Earlier today, the folks from Afore Capital hosted their inaugural “Pre-Seed Summit” in San Francisco. About 150 people showed up, a healthy mix of founders, seed-stage investors and big fund VCs, and a bunch of LPs of various sizes. Some press showed up, too. “Pre-Seed”... Read More

Today it was revealed that Uber, the largest startup/private-unicorn juggernaut reported spent $200M (cash & stock) to acquire San Francisco’s Jump Bikes, a local startup founded all the way back in 2010. There are lots of interesting transit-junkie and international angles related to this transaction,... Read More

Last week, I wrote about the one ingredient required to “get into” venture capital – context. For folks investing today, there are countless more opportunities to invest and some of them actually do not require that much context. It’s the subject for another post, but... Read More

Earlier this week, a super-smart recent college grad pinged me to talk about a potential career in venture. I took the meeting. It was funny to me, in a way, that I myself had those meetings 7-8 years ago. I can’t remember all the advice... Read More

A bit of personal news for readers of this Haystack blog — as it was announced earlier this week, starting Monday (tomorrow) I will become a Venture Partner with Lightspeed Venture Partners. I will continue to run Haystack independently as a single-GP seed fund. You can... Read More

Back in Q1 of 2016, in my quest to find and fund companies that were providing new ways for individuals and entities to access the Internet, I had heard about a startup in the YC W16 batch called Astranis. I stalked Astranis online, emailed them... Read More

Over the last few weeks, I’ve uttered the phrase “Amazon needs to buy Ring” or “Amazon will compete with Ring” a number of times. Well, today, they bought Ring, allegedly for a rumored amount of $1.2B or more. Wow! Below, I will quickly unpack why... Read More

Mid-way through 2017, a close friend of mine said “Hey, remember Nick? He’s raising a fund. You should ping him.” So, I pinged Nick. It had been nearly three years since we really chatted. It turned out that Nick, who had been a very early... Read More

When folks ask “Hey, how’s it going?” I usually respond with “Can’t complain” or “Optimistically paranoid!” It is really how I feel. First off, how lucky are all of us — founders, investors, limited partners, journalists, early employees — to work in such a dynamic... Read More

It is probably my favorite “big” tech conference of the year. Every year, in late January, hundreds of VCs and LPs make the trek to Los Angeles for The Upfront Summit, hosted by the team at Upfront and their local sponsors. If Twitter is the... Read More

Back in early 2015, while I was a venture partner with Bullpen, the guys there remarked about one of their portfolio founders on a continuous pivot with his company and that while it seemed crazy, they admired the team’s craftiness in hunting for the next... Read More

If you can remember back nearly two years ago, the tech startup chatter was consumed by a fascination with bots. This was during a time when Facebook Messenger experimented with bots for brands, and when the ecosystem went a little overboard in its hopes for... Read More

This post is about the Bay Area startup and venture ecosystem. I believe the local ecosystem just completed an entire “reset” with respect to the earliest stages of company formation. (I need to state upfront that this isn’t about the seed landscape nationwide — I’ll... Read More

Whenever there’s a big startup exit, I try to quickly unpack it here on the blog. There’s been so much news about Uber for the past year and more that, frankly, I have tuned most of it out. It’s almost laughable now three years ago,... Read More

Turning the page on 2017, here’s what I’m looking ahead to in 2018: I want to keep this post brief as possible. Below is a set of predictions for 2018 in tech startups and VC. This is also a window into the principles and beliefs... Read More

This will be a brief post looking back at some of the notable tech exits of 2017. Before we begin, there are many disclaimers that must be made… [note: if we missed a “notable” exit, please let me know & I’ll update the sheet…] First,... Read More

Earlier this year, I wrote a post detailing how I was able to transform Haystack into an institutional fund. As there continue to be more and more smaller and newer funds created per year, that post triggered a bunch of emails and follow-up questions, so... Read More

Here’s my “Year In Review For Tech VC & Startups, 2017 edition.” For the past few weeks, I’ve jotted down notes on my iPad w/ Pencil, and sort of dreaded the act of writing this given the overall stench of 2017. Yes, there were some... Read More

This fall, I wanted to go on a “Podcast Tour” to talk about the new Haystack Fund and also re-engage with one of my favorite mediums, audio. Here’s a quick holiday round-up of all the shows from this fall, with two more set to be... Read More

For a while, on this blog, I attempted to pick one startup for that year which truly “broke out” of its shell. Dialing back the clock, one could say 2011 was Uber and Airbnb; in 2012, I wrote about Stripe; in 2013, I wrote about... Read More