Posts from entrepreneurship

Early in the pandemic, we were all deluged with stories of tech workers, companies, and founders leaving Silicon Valley for Miami and Austin. And that was true. But from my personal experience, they also left for many other places too, including Los Angeles and New York City.

I met with a founder last week who has left the bay area for good and now splits his time between homes in LA and NYC. It is hard to know what cities have been the biggest beneficiaries of the great relocation but I am certain that NYC is one of them.

Here are some tweets I’ve seen in recent weeks talking about this:

Feels like every fourth bay area tech person I talk to is moving to New York.

— Sam Altman (@sama) September 26, 2021

2 mtngs yesterday w/ w coast crypto folks where they proclaimed NY the epicenter of crypto. I guess I've been feeling the activity, but didn't realize it was so conclusively here. if true & if crypto eats internet, there's a path to NY dethroning s valley as epicenter of tech.

— Jordan Cooper (@jordancooper) September 23, 2021

I am not proclaiming the death of Silicon Valley. It is alive and well and will continue to be the epicenter of tech in the US for as far as I can see. What it has lost is the power to hold onto people who don’t really want to be there. One of the most important things the covid pandemic has done to work in the US, particularly tech work, is to make it so that people can work for great companies wherever they want to live. That’s a huge shift and I believe it is permanent.

But that’s not the only thing that’s driving NYC’s tech resurgence. As yesterday’s IPO of Warby Parker reminds us, NYC is now home to a growing number of large entrepreneurial companies that are now public and will remain independent and growing in NYC. They may employ people all around the world, but they are HQ’d in NYC and will continue to be.

And Jordan is correct in the tweet above that NYC is particularly strong in Web3 because of its roots in trading, speculating, DeFi, etc and because of large Web3 software players like Consensys that have been operating here for many years now. And as Web3 is now exploding into the creative class via things like NFTs, DAOs, gaming and more, we will only see NYC’s strengths come to the front and center in the most important new sector in tech.

It’s a great time to be working in tech in NYC. You get all of the benefits of living in this amazing city without the hassles of the commute every day.

I’ll end with a plug for a startup competition that Google, Tech:NYC, and Cornell Tech are putting on called the “NYC Recovery Challenge”.

The challenge will bring together startup entrepreneurs from across the five boroughs to pitch tech solutions for New York’s recovery to a panel of business, economic, and policy experts with the chance of winning cash prizes, technical mentorship, and more.

The top three founders and their teams will be recognized as “NYC RecoveryFellows” and will receive cash awards from a prize fund totaling $150,000. The first-place founder and their team will receive a non-dilutive cash award of $100,000, and two runners-up will each receive non-dilutive cash awards of $25,000. Seven other entrants will be recognized as “Founders to Watch” and will participate, along with the three cash award recipients, in a month-long, equity-free mentorship program — dubbed the “NYC Accelerator” — led by Cornell Tech, Google for Startups, and Tech:NYC advisers. 

If you and your startup want to apply, you can do so here.

I recall when my partner Brad and I were raising our first USV fund, back in 2003, and potential investors wondered about my blogging habit. They asked if I was making a mistake telegraphing our investment thesis for everyone to see, including our “competitors.”

We strongly defended the practice and explained that the benefits of telling the world what we were looking to invest in, and why, strongly outweighed any costs. We explained that telegraphing would bring entrepreneurs to us.

And that turned out to be the case. So many of our top-performing investments over the years came to us because of our telegraphing strategy. It is hard to know who is working on a problem you are interested in. But if you put the word out far and wide, they will find you.

I was reminded of those conversations almost twenty years ago now when I read this post on USV.com by Hanel outlining our interest in measuring carbon. She explains that we have made one investment in that area already and are looking to make more. And she explains why.

I am sure that Hanel has already heard from a bunch of founders working on measuring carbon and will hear from more in the coming weeks and months. That’s excellent and how it should work in our view.

Over the last 18 months, the early-stage financing market has seen dramatic changes characterized by these three things:

• A shift from in-person fundraising to virtual fundraising
• A reduction in financing process timelines from months to weeks
• A continued increase in the amount of capital available for early stage companies

I believe that for the most part, these changes will be permanent.

And I believe that for the most part, these changes are good for early-stage company formation and innovation.

However, there will be some negative side effects from these changes and one that I worry about is the “bad marriage problem.” Unlike public markets, private market investments are held for many years, often a decade or more. If an investor and an entrepreneur find each other difficult to work with, there is no easy solution. There is no divorce court for startups. And so the result is likely to be entrepreneurs and investors getting stuck in bad marriages.

There are a few opportunities to address this issue. There is a vibrant secondary market for private investments and while it is mostly limited today to well-known later-stage companies, it could develop into a broader market as the capital seeking to get invested in early-stage innovation continues to grow unabated. It is unlikely that founders will be able to force investors out of their cap tables via the secondary markets, but a voluntary separation via the secondary market seems more likely to me.

I also think startup boards need to evolve. There should be many more independent directors and many fewer investor directors on startup boards. Investors should be more open to observer seats and founders should have more say in which investors sit on their boards. I am not arguing that founders should control their boards, but I am arguing that investors should not control the boards. I think independent control is the most sustainable solution.

We know that bad marriages are hurtful to everyone, not just the spouses. Companies that have dysfunctional founder/investor relationships suffer from them. And the shotgun marriage environment we are operating in right now (and for the foreseeable future) will likely create more of them. So we should be thinking about solutions to end these bad marriages and let everyone move on to better ones.

My family has a history of irregular heartbeats, from PVCs to AFIBs. So when I saw my cardiologist recently, I asked him how I could track my beats. I have worn a Holter Monitor a few times and did not want to do that again unless it was absolutely necessary. He pointed me to this Kardia Mobile device which I purchased on Amazon a few weeks ago.

This Kardia Mobile 6L device is remarkable. It delivers a “6 lead” EKG reading into your smartphone by putting the device on your knee and pressing both thumbs on it. I realize that 6 leads is not the same as what you get with a Holter Monitor or an EKG in your doctor’s office. But it is really amazing because it is so easy to use in your own home. It is the size of an Apple TV remote, maybe even a tad smaller. I just email my cardiologist the result and he tells me what is going on without him having to take fifteen minutes or more to see me and without me having to visit his office.

This is just one example of the revolution underway in health care. Driven by advances in technology, a computer in everyone’s pocket, ongoing changes in the healthcare system accelerated by the pandemic, among other forcing functions, we are seeing more and more healthcare being accessed in our homes vs in the doctor’s office.

This does not mean that doctors are needed less. I think they are needed more. But they can focus their time and energy where it is most needed, in providing the care itself vs all of the other things that lead to the care.

This has the potential to both increase access to care and also reduce the cost of it. We will need other changes to the healthcare system for those things to be realized. We will need the healthcare system to move away from a business model based on the provision of care in favor of a business model based on outcomes. We will need the power of the payors to be reduced in favor of the power of the patients. Those changes must be driven by society/politics and they won’t come easy.

But the conditions are ripe for a reshaping of the healthcare system. Entrepreneurs (like the folks who made the Kardia Mobile device) and risk capital can and will be an important force in driving that change.

This should be obvious to AVC readers but I am a fan of short and sweet. Why take two pages to say something you can say in one page? Why take two paragraphs to say something you can say in one paragraph?

This letter to potential investors from the CEO in the Duolingo S-1, which was flipped to the public yesterday, is a fantastic example of that.

Disclosure: USV is an investor in Duolingo and we stand to profit from their IPO. This is not in any way an endorsement of the offering. Investors should read the S-1 and make up their own mind about it.

On Monday, a copy of Startup CXO, my friend Matt Blumberg’s new book, arrived at the USV office. I picked it up to take a quick look and thought “this a heavy book!”

So I texted Matt, congratulated him on getting the book out, and then asked why it was so heavy. He replied “because it is 640 pages, there is a section on every C-level function in that book.”

That’s when I realized that Startup CXO is not really a book. It’s a “field manual” to scaling a leadership team and company. It is the kind of book you will keep by your desk and pull out from time to time to figure out how to approach an issue or to help one of your senior leaders figure out how to do that.

And in that context, it’s a very valuable resource for CEOs and leadership teams as they scale a company and find new challenges around every corner.

The book is now out in Kindle and Hardcover. I recommend the Hardcover so you can keep it handy and pull it out from time to time when you need a quick primer on something.

Last week I spent three hours with my six partners in a conference room talking through what we are investing in and why. It was a terrific session and I had more “ahas” in those three hours than I have had in many many months. There really is no substitute for sitting together with your colleagues working things out face to face.

This week our team met with a founder in Singapore via Zoom. It was midnight in Singapore and noon in NYC. In one hour we learned enough from the founder to be able to make a decision on whether or not to invest in the founder’s company.

In the last year, events like the latter one have been commonplace. Events like the former have been non-existent. And there are many in the tech sector and broader business sector (and other sectors too) that have come to believe that on-screen interactions will be the primary way we engage going forward.

For certain things, like raising capital and investing capital, on-screen works pretty well. Founders have figured out that they can raise capital from their kitchens, bedrooms, and offices in weeks vs roadshows that lasted months. I don’t think we will see founders going back on the road in any material way ever again. And founders in Singapore can access capital markets in NYC with ease. And investors in NYC can access investments in Singapore with ease. These are all important and disruptive changes to the startup, tech, and business sectors.

But in the last month, as I have been going into the USV offices most days, I have come to realize what we have been missing with the on-screen work model vs the in-person work model. Many things are more efficient on-screen but some things are way better in-person.

Understanding which is which and then figuring out how to continue to do the in-person things will be critical to leaders and teams navigating the new normal.

I got an email from a founder/CEO about six months ago saying that his company was going back to the office completely when the pandemic was over. I had not heard many CEOs taking that strong of a stance at that time. Since then, I have heard the same from a number of our portfolio company leaders. They are in the minority but they are not non-existent. When we survey our portfolio we find that about 20-25% will go back to full-time in the office work, another 20-25% have gone entirely remote, and the balance will try to figure out a hybrid model that makes sense for their company.

At USV, where we have landed for now, and maybe forever, is a bias to be in the office, particularly on the days we meet in person, but we are also way more open to on-screen work and we have an expectation that some team members will choose to work on-screen for multiple days a week, possibly the majority of days a week. We see that working parents benefit from the flexibility that on-screen work allows and younger team members benefit from the socialization and camaraderie that an office provides. We also see that those who commute long distances benefit significantly from being able to reduce the commuting load by working on-screen multiple days a week.

Our business has a natural rhythm of two days a week when we meet as a team; Monday and Thursdays. So those tend to be the days that team members try to be in the office and those are the days we do things like cater in lunch and maybe go out after work together. That allows us to retain the team dynamic and culture while being more open to on-screen work going forward.

We definitely have not figured this all out, but we are starting to see some patterns and some benefits of both work modes, and we are trying to navigate to a good middle ground.

Each company needs to figure this out in a way that works for their team and culture and I believe that there is no “right way” for everyone. But I also believe that in-person interactions remain critical to making better decisions, better products, better cultures, and better companies and so I would encourage everyone, including the fully remote teams, to figure out how to make in-person interactions happen on some regular cadence.

Last June, I wrote about board diversity and suggested some things we are doing and that you can do to diversity your board.

In the ten months that have passed since I wrote that I am pleased to say that we have seen a noticeable increase in board diversity in our portfolio. I have personally stepped off a few boards to make room for diverse board members and I am prepared to do more of that. A number of my partners have done the same. It is that important to me and USV.

But I can also tell you that the state of diversity in startup/growth company boards and our portfolio is still awful.

Our portfolio company Bolster connects fractional executives and board candidates to startup and growth companies. They have done some of the board searches for diverse candidates in our portfolio and they are going to do a lot more.

They have been surveying the startup and growth sector over the last few months to determine the state of diversity on boards. They published the results today. The numbers are embarrassing.

We can do better and we must do better.

Here is how:

1/ Make room on your board for independent directors at the very start and fill those seats with diverse candidates.

2/ Ask your investor directors to become observers to make room for independent diverse candidates.

3/ Prioritize this.

4/ Use Bolster or other service providers to surface great diverse board candidates.

There are so many qualified diverse candidates out there for you to bring onto your board. I have participated in many of the board searches in our portfolio in the last year and I am blown away by the diverse talent that is out there waiting to help you grow your company. You just need to make room for them and ask them to join your board.

Just do it.

A well-known entrepreneur turned VC, who will go unnamed because I am not sure he would want me to share this conversation publicly, once told me “if you remove a founder, you must sell the company within a couple of years or it will start to decline in value.”

I don’t entirely agree with that and my experience with it has been different, but it brings up an incredibly important topic about leadership.

I like to keep things simple and in my simple mind, leadership comes in two flavors, visionary leadership and operational leadership. Founders are almost always visionaries (if they aren’t, run in the opposite direction) and hired CEOs are almost always operators.

What this VC was saying is that once you replace visionary leadership with operational leadership, the Company will stop innovating and start to lose value. I agree completely that companies that stop innovating will start to lose value. What I don’t agree with and have seen first hand, is that you can have a team that can provide both operational and visionary leadership.

Leaders who can provide both operational and visionary leadership are a rare but special breed. When you find one, get on their bus and stay on it for as long as you can. It will be an incredible trip.

It is also the case that you can pair visionary leadership with operational leadership and I have seen that model work very well for long periods of time. Most commonly, the visionary leader is “in charge” and the operational leader runs the business on a day to day period. That can be an Executive Chairman (visionary) and a CEO (operator) or it can be a CEO (visionary) and President/COO (operator). Most commonly in this model, the visionary leader is the founder and the operator is a hired executive.

Small early-stage companies can succeed without operational leadership but not forever. That is why founders who are great visionaries but weak operationally can be very successful for a while at least. Once a company gets into the hundreds of employees and is headed to the thousands, it needs operational leadership and this is where many visionary founders struggle. And this is when operational leaders are hired and the work starts to find the right long-term sustainable operating model.

Some founders are this rare breed of visionaries who can operate too. Most are not. So this work to find the right pairing is critical and is a lot of the work that board members do with the founders and their leadership team in startups.

But going back to my friend and his advice that I started this post with, it is true that operational leadership alone will not get the job done. And it is also true that operational leaders will have a hard time getting “the vision thing” from below. It has to come from the top. Operational leadership, fortunately, does not.