Picking startups is part art, part science. In the public markets, there is not only a plethora of quantitative information available but also a high degree of certainty surrounding a company’s business model and its place in the market. By the time a company goes public, chances are it has…

How DeFi compares with TradFi and what this means for the next generation of founders and funders. — Bear markets create great companies. The combination of scarce capital and suppressed market demand forces founders and teams to become both fiscally frugal and laser-focused on high value activities. People often point to the likes of UBER, Dropbox, Facebook, and Airbnb — among others — as bear market success stories…

Nothing fancy here. Just 90 highlights — lessons, learnings, quotes, maxims, stats — from my reading of the awesome The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Art of Disruption by Sebastian Mallaby. This is a great book for both venture investors and startup founders alike, and the following extracts might…

Web3, Venture DAOs, and the new youth revolt. — In the early days of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg turned up to a meeting with the prestigious venture capital firm, Sequoia Capital…in his pajama pants. He was armed with a deck titled The Top Ten Reasons You Should Not Invest. Number 2 on the list was “Because Sean Parker is involved.”

A look at web3’s global user penetration. — “We’re so early!” We hear this all the time from crypto-maxis who can see only the upside. But, are they right? If the power of web3 is in its application layer — the myriad use cases built atop the blockchain infrastructure, then it doesn't make sense to ponder this question…

As Sebastian Mallaby correctly pondered in The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Art of Disruption, it would be easy to reflect upon Sequoia Capital’s enduring success atop the venture capital league tables as owing to its reputation and standing in the Valley, forged over half a century. But like…

How to invest in the tokens of web3 startups and projects without crossing regulatory lines — The mechanics surrounding early-stage investment in company equity is a well-worn pursuit, honed over decades since HBS professor George Doriot raised a $3.5 million fund to invest in technology companies back in 1946.

According to CryptoRank, there have been 619 public token offerings this year. Amongst them were some notable token drops from move-to-earn platform STEPN, the Bored Ape Yacht Club, and the play-to-earn game, League of Kingdoms. Earlier this year we saw STEPN’s GMT token rally from 1 cent to $4.10 in…

Crypto’s emperor has no clothes moment has a silver lining. — Crypto markets are cooling down. Soaring inflation, rising interest rates, the end of stimulus cheques, the post-COVID re-opening of economies, and the recent Terra/Luna bank-run and mass liquidation event are all taking their toll, amongst myriad other factors. Across the broader private markets, the impact is already being felt by…