continue Reading

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Re-imagine: products, policies, digital transformation, machines vs humans

As we move into a new decade, it is worth asking broader questions like “what does our world need”? We’ve just sent out an investor newsletter discussing how the world … Continue Reading

Align

Dear Founder #5: Managing growth pains – 8 alignment tools to manage complexity

Anyone who has worked at large organisations will know what organizational inertia feels like.  There was once this much-read corporate tome titled “Can elephants dance?” (written by the then CEO … Continue Reading

Not_all_revenues_are_created_equal#2

Dear founder #4: not all revenues are created equal

[A note from 5 Oct 2019: “gross margins” and “sustainable revenues” has become talk of tech town this past week, and a big-name Silicon Valley VC has made a similar … Continue Reading

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The Power of the Power Law, “super-stars”, and moving the returns curve “to the right”!

I finally get to jot down some of my thoughts here about the “power law”, and more specifically the “power of the power law” …. I. The phenomenon of superstars OK, … Continue Reading

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Great founding teams – a revisit

[An earlier version of this post was titled “Builders of the world, design and surf once in a while!”] As 2018 draws to a close, we reflect on how we … Continue Reading

Product_market_fit

Nuts and bolts #2: 9 delightful things about product-market fit

A lot of ink has been spilled on “product market fit” but we are still very often answering Qs about this and so we are going to jot down a … Continue Reading

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Being long on innovation – part 2: Thriving under the shadows of giants

[Addition on 24 Oct: adding a link to an a16z blog-post published not long after on the same topic highlighted in point 5 below, that selling in the early stages … Continue Reading