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
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
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 #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
Dear Founder #4: not all revenues are created equal
- By ssyc1
- June 5, 2019
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[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
The Power of the Power Law, “super-stars”, and moving the returns curve “to the right”!
- By ssyc1
- February 21, 2019
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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
Nuts and bolts #3: your financial model and your understanding of your business, your market and your customers, and your value drivers
- By ssyc1
- February 11, 2019
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Dear founder. This is a letter to all you founders who are preparing a financial model for your Series A or even Series B round. First, may I congratulate for … Continue Reading
Great founding teams – a revisit
- By ssyc1
- December 24, 2018
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[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