I stopped writing at BerlinVC around a year ago. It would be easy to say that the reason is simply that getting BlueYard off the ground and working on building up our portfolio just left too little time. That would be the easy explanation, but the wrong one. The truth is that I increasingly felt my… Continue reading
Wait - what?
I am pretty confident my partner Jason is among the most well-read VCs out there. We are easily talking several books a week. I am happy if I manage one book a month. I have been bugging him to start a blog about what he is reading - because I know I sure benefit from his recommendations… Continue reading →
Hire the trajectory, not the status
One of the most common and cringe-worthy boardroom phrases is “… I think we need to hire a world class C[x]O or VP of [X].” I am still waiting for the day when the CEO replies “thank you for flagging the world class piece, I would have hired a mediocre candidate!” Joking aside, the less catchy… Continue reading →
A new venture firm called BlueYard
You may have noticed a significant decay in my blogging activity recently. My excuse is that over the last few months Jason Whitmire and I have started a new venture firm called BlueYard Capital and that took up a fair amount of attention and time. With the help of our entrepreneurs, our co-investors and a whole… Continue reading →
URGENT: The EU is risking the open internet - take action now
If you know what this is about and want to take action - scroll down to the end. One of the greatest accomplishments of the web has been permissionless innovation - anyone can build & distribute services and products over the web; consumers and companies are free to choose and pay for whatever web services and… Continue reading →
When “everything is awesome at the company right now” - it really isn’t
When I hear one of our CEOs say “everything is awesome at our company right now; the entire team is in a great mood” - my first thought is “uh-ho”. Because at great companies things are happening so fast, things are being questioned all the time, things are so at / over capacity - things… Continue reading →
Donut board meetings vs VC value add
A few weeks ago I moderated a panel at Tech Open Air. The topic was the shifting venture landscape and how entrepreneurs can navigate it. There are a bunch of new VC firms - some offer services some don’t; there are a bunch of old VC firms now offering a lot of services, some… Continue reading →
Local discovery on… Instagram
This morning when I checked Instagram I had notifications that an account called eatingberlin had liked two of my pictures I had taken at Berlin restaurants. It reminded me that I had seen others like berlinfoodguide or berlinfoodstories - so I followed all 3 of them to make sure I’m in the loop on new food hotspots… Continue reading →
Finding out how “early stage” a VC firm really is
“We’re early stage” doesn’t really mean much because it can be stretched to mean a whole range of phases as a company grows up. And that’s OK - VC firms come in all shapes and sizes and folks are successful with all kinds of models. We could have a long debate about what “early stage” is… Continue reading →
Becoming a VC and other weirdness. An interview
There’s a startup in Berlin called Jobspotting - if you’re looking for a new job you must check them out. They run a series of interviews, and a while back I had the pleasure of having a chat with Carrie King about how I became a VC and a bunch of other things. We had that conversation many… Continue reading →
