From a venture investor’s diary #4: 7 scale-up dos and one don’t-do
- By ssyc1
- April 19, 2023
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To help young companies increase their odds of success, I continue to add to my typology of “scale-ups” mistakes to avoid: too early, wrong direction, lack of focus, and so … Continue Reading
From a venture investor’s diary #3: a few scale-up lessons
- By ssyc1
- October 19, 2022
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My mind has recently been preoccupied by a number of founder-CEOs who have been doing too many things, or, more accurately put, having too many people doing too many things … Continue Reading
From a venture investor’s diary #2: On leaders and leadership
- By ssyc1
- June 8, 2022
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Leadership is something that the pattern recognition machine that is me think a lot about, have a lot to say about, and don’t know when I will ever stop thinking … Continue Reading
Nuts and bolts #4: six more delightful things about product market fit
- By ssyc1
- May 16, 2022
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We are having more delightful thoughts about product market fit once again! We thought to revisit this topic because we really harbour the hope that young founding teams can cut … Continue Reading
Thoughts from the trenches: Little data, dark data, “ramps” and related things
- By ssyc1
- January 29, 2021
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“Big data” and its twin, AI, is a big theme, has been so for some time (for us too), and is continuing at an accelerated pace. But seeing big data … Continue Reading
Dear Founder #8: moving fast, intellectual honesty, and tapping into the “unknown unknowns”
- By ssyc1
- June 26, 2020
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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
Dear Founder #7: Thinking global from day 1
- By ssyc1
- May 1, 2020
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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
Dear Founder #6: on weather-proofing again (with a note on strategies for the unexpected tornado) ….
- By ssyc1
- April 8, 2020
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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
Re-imagine: products, policies, digital transformation, machines vs humans
- By ssyc1
- February 27, 2020
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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
Dear Founder #5: Managing growth pains – 8 alignment tools to manage complexity
- By ssyc1
- February 24, 2020
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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