Pattern Recognition is a journal of thoughts and strategies on venture capital investments.
A lot of entrepreneurs have come to me recently looking for advice about their seed round, mostly because they are oversubscribed and need to choose between VCs and angel investors. Given that I am a VC, you would assume that I would side with other VCs, but I am actually somewhat negative on VC participation at […]
What is the thread that connects the great media companies of the last 20 years? I think the answer will surprise you. In 1995, Yahoo was founded as a personal project of two Stanford PhD’s. The project aggregated links from around the web, creating an index of third party content in one place. It was a brilliant […]
I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine about the government’s plan to regulate the way websites track consumers online. If you are not familiar with all the press on this topic you should read the Wall Street Journal pieces here or here. The Wall Street Journal has been the most zealous proponent […]
When I started writing this blog I put together a list of topics, and one of them was making bold predictions about a new, capital-efficient software model taking over the world. But as often happens when I write these posts, the story took a different turn and I found myself writing about two different software […]
At the Sigalow house we have a ritual of ordering Chinese take-out on Sunday, and two nights ago I got the following fortune, “If we do not change our direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed.” I think the forces of the universe, or perhaps just the forces at China Fun, are […]
I was on a panel with a few other VCs at the Columbia Private Equity Conference last week, and we were asked if we had a hard time recruiting entrepreneurs and executives to work in New York City. I had the benefit of going last, which is always my favorite place to be on panels, […]
Last week Zynga joined a select group of hot consumer companies, with a reported $500mm financing at a $10bn valuation. It didn’t take long since my previous post for another company to join this exclusive club. This time around I can’t help but weigh in. Most people outside of the technology community and the 101 […]
The Greycroft team had a great agency experience last week. We were hosted by Digitas, on behalf of their largest client American Express, over a night of dinner and drinks to discuss the opportunities in social media marketing. On our end we invited two of our portfolio companies, Klout and Ad.ly, to lead the discussion. […]
I have been watching with fascination about the follow-on rounds at companies like Groupon, Twitter, and Facebook. A lot of money is changing hands, a billion dollars here and a billion dollars there, and these companies are so closely held that their financial performance is still a mystery. Every time I hear a number about Facebook’s […]
A few years ago I read Moneyball, which is another Michael Lewis book, and the “Aha” moment was his discussion of walks in baseball. It seemed counter-intuitive at first, but players who get on base a lot, even through walks, are valuable assets. Most managers had overlooked this and were focusing on the wrong attributes, […]