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Despite rumors that the VC business slows down in the summer, we’ve had one or our busiest periods in quite a while.  During June, July, and August, we’ve closed 4 new investments and several follow-ons, with a number of companies gearing up to go out in the fall.  Although we had a busy summer, I […]

I was very pleased to see that “This is Us” was nominated for 11 Emmy’s and that Sterling Brown won the award for Best Actor in a drama series. This is Us was my favorite show in the last year and I’ve been encouraging my friends to watch it for a while. I enjoyed it […]

As the atomization of seed has become more mature, it is increasingly clear that history is repeating itself. What I mean is that the things that played when seed VC became institutionalized is beginning to happen in the pre-seed market. And the words I am hearing from seed investors are nearly identical to the things […]

Recently, I’ve been spending a fair bit of time with a number of the new early-stage investors in Boston. There are a lot of new folks in the space. Just last week, Axios announced that Stephen Marcus is raising a fund called Riot Ventures and Term Sheet announced that Nilanjana Bhowmik from Longworth will be joining Converge. In […]

One question I know investors sometimes ask founders is “what are your valuation expectations for this round?” It’s a tricky question to answer because you kind of can’t win either way. If you say something that is around market, you are somewhat negotiating against yourself.  Why anchor yourself low when the market drives the price […]

A big chunk of our time as VC is spent on internal discussions about companies we are looking at.   We believe strongly that when making investment decisions, it’s important to score opportunities quantitatively but make decisions based on conviction. What this means is that we take quite a few votes and measurements from each team […]

Commerce businesses are notoriously difficult for a number of reasons.  Multiples in this category are usually pretty low, due to low margins, capital intensity, and competitive rivalry.  Also, Amazon has made it such that consumers are accustomed to fast, free shipping, great service, free returns, and other things that are super costly to deliver on […]

Our entire team at NextView is very pleased to announce that Ginny Mineo will be joining us as Director of Platform. Ginny comes to us from HubSpot, where she had a tremendous impact on the company in a variety of ways. Most recently, she led the team responsible for growing their successful podcast audience and […]

I was on a panel last week with some friends in the VC and angel ecosystem. One thing that gets repeated often (that I generally agree with) is that ideas are a dime a dozen. As investors, we tend to value the grit and tenacity of a founder and their commitment to solving a problem more […]

Although seed investing has become increasingly the domain of specialized seed funds, large lifecycle VC’s continue to participate as well.  In the last three investments I’ve made, there has either been a lifecycle VC involved or one was interested but didn’t end up being part of the syndicate. There has been a bunch written about the signalling […]