Recently, I stumbled across a captivating perspective on aphorisms via Tim Ferriss’ 5-Bullet Fridays. The Procrustean Bed. To be fair, before reading it on Tim’s newlsetter, I haven’t even heard of the concept. In one of his newsletters, he cites two incredible sources: “ ‘Something designed to produce conformity by…

When winds and waves a mutual contest wage, These foaming anger, those impelling rage; Thy blissful light can cheer the dismal gloom, And foster hopes beyond a wat’ry doom. - John William Smith, “The Lighthouse,” 1814 Marc Andreessen answered a few weeks back to a question that has been ringing…

There’s a question I love asking founders. What does product-market fit look like to you? PMF is often nonobvious and guesswork in foresight, but incredibly obvious in hindsight. But the ability to foresee and measure an inflection point in the business is a common thread among the best founders in…

In the month before I started this blog in 2019, I had written 20 odd blogposts as a safety net in case I ran out of ideas in my weekly cadence. Most of which never had the chance to stand in the limelight, including my first one on intuition. Particularly…

A founder recently asked me how investors would perceive her going through two different accelerator programs. Specifically, what would investors think if she took dilutive capital from two investors who care about ownership targets, yet have similar, if not the same, value adds to her business? How each type of investor thinks about dilution It’s a great question…

Seemingly, everyone these days — from Twitter to podcasts to blogposts (including mine) — talk about buying and investing in startups. What are best practices for investment theses? How do I pick the best companies to invest in? Conversely, how do I get picked or get allocation into hot startups…

Last Thursday, I had an extremely thought-provoking conversation with an attorney-turned-investor. Out of the incredible array of topics our open-ended exploration on the topic of diversity — geographically and demographically — led us to, there was one thing in particular that I had to double click on. She shared, “Men…

With the crazy market we’re in today, VCs are frontloading their diligence. They’re having smarter conversations earlier. Before 2021, most investors would have intro conversations with founders before taking a deeper dive into the market to see if the opportunity is big enough. Nowadays, investors do most, if not all…

Last weekend, I tuned into Samir Kaji’s recent episode with LPs (limited partners). Not once, but twice. And as you might’ve guessed, was damn inspired by their conversation. The more I listened to it, the more synonymous the paths of a founder and an emerging manager (EM) seemed to be…