From a venture investor’s diary #7: Being a “multiplier” to founders

(This is a companion piece to “3 things on founder-CEO excellence”) I am known for summarizing things into 3 bullet-points, and I’m finding myself doing it again. In the grand … Continue Reading

From a venture investor’s diary #4: 7 scale-up dos and one don’t-do

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

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

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

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”

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

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) ….

  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

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

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