I’ve seen so many tweets and posts shitting on Peloton and its founder. The dude started a $10B+ company in a category that almost everyone would have said was stupid. He made some big mistakes in his 10th year of leadership. Give the guy a break.
Rob Go
5,503 posts
Rob Go
@robgo
Lucky husband of @ntduke and father of two amazing girls. Cofounder of NextView. Built some product at Ebay and learned some investing at Spark Capital
- I started in VC in 2007. When I learned the business, there were a lot of rules of thumb that I found arbitrary. Looking back, I realize that many of these made sense because they were formed during a much tougher market environment. Long 🧵
- Today is a big day @NextViewVC. We are making two announcements that we are super excited about. First, we are pleased to announce that we have closed $200M across two new funds. 🎉 Second, we are welcoming @stephpalmeri to our team as a Partner based in SF. 🤯
- Should you "test the waters" for a VC fundraise? TLDR: Don't Quick thread:
- A few weeks ago, one of our portfolio companies completed an investor buyout. The founders now own 100% of their business. Investors got a positive return. All parties I think walked away feeling pretty good about how things transpired 🧵
- A few weeks ago, one of our portfolio companies bought out current investors (for a positive return) resulting in the founders and team now owning 100% of the business. Going to write a blog post about this. What do folks want to know?
- I've probably talked to 100+ YC founders over the years. A lot of VC's get frustrated when speaking to YC companies, but I generally admire them. There are clearly some best practices that are inculcated into YC companies. Here are a few that I think are worth learning from:
- I’ve noticed an interesting trend among early stage VC funds: A heightened focus on fast markups and early fund performance metrics. It got me thinking – is this a good or bad thing? 🧵
- I presume @bfeld and the other Foundry folks don't really care. But I do wish that the coverage of the Foundry news was more celebratory. The team publicly stated early on that they would retire and not perpetuate the fund indefinitely. I believe their performance has been
- Due diligence is a funny thing. It's very easy to find an industry "expert" that will give strong negative feedback on a company. The more prepared your mind is, the more you can tease out the nuance and still get to "yes" despite negative feedback.
- As early stage markets have gotten more efficient, there exists only four ways for a investor to lead a seed round: 1. Having a truly proprietary relationship 2. Having a top decile reputation 3. Paying above market 4. Making a contrarian bet But it's easy to fool yourself.
- Seed investors love to say that founders ought to raise less money early and stay disciplined. But when rounds actually come together, they love to say founders should raise a bit more to provide extra cushion (as long as they get their target ownership) 🙃
- I find a lot of people do much worse investing as a VC as they do as an angel? The obvious reason is that as a VC you need to write bigger checks, and so one' access gets worse. But I think there are three other, more avoidable issues.
- We've had quite a few portfolio companies raise funding rounds over the last few months. I'll try to consolidate some thoughts in a longer post closer to the fall, but a few learnings/observations: