NeuBridges

Stories from the seam of West Africa and Silicon Valley

Jan 27, 2017

Learning from 20VC interviews, round 3

Highlights:
- the only way to learn investing is to invest
- investor role must include setting/reaching milestones
- this is a business of outliers
- build a succession plan (even for a fund)
- best definition of leader: leading teams by defining what game is…

William Treseder

Dec 20, 2016

A Different Kind of African VC

Venture Capital has to change. The dominant model (best exemplified by Silicon Valley) ensured its own extinction by drastically driving down the cost of creating and scaling new businesses. Here are the three main things that are required: time; money; and people.

William Treseder

Dec 20, 2016

Learning from 20VC interviews, round 2

Highlights:
- GPs tend to fund people who look or act like them, and build investment theses to support that inclination
- valuation should be constricted with seed stage
- hardware is just a wedge into data

William Treseder

Dec 2, 2016

Learning from the 20VC interviews, Round 1

Highlights from this post:
- initial investments will always come from current network
- falling costs naturally let me think about higher order problem-solving
- need a portfolio strategy for LPs as well

William Treseder

Nov 16, 2016

Early fundraising lessons from VCs

After sending out my first fund-raising email, I received a lot of feedback. Some of it was generic (“Nigeria isn’t a city, idiot.”) but most was very specific advice from people who invest for a living. I won’t bore anyone with the details, but here are some themes…

William Treseder

Nov 16, 2016

Getting Started — 2 years to go

A few months ago I sent out an email. Nothing special about that, except for the content. The messaged asked for advice from about 30 friends and mentors who I deeply respect.

William Treseder

Nov 16, 2016

My first fund-raising email

Here it is, in all it’s glory.