A few notes before I jump into this. First, I realized in running through several drafts of this post that it can be hard to talk about networking without coming across as a bit cold or transactional in how one approaches relationships. I hope the note below doesn’t come off that way – my aim was to talk about something that I really care deeply about and offer some ideas for how to strengthen and deepen the working relationships in your life. Secondly, I’d like to thank Patrick (who I reference below) for his review and feedback of several drafts of this post – it was very much appreciated (and needed). While we live in a hyper-connected world, how deep…
Posts By / seth levine
Friday Fun #6 – You Had One Job
As internet memes go, You Had One Job is a fun one. There are a few versions running around but the one I pay attention to is the Twitter handle @_youhadonejob1. Full of amusing pictures of things gone a little awry… Happy Friday!
What’s The Optimal Portfolio Strategy for a Venture Fund?
Last year I wrote a few posts (here and here) that talked about how skewed venture returns were. The key take-away graphic from that post is below – outsized returns on venture investments are rare. Much rarer than most people realize. A key question my post didn’t consider was what the ideal venture portfolio might look like in the face of these data. Steve Crossan took a stab at modeling the answer to that question using the data from my Outcomes post. It’s an interesting read – you can see his full analysis here. Interestingly, we pondered this exact question at the very start of Foundry Group. Nassim Taleb’s book, The Black Swan had just come out and we decided to read the…
You May Have Too Many VCs On Your Board
Those that have followed my blog for any period of time know that I love the data that my friends at Correlation Ventures gather and write about (for example the data behind my post Venture Outcomes are Even More Skewed Than You Think or IPO or M&A). Today they released some data on the correlation between the number of venture board members around the boardroom table and the success of venture funded businesses which I thought was pretty illuminating and which confirmed a long held suspicion of mine. I haven’t counted exactly but I’ve been on dozens and dozens of venture funded boards in the almost 20 years I’ve been a venture investor. Some have been fantastic. Some have been dysfunctional. Most…
Friday Fun #5 – I have your friend’s phone
One of my all time favorites.
The Changing Venture Market In 3 Images
Want to visualize how the venture funding market is changing? Look no further than these 3 slides (from a presentation put together by our friends at Greenspring). I don’t think much commentary is needed here. Average round size at Series A is increasing dramatically. Venture is being increasingly driven by large rounds (especially at the later stages – this is significantly skewing the overall funding numbers that are being reported). IPOs are the new Unicorns (they’re becoming more scarce than their $1BN valued cousins)
Friday Fun #4: Ordinals, Texas Style
Two of my partners are from Texas (Brad, which surprises many; and Lindel, which surprises no one). This article on the various ways of describing direction in Texas was hallarious. Who knew, “down”, “out”, “over” and “up” were directions…
What does it mean to be an “executive”
We have active and lively Foundry CEO and Portfolio Executives email lists. They are among the things that I love the most about the community we’re creating at Foundry. I love watching execs across the portfolio (who refer to each other as “Foundry cousins”) help each other out and share ideas. It’s an important reminder that great companies are created not by solo, heroic efforts, but by the collective force of entire communities. Recently a CEO sent around the following question: what defines an executive (who reports to a CEO)? — especially as different from “a regular manager”. I thought a number of the responses were great and wanted to share them here so they can benefit companies beyond the…
Friday Fun #4 – Behind the Scenes On Our Latest Video – Bored Meeting
I hope you saw that Foundry released our latest video last week – Bored Meeting. At the time I’m writing this more than 100,000 of you have, which is pretty exciting. Bored Meeting follows on the heels of two prior efforts – I’m a VC and Worst of Times. I’m fortunate to have a really talented partner in Jason Mendelson who writes, performs all the instrumentation for, mixes, edits and produces these songs and videos. It’s a labor of love for all of us – an attempt to bring a little personality and humor to a business that often lacks both. The process is a blast – from recording the song in Jason’s basement studio to working on costumes to…
Focusing on Actions, not Results
I just had a conversation with an entrepreneur I’ve worked with for decades that resulted in an insight that I thought was worth sharing more broadly. We were talking about managing teams and in this case the challenge of getting some of his exec team focused on broader goals and the end result we’re driving for in the upcoming year (a big growth year for this business). The solution we outlined was to focus on actions (concrete, clear, definable) vs. the more vague set of results that we had been trying to align everyone around. We’re still driving to the same outcomes but the leap was too large in a couple of cases for people to get their hands around….