I recently read The Power Law by Sebastian Mallaby. There is a section about how Thomas Perkins, the founder of Kleiner Perkins, approached venture capital. His strategy was to "identify the white-hot risks, then find the cheapest way of going after them." Essentially, determine where the startup might fail (e.g. is there a foundational technical breakthrough that's required? Some complex operational execution? A question of market demand? etc.), and maniacally focus on solving for that singular element in the most economically efficient way possible. I very much like this approach to investing and company building. Constraints (i.e. the limited amount of money one has in the bank) force focus and ruthless prioritization.

In the past decade tech entrepreneurs have experienced remarkable market conditions. Money from venture capitalists was seemingly infinite. This created a series of bad behaviors that entrepreneurs will have to unlearn. Mainly, it enabled founders to do too much shit at once without truly understanding and focusing on what was most important to make their business actually work (i.e. what is the white-hot risk?). My strong preference for company building, particularly at the early stages, is to singularly focus on the thing that is mission critical and to tackle that in the scrappiest way possible. I, like every other entrepreneur, have made the mistake of trying to do way too much on more than one occasion. The times things worked best were always when we had a crystal clear focus on the absolute most important thing to accomplish and focused all of our resources and attention towards it.

The recent market turn is going to create new constraints for entrepreneurs. Capital will be much harder to come by, and this will be a forcing function for leaders to do less. Ultimately, I think this is a very good thing. Many founders will struggle to adapt - these are new market conditions for a lot of people and new is always difficult. But those that do embrace these newfound constraints and zealously hone in on the white-hot risks are going to emerge having built industry-defining iconic companies. They will likely build better companies faster in this capital-scarce market than they would have in the capital-abundant one. Call me old-fashioned, but I'm excited about this return to normalcy. In the long run I think it will produce better outcomes for everyone in the ecosystem.

I left GroupMe/MSFT at the end of 2013. I haven’t been involved with it for a long while now, but around a year ago I caught up with someone who was familiar with how the product was doing inside Microsoft. I was absolutely shocked to learn how popular the app still is. There were roughly 25M MAU, nearly 100m total users, and 13m DAU. Practically every college student in the country uses it. And roughly 10 engineers were supporting the entire operation.

I was shocked because the product hasn’t really evolved in the past decade. There are seldom any updates, and it has really just been in maintenance mode. It’s an incredible asset that for some reason has not been usurped by competitive messengers. It’s sticky. And fun #)

When people ask me about my GroupMe experience I like to say that building something in consumer is 90% luck and 10% executing against that luck. I actually think the luck variable for success in social may actually be closer to 95%. So many amazing teams tackle problems in social but their products never make it and if they do they’re usually a blip - they pop and then fizzle with no staying power.

Another thing I believe about consumer applications that make it is that they capture lightning in a bottle, and there is very little a team can do to fuck things up. Once the lighting is captured, even if you try to deliberately sabotage the thing, you can’t prevent it from growing. We sold GroupMe to Skype, and from what I’m told this was absolutely the case at Skype early on. It was a mess, but that product was going to catch fire no matter how dysfunctional things were. Twitter was the same way. And when I joined tumblr, there was very little the team could do to prevent its success. Constant downtime was never a deterrent. When you strike the chord it’s nearly impossible to dampen the vibration.

Marc Rebillet is one of my favorite new artists I discovered in the past several years. His energy is infectious, he exudes nothing but positive vibes and fun, and he's a musical improvisational genius. Normally he does solo live shows that he streams on YouTube (you can check them out here) where he messes around for an hour wearing nothing but a robe and some boxer briefs. It's quite a shtick to say the least. But where he really begins to shine is when he improvises with other talented musicians. The first time I really saw this was in this video of him, Reggie Watts, and Flying Lotus.

Earlier this week I stumbled on a new collaboration he did with Reggie Watts and Erykah Badu. It's exceptional. If you want a taste for what it's all about, start watching at the 17:50 mark (for around 10 minutes), and then again at the 34:30 mark.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtR1yVmCCvw

I am a huge fan of musical improvisation. My favorite live bands, Phish and The Disco Biscuits, all focus on group improvisation. There's something uniquely incredible about a group of people making something out of nothing, listening and riffing off one another, and having both the patience and courage to explore uncharted territories together. But when it works, when the group gives it enough time to breathe and evolve, something magical happens. Something spectacular is extemporaneously created out of absolutely nothing.

I recently read The Power Law by Sebastian Mallaby. There is a section about how Thomas Perkins, the founder of Kleiner Perkins, approached venture capital. His strategy was to "identify the white-hot risks, then find the cheapest way of going after them." Essentially, determine where the startup might fail (e.g. is there a foundational technical breakthrough that's required? Some complex operational execution? A question of market demand? etc.), and maniacally focus on solving for that singular element in the most economically efficient way possible. I very much like this approach to investing and company building. Constraints (i.e. the limited amount of money one has in the bank) force focus and ruthless prioritization.

In the past decade tech entrepreneurs have experienced remarkable market conditions. Money from venture capitalists was seemingly infinite. This created a series of bad behaviors that entrepreneurs will have to unlearn. Mainly, it enabled founders to do too much shit at once without truly understanding and focusing on what was most important to make their business actually work (i.e. what is the white-hot risk?). My strong preference for company building, particularly at the early stages, is to singularly focus on the thing that is mission critical and to tackle that in the scrappiest way possible. I, like every other entrepreneur, have made the mistake of trying to do way too much on more than one occasion. The times things worked best were always when we had a crystal clear focus on the absolute most important thing to accomplish and focused all of our resources and attention towards it.

The recent market turn is going to create new constraints for entrepreneurs. Capital will be much harder to come by, and this will be a forcing function for leaders to do less. Ultimately, I think this is a very good thing. Many founders will struggle to adapt - these are new market conditions for a lot of people and new is always difficult. But those that do embrace these newfound constraints and zealously hone in on the white-hot risks are going to emerge having built industry-defining iconic companies. They will likely build better companies faster in this capital-scarce market than they would have in the capital-abundant one. Call me old-fashioned, but I'm excited about this return to normalcy. In the long run I think it will produce better outcomes for everyone in the ecosystem.

I left GroupMe/MSFT at the end of 2013. I haven’t been involved with it for a long while now, but around a year ago I caught up with someone who was familiar with how the product was doing inside Microsoft. I was absolutely shocked to learn how popular the app still is. There were roughly 25M MAU, nearly 100m total users, and 13m DAU. Practically every college student in the country uses it. And roughly 10 engineers were supporting the entire operation.

I was shocked because the product hasn’t really evolved in the past decade. There are seldom any updates, and it has really just been in maintenance mode. It’s an incredible asset that for some reason has not been usurped by competitive messengers. It’s sticky. And fun #)

When people ask me about my GroupMe experience I like to say that building something in consumer is 90% luck and 10% executing against that luck. I actually think the luck variable for success in social may actually be closer to 95%. So many amazing teams tackle problems in social but their products never make it and if they do they’re usually a blip - they pop and then fizzle with no staying power.

Another thing I believe about consumer applications that make it is that they capture lightning in a bottle, and there is very little a team can do to fuck things up. Once the lighting is captured, even if you try to deliberately sabotage the thing, you can’t prevent it from growing. We sold GroupMe to Skype, and from what I’m told this was absolutely the case at Skype early on. It was a mess, but that product was going to catch fire no matter how dysfunctional things were. Twitter was the same way. And when I joined tumblr, there was very little the team could do to prevent its success. Constant downtime was never a deterrent. When you strike the chord it’s nearly impossible to dampen the vibration.

Marc Rebillet is one of my favorite new artists I discovered in the past several years. His energy is infectious, he exudes nothing but positive vibes and fun, and he's a musical improvisational genius. Normally he does solo live shows that he streams on YouTube (you can check them out here) where he messes around for an hour wearing nothing but a robe and some boxer briefs. It's quite a shtick to say the least. But where he really begins to shine is when he improvises with other talented musicians. The first time I really saw this was in this video of him, Reggie Watts, and Flying Lotus.

Earlier this week I stumbled on a new collaboration he did with Reggie Watts and Erykah Badu. It's exceptional. If you want a taste for what it's all about, start watching at the 17:50 mark (for around 10 minutes), and then again at the 34:30 mark.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtR1yVmCCvw

I am a huge fan of musical improvisation. My favorite live bands, Phish and The Disco Biscuits, all focus on group improvisation. There's something uniquely incredible about a group of people making something out of nothing, listening and riffing off one another, and having both the patience and courage to explore uncharted territories together. But when it works, when the group gives it enough time to breathe and evolve, something magical happens. Something spectacular is extemporaneously created out of absolutely nothing.