Sharing, Building and Community (Notes from June 24 - 30, 2019)

If you hadn't noticed or read from the start, you should know that I've gone in order from the start on the Twenty Minute VC episodes. Many of the conversations are from 2015 and 2016 so they end up as a bit of a history lesson and window into the mindset surrounding capital / founding at that time. Bubble discussions or higher capital raises are comical when we now know what today looks like - higher, still. Although I'd say geographically, expansion has exponentially grown as it's become easier and more common for firms to seek out what they really believe is an edge for them. Interestingly enough, people also don't stay where they were, especially over a few years. As I look them up to refresh and review for these posts, it can be very enlightening to see where they are currently - did they start a new project? Open a new fund? Move on to different industry?David Teten was one of those switchers, as he was with ff V/C at the time, and now over at HOF Capital. Similar role but perhaps more focused on what he'd like to see. Also, many of the firm founders and partners aren't heralded for having more than a few roles - some probably for different reasons, but I look at that for myself as a way to stay extremely excited about continuing to learn every day, every week. To believe in yourself to be capable of doing great work, helping to create as much value as possible in the most efficient manner, hopefully. Weird that many people receive flack for multiple positions when many of us strive to follow a few particular, but potentially different, things. For this, I admire David in keeping up with his roles, while keeping us all in the loop of his thoughts, generally, as well.Next, there were two involved in real estate, housing and construction that were pretty much aligned. What do I mean? Both believed the rising housing (and estate, generally) costs have come as construction costs have increased significantly. This is creating unduly pressure, and making it more difficult for projects to get done. Maggie Coleman went through real estate differences for certain types, while John Rahaim of SF mentioned precautions that are being taken for the coastline and bay.Then, we had Ryan Hoover, who runs ProductHunt, and is one of my favorite follows. He built what he and his friends wanted - a place to share ideas and products to try. And 5 years later, here he is. I won't spoil some of the nuggets that he shared, including a few of his favorite books and monetizing once he knew it was real. Not to be outdone, a discussion with Phil Southerland covered how he has built a strong community of athletes born or having diabetes. To demonstrate how they can grow, he helped form a team of all diabetics and professionally rides to bring awareness and improve the lives and conversations surrounding them.There is important work being done by many people, including ourselves. If we can better someone's life, it's likely worth doing it if you're enjoying it. We can help by just being who we are and doing what we would like to do. I'd love to hear some of your ideas or thoughts regarding the people covered in this week's notes.

• David Teten@dteten, Partner at ff Venture Capital, founder and Chairman of HBS (20min VC 095)

• Alumni Angels of Greater NY, largest angel group in NY
• How to Disrupt the Investing Business
• Grew up in Marin Co, played with computers - consulted and taught Excel as a kid - bah mitzvah on knowledge test Fired when he was 16 from financial services company because they figured out password was pw for admin
• In college, worked briefly in strategy consulting before investment banking in tech - business school where he started multiple ventures in Israel and US
• Joined ff VC in 2011 when it was 3 - now 27+ people, as largest headcount seed VC in Canada, Amsterdam, Israel, UK, US
• Company ff should be generalists - broadest possible but don't invest in life sciences due to no expertise there yet
• Can't predict in advance, so they want companies that are interesting with high growth potential
• Admires outbound of TA or Summit, but something like SignalFire to look at data for high growth Resources to help founders to reduce write-offs (1 in 6 fail for them) which attracts inbound (2000+ a year) Filters down to ~12 a year to invest
• Google Ventures / SignalFire and others as algorithmic approaches to source - increasing importance but not validated thesis
• Loves their model as efficient - frustrations at other vc's (80% of time with people / co you can't invest in - partying and not meeting anyone) Nobody at ff has a job as origination, Angelist as disrupting the generalist VCs (those that don't have added value)
• Top 3 Important Ways to Support Companies: capital raising, finance acceleration team - CFO acting, recruiting
• How to determine value add as entrepreneur
• Reference check
• Do the math on portfolio: for ff, 60 portfolio co's (active in 2/3), 24+ ee's
• How many people in the team? How many portfolio co's? How many checks? Use that to determine person-hours you can expect
• What sort of technology platform to support the company?
• A16z as huge operational side - finance, marketing, etc… Short list for companies doing this - very capital intensive
• Believes that there will be some shrinkage in the model in a downturn if it's not fully thought out
• Very illiquid asset class (mentioning to LPs) - 12 different academic studies for 18-54% median returns
• 10+ years for cash returns, lot of institutions aren't okay with that time range
• David Swenson (head of Yale endowment) has argued long-lasting liquidity premium for illiquid asset classes Even the most liquid asset classes aren't liquid when you want them to be (2008, for instance)
• Indiegogo as seed - crowdfunding space, competitors aren't invested in - watch Angelist very closely, though
• Services from Angelist as they look around at different parts of deal flow
• Encourages member space to get involved in angel investing for next generation of companies - exposure to ecosystem Promote economic growth
• Research study: Disrupt investing - security, for instance
• Secure (ID verification), Distill Networks (blocks bots), IONIQ (from Atl, secure cloud usage)
• New processes and make them efficient: Addapar (Excel/PDF), Earnest Research (nontrad datasets eg: cc info, email receipt mining)
• VC usage of social media: much more aggressive, judicious but no breakfast tweeting - sell
• Edward Tufte - Yale prof, must read
• PandoDaily as top blog - not afraid to make enemies, discuss what they do
• SkyCatch as most recent - drone tech, set of tools for collecting data via drones - construction use case (Kamatsu client) Monitor exact status of project, imperative they know where everything is
• Maggie Coleman, MD and Head of Intl Capital at JLL RE (Wharton XM)

• Looking at different real estate measures - single family homes, for instance
• Do different assets in real estate require a different measure to draw attention from foreign investors? Didn't seem so - would depend on where the capital was coming from (their own environmental basis)
• Construction costs as outpacing many other costs - affecting many markets

• John Rahaim, Director at SF Planning Dept (Wharton XM)
• Having to adjust for the changing seaboard - will regulatory measures be taken? No mechanical or living people in commercial buildings on the first floor, for instance
• Says there are already precautions being taken on the bay - 5-8 feet, for instance
• Construction costing so much already that it's been very difficult to get building done post-land acquisition
• Estimates of $600-800k for this due to inflationary and costs passed from the building companies
• Said he had some 36? Projects that are being held up
• Ryan Hoover (@rrhoover), Founder @ ProductHunt (20min VC FF026)

• Best community builder, Twitter engagement, winner of TC Best New Startup of 2014
• Just wanted to build a consumer-focused thing to discuss with his friends about app ideas or companies
• Put it on Quibb and Twitter - manual things initially, set up an email subscription, personal email connecting with people Keep building communities otherwise it peters out
• First iteration was RoR built over 5 day Thanksgiving holiday - core is the same, people using and community growth Having people tell them and comment on ideas (used it as their new home page)
• How to plan to go from early adopters to mass market? Eager enough to participate, engage and not necessarily representative of the common users
• Categorizing Podcasts and putting them on the home page - barrier before, now based on episodes This Week in Startups, Startup Show (by Gimlet founders), Jake Gyllenhaal ep of Mystery Show (Gimlet media) - is he 6' tall?
• Worked on Hooked with Nir Eyal, using some in ProductHunt
• Email digest is the trigger - action is to open / click on something to find inspiration or interesting Built email variability - some consistency, surface different titles and content
• Follow collection, clicking follow, reward is updates on the collections - permission for emailing to reinforce and come back
• Ryan's favorite collections: featured ones, Russ has game collections (browser ones), Julie created bakednight
• Betaworks kept popping up on their engagement charts - Twitter very active, products (Without, where would he be?) Always tagging the authors and being genuine, personable, funny or light-hearted
• Monetizing PH - at its core, download/use/purchase products with the right intent
• Over time, will explore more of this
• Fundraising: first time for Ryan, different as a side project and growing
• Quibb as newsfeed other than Twitter and also Crunchies where they announced Shipt but said "Actually, it's PH"
• Sunrise as calendar app, Pomodoro - no longer. Favorite book: Art of Game Design by Arty Shell User psychology and game mechanics, how it applies to tech products as well. Game design not always thought about.
• Brian Solis (@briansolis), author of Lifescale (Wharton XM)

• Survey on how social media has changed / warped views for girls Hadn't fully released yet

• Phil Southerland (@philsoutherland), CEO of Team Novo Nordisk (Wharton XM)

• Living with T1 diabetes and bringing awareness
• T1 and T2 can be helped, dealt with and he's trying that
• Cycling team focused on it Full team is athletes with diabetes triathletes, runners and cyclists