There is a lot of <$1b company M&A coming…

Recently I had coffee with David Newns and we were discussing the opportunities around M&A for small-cap companies. Historically the VC world has not been acquisition-driven so it’s reasonably rare for someone to tolerate my perspective on this. It seems clear that over the next few years (probably measured as remainder of average current VC…More

Sleep lessons for founders and CEOs (also investors and boards)

In the current capital-rich environment where anything seems possible, I’ve been slipping into a habit of wondering how previous companies would have worked out had we started them today. After much rumination I think my biggest missed opportunity was not a constraint of capital, but rather an undervaluation, and misunderstanding, of sleep. Like many, I…More

Digital currencies, DeFi and the impact of the next Carrington event

‘But have you hedged yourself in crypto?’ is the kind of question I am being asked a lot lately. Ignoring the technical and economic miracles/mirages of DeFi, I started to scratch an itch about non-obvious vulnerabilities. Like everything I write, this remains work in progress. If you read a sufficient amount of human history it’s…More

Is US household wealth becoming a national emergency?

I never trust single factor explanations. It usually means that I don’t understand things well enough. However I’ve been obsessing over this graph for a week, because I feel it’s such a huge contributing factor to a range of current phenomena: This declining economic position for young people (on the current trajectory the next generation…More

A Visa model for scaling moderation

This weekend I mostly ended up thinking about quality of content, primarily due to some things I was reading/listening to: Mark Little’s (CEO Kinzen) great summary of the containment trends around content infodemics (I love this term) China announced new content moderation rules to regulate live-selling on streaming services Acquired’s interview with Rec Room’s CEO…More

The next Amazon and Coinbase will probably emerge from a game

I think a lot about ecosystems. Mostly as a mental hack to get around those odd cognitive blockers which humans have when conceptualizing really big things. Especially that category of really big things which everyone agrees will probably be pretty big anyway but which could be really big. The best examples are entirely obvious: Google,…More

Is it still an opportunity if the pricing is nuts?

This post originally started as an exercise to structure my thoughts on current private tech company valuations. Between Deliveroo’s brutal IPO experience on the London market and Clubhouse’s hold-my-beer financing rounds, do valuations even have a purpose? Take, for example, some of the recent investing activity around kids financial services: Greenlight, Current and Step (US-based)…More