I heard some incredibly wise words several years ago that I’ve often thought about but never really shared with anyone else. By chance, I happened to bring it up in conversation today, and it reminded me of how profound the idea was when I first heard it, so I thought I’d share.

The words were about loss and relationships. The particularly profound observation is that when you lose someone, you don’t only lose them. Every person brings out something unique in the other people that are around them. …

We are going to try to establish a fun new blog series every Friday called “Friday Fun-isms”. These are a collection of phrases and sayings that we often say internally at NextView or with the founders we work with. These posts aren’t meant to be super detailed, but a bit of a peak into our thinking and hopefully a reflection of something interesting or helpful.

Our first Friday Fun-ism is one that I always talk about when it comes to fundraising: “It moves slow until it moves fast”.

Fundraising processes have an unusual tempo. There is usually a fairly lengthy…

When we talk internally about our themes at NextView, the focus is less on areas or sectors, but more about shifts in human behavior and preferences. We share some of the categories we are interested in on our website, but the themes we pursue are based on the way end-user behavior is changing as these categories are being transformed by technology.

For example, we have a broad interest in what’s happening in the food category, and one thesis within that is around the shift from “source” to “application”. …

One area that seed investors can be really helpful to founders is around setting milestones to optimize for future funding rounds. Assuming that you are building a business that will require more capital, using your limited resources against the highest priority activities can make a big difference.

The frustrating thing I notice is that many activities that go into building a seed-stage startup don’t get full “credit” from the external funding market. They may be necessary, but they don’t really create a step-function increase in the appeal of your company to a new investor. In general, I call these under-valued…

Sunrise calendar was perhaps the most loved calendar application that has ever existed. Even today, I get comments from consumers who tell me how much they miss the product and never found anything else quite like it. Pierre, Jeremy, and their team took a boring but essential utility and made it a true delight, through excellent design, innovative features, and market leading speed.

Although the Sunrise acquisition was an outstanding outcome for everyone involved, I always felt regret that our time working together came to an end so soon. …

I generally believe in the adage that there are only two jobs to be done at an early stage company:

1. Building the Product
2. Selling the Product

Because of this, most of the early teams we invest in are heavily weighted towards engineering. The founders usually serve as the de-facto head of product and/or head of sales. The first non-engineering hire is usually focused on GTM, especially once there is some semblance of product market fit.

Aside from these roles, there are usually two hires that I strongly recommend that founders prioritize if they can find someone great. It takes some…

I was supposed to be at YC this week, until an unexpected collision with a tree put me on the sidelines for a week (I’m ok, btw, just a dumb ski injury). As I wait for my MRI, I am trying to soak up what I can about what’s going on in SF this week. Kudos to YC for making a really excellent portal to be able to learn about the companies in their batch in a really efficient way.

This got me thinking about what kinds of things founders can glean from YC, even while just observing from afar…

Earlier and Smaller

A few weeks ago, I was speaking at an event and predicted that we were going to see an interesting correction in the early stage market as more funds start to going earlier and invest in smaller rounds. This was actually a contrarian opinion, as most folks believed that rounds were only getting bigger and funds are investing later.

I’ve noticed this prediction start to come to fruition recently and shared this tweet

This seems to have resonated with folks, so I thought I’d share a bit more:

I think the rationale for this shift is…