Land grab.
That's the term that Fred Ehrsam, founder of Bitcoin startup Coinbase, used to describe the current state of play in the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Board meetings are a pain in the ass.
Unless you're a well funded, growth stage company that has lots of hands on deck--tons of instrumentation that easily dumps out pretty charts and metrics, or luxury emenities like, well, time, most entrepreneurs probably feel like they could be doing more productive things than telling their investors what they did last month.
Yesterday, I got profiled in Crain's about my investment philosophies. They do this cool lunch series where they try a new place and profile both a person and a place.
I hear a lot of funny things about other VCs. This one doesn't really do early stage, that one doesn't really get consumer.
Seemingly overnight, a bunch of parking spaces disappeared in New York City--replaced by bike share racks.
I reserve the right to be 100% wrong on any of my investment decisions--but at least I make them, and I try to make them fast.
Ten years ago, I was an analyst for the General Motors pension fund, working on fund investments into leveraged buyout funds and venture capital deals.
So Shopkick is apparently profitable, driving hundreds of millions of new sales to merchants--remember them? The in-store retail check-in app?
And Belly? They just had their millionth Point of Sale loyalty check-in.
Your grand plans. The best you could ever hope to achieve...
A failure.
A failure to strike fear.
For almost ten years, I've been volunteering on New York City's waterfront--introducing lifelong New Yorkers and tourists alike to kayaking.