I Made These Mistakes A Few Times But You Don’t Need To Part of successful angel investing is picking winners. Another part is avoiding picking losers. Before we founded Homebrew I made ~20 or so i… | Continue reading
What I Learned From Working On Conan’s Season #2 and My Own Fears Actor John Lithgow playfully tossed a show at me, boxer Larry Holmes jokingly (I think) threatened to knock me out and actress Jenn… | Continue reading
Why Ken Norton’s Dual Product Management Career Path Can Also Encourage Innovation At Scale “Rising to your level of misery” is how Arthur Brooks frames the trap of being good enough at your job th… | Continue reading
It’s weird to try and help fund people who are going to compete with me, right? Well, I couldn’t be more excited to do just this. The 10 initial Screendoor Venture Advisors Ok, the head… | Continue reading
Teaching my daughter that ‘adventure boo-boos’ are part of life I come from a family of flinchers. Well-intentioned of course but with an instinctual urge to ask “is that safe?” before proceeding. … | Continue reading
Why the next 6–12 months will be the best time in a decade for startups to hire Our YOLO Economy New York Times’ Kevin Roose labeled the new attitude sweeping workers in certain privilege… | Continue reading
Engage your team and understand their needs but craft your “Return To Office” strategy from the top down We’ve backed a wide variety of startups at Homebrew but the CEOs are now all coalescing arou… | Continue reading
Can You Build a Photo Community Which Doesn’t Prioritize Pretty? “Young girls, however, see AR filters primarily as a tool for beautification: “[The girls] were all saying things like, ‘I put this … | Continue reading
How a year of virtual living made me appreciate people more When I tell people I’m an introvert, reactions split into two camps. For those who know me well, it’s pretty much, “Yeah, duh.” But for t… | Continue reading
What happens when your favorite dead product rises again Turntable 2021, pretty much the same product (for now). Usually the first email I open in the morning doesn’t make me scream out “HOLY SHIT!… | Continue reading
In a pre-RATM band, guitarist Tom Morello was shamed by a musician friend about how his guitar strings ran long off the head of the instrument (a now iconic look for him). “‘Cut your strings! What,… | Continue reading
Five Memorable URLs from COVID Season One (aka the last 12 months) March 11th was “COVID Day One” for many folks, or at least when it crossed from “will this be a big deal?” to “this is a big … | Continue reading
You will never be able to take the brand risks, the legal risks, or the partnerships risks that a true startup can Noam Bardin of Waze. Photo: Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images I’d exchanged DMs with Waze… | Continue reading
Advisors can be so much more than social proof and tactical advice “Can we put you as an advisor in our deck? You don’t even need to do anything and we’ll give you equity. It would be a big help fo… | Continue reading
Cognitive Biases Shape Us Beautifully And Tragically If you could only access a single URL on the web what would it be? Not something like Google or YouTube but actually a single static url — so yo… | Continue reading
Lessons on Allyship and Community ✅ IRL Friend. That’s the tweet I employ to signify that I’ve finally met up with someone previously only known to me online. Of course 2020 hasn’t had much of… | Continue reading
Startups Should Work To Make Their Employees Wealthy Not Just Their Founders And Investors Earlier this week a modest deposit appeared in my checking account, one I honestly never expected. You see… | Continue reading
Creator Wellness Will Be A Key Goal of New Products Being a modern creator is, for many, exhausting. The falling economic costs of production and distribution have been replaced by a new set of tax… | Continue reading
And My Ask Of Investors In These Companies It’s frustrating if you’re a customer of an expense report SaaS startup and the company goes out of business, but it’s potentially devastating if your tel… | Continue reading
You’re Not Yet Google, So Don’t Blindly Mimic Their Processes Google’s internal management approach has sustained and scaled pretty impressively over the years. Quantitative goal-setting, setting s… | Continue reading
Why Startup Ecosystems Need More Than Just VC Funding Hi. I read your [Tweet, Medium Post, WSJ OpEd] about leaving the Bay Area for [Texas, Florida, Seasteading]. I totally understand. Even though … | Continue reading
And Four Ways For You To Reclaim Your Time You want to see the real answer to what you value? Look at your calendar, because how you spend your time is the truest representation of what you care ab… | Continue reading
[I originally published this on Medium pre-IPO, so the tense is outdated, but I think the framework holds] Using a Weighted Scorecard Instead of Just “Did It Pop or Not?” Every big tech IPO results… | Continue reading
You’ve heard the expression “All sizzle, no steak?” Or the Texan equivalent of “All hat, no cattle?” [sidenote: it’s weird that cows feature prominently in both of these]. Basically these sayings a… | Continue reading
You’ve heard the expression “All sizzle, no steak?” Or the Texan equivalent of “All hat, no cattle?” [sidenote: it’s weird that cows feature prominently in both of these]. Basically these sayings a… | Continue reading
After managing large teams across Google for many years, and now, as an investor, having the chance to observe dozens of highly effective startups, I’ve seen there is one major difference… | Continue reading
After managing large teams across Google for many years, and now, as an investor, having the chance to observe dozens of highly effective startups, I’ve seen there is one major difference… | Continue reading
Photo by Ibrahim Rifath on Unsplash A number of reporters and columnists these days are “going indie,” detaching from their previous employer and signing up with a site like Substack, Patreon or Me… | Continue reading
Photo by Ibrahim Rifath on Unsplash A number of reporters and columnists these days are “going indie,” detaching from their previous employer and signing up with a site like Substack, Patreon or Me… | Continue reading
The above tweet seemed to resonate with folks, and sometimes when that happens, I like to expand in a post, since the tweet willdisappear in 30 days. Ok, let’s talk about working in tech and feelin… | Continue reading
The above tweet seemed to resonate with folks, and sometimes when that happens, I like to expand in a post, since the tweet willdisappear in 30 days. Ok, let’s talk about working in tech and feelin… | Continue reading
tldr: instead of choosing between in-person or remote, your seed stage company (or team) should be more hybrid, tied to the type/phase of project going on. With in-person being used during periods … | Continue reading
tldr: instead of choosing between in-person or remote, your seed stage company (or team) should be more hybrid, tied to the type/phase of project going on. With in-person being used during periods … | Continue reading
So I recently re-shared a 2019 blog post where I’d basically advised founders who’ve raised seed capital to worry less about “how will I raise the next round” and more about “how will I e… | Continue reading
So I recently re-shared a 2019 blog post where I’d basically advised founders who’ve raised seed capital to worry less about “how will I raise the next round” and more about “how will I e… | Continue reading
Something happens on Twitter after you’ve gathered enough followers to become at least a “semi-public figure” and I don’t think it’s healthy. Expanding outside your immediate social circle of IRL f… | Continue reading
Something happens on Twitter after you’ve gathered enough followers to become at least a “semi-public figure” and I don’t think it’s healthy. Expanding outside your immediate social circle of IRL f… | Continue reading
Looking at my 26-day-old Tweet, it feels certain I was going to write *something* about Coinbase’s culture memo. Now in late October, we’re far enough removed to see initial reactions have play out… | Continue reading
Looking at my 26-day-old Tweet, it feels certain I was going to write *something* about Coinbase’s culture memo. Now in late October, we’re far enough removed to see initial reactions have play out… | Continue reading
Disclaimer: I’ve never been hired by a venture firm. Ok, now that’s out of the way, here’s the advice I give folks who have 2–3 years of work experience and are looking to get an entry-level role a… | Continue reading
Disclaimer: I’ve never been hired by a venture firm. Ok, now that’s out of the way, here’s the advice I give folks who have 2–3 years of work experience and are looking to get an entry-level role a… | Continue reading
Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash Watching a half dozen French Resistance soldiers standing around debating whether Taco Bell is “authentic” teaches you some things. First, that most people have n… | Continue reading
Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash Watching a half dozen French Resistance soldiers standing around debating whether Taco Bell is “authentic” teaches you some things. First, that most people have n… | Continue reading
As an early stage investor I look at A LOT of pitch decks. In the seven years since we started Homebrew there has been some evolution in this area – Docsend, videos, the occasional memo ̵… | Continue reading
Once is a coincidence, twice is a trend? Increasingly I’m hearing about talented folks and sought after startups ditching the interview process as final arbiter of employment and instead opti… | Continue reading
April 26th, 2013 was the day we closed Homebrew’s initial fund and we consider it our ‘birthday.’ The firm’s why and how were previous blog post topics and I won’t reh… | Continue reading
Linkblogging is definitely allowed in a pandemic. Here are some words I believe are worth your attention. Planet Money Ep 991 – Lives vs The Economy How do you value a human life? Planet Mone… | Continue reading
I’ve mostly resisted the online tech conversations around “COVID will change [X] forever,” although I do especially love the ones which are basically tells for the individual̵… | Continue reading