After listening to 1,000x VC podcasts: "I had a unique path into venture capital. I had no idea about the industry but when I was at Stanford business school...."
In the beginning, startups make the mistake of building their organisations top-down rather than bottom up. Don't hire a VP of sales, hire an account executive. Don't hire a VP of product, hire a product manager. Fill your company with doers not managers first
Dropbox share price by round. Seed: $.02 (Sequoia), Series A: $.06 (Sequoia), Series B: $9.05 (Index) , Series C: $19.10 (Blackrock). $7m in seed/A now worth approx $3.4bn at $20 share price. Not bad!
They said that a Google or Microsoft sized company would never come from Australia. Yet here we are. Canva is a once in a hundred-year business story unfolding before us.
Thank you to our own investors for their belief and I'm excited to be able to pass it on to the founders with the courage to take a giant leap forward 🐨🥝🌟
10 years ago, Accel invested $60M for 15% of Atlassian. Today, that stake is now worth just shy of AU$10B. The Australian venture industry (source: AIC) has raised AU$5B in total in the last decade
After 44 years on this earth, I keep coming back to this quote from Tyler Cowen as to the purpose of life and how I would like to spend mine.
"At critical moments in time, you can raise the aspirations of other people significantly, especially when they are relatively young,
18 years ago eBay acquired Paypal for $1.5B. Today, Paypal is worth $220B. 14 years ago Google acquired Youtube for $1.6B and today Youtube would be worth $250B+. 8 years ago, Facebook acquired Instagram for $1B and today Instagram would be worth $150B+ #corporatevc
OpenAI has two structural advantages over Google: no middle management and no legacy business to protect. Technically, the products are equally impressive. But middle management combined with a business to protect is a cocktail for death
