Disqus - Latest Comments for awarms

Re: Sheer Panic

Alan Warms — Mon, 16 Mar 2020 12:31:11 -0000

Great post

Re: The P33 Plan

Alan Warms — Thu, 07 Nov 2019 08:24:05 -0000

Jeff - I of course agree with the overall sentiment. And if the article is accurate, the "plan" is a bit absurd - of course the entire notion of a "planned" economies but the points - "turn research into companies" - sure ok, how does that happen again? "Hire more people of color" - while a noble goal what does that have to do with success of other startup communities? etc etc. In any case, where I disagree with you is the notion of seed capital being the key here. I realize this is a bit of a chicken or egg argument - but my hunch is historically there have simply been less founders going at it here than in comparably sized cities. One of the reasons historically was much harder to find other talent. But for at least the last 10 years if not more, if you wanted to stay in Chicago and start a business, you could do it, and you could raise capital from outside the city if need be. There's so much venture seed and pre-seed out there that they are all looking outside of the Bay Area and NYC. And it's never been easier to connect and network with folks you don't know. The analysis I'd like to see is looking at the top of the funnel of founders. My hypothesis is we've had less of them in general over the past 50 years, and are just now getting to spinoff mode with companies like GrubHub, Performics, Braintree, etc. etc. coming down. Our city didn't have the DNA of Boston with its minicomputer revolution or of course Silicon Valley, and then Google/FB. I think it's just a matter fo probabilities and time for our ecosystem to continue to grow. To a previous point you'd made, while the new hires Google, etc. make in our town aren't necessarily the most entrepreneurial folks they do make it much easier to find top dev talent for startups. The issue with throwing more seed capital is who are you throwing it at? Same issue we have with all our famous "incubators" out here. Good founders and entrepreneurs can figure out how to incubate themselves and how to raise capital. It is a litmus test. City needs to focus on selling our benefits (even with tax bs, LOW COST OF LIVING!), and getting rid of that horrific tax you pay on invested capital. And stop the handwringing and inferiority complex already.

Re: The Hit Rate

Alan Warms — Sun, 15 Sep 2019 12:59:02 -0000

Here's my q. If 2-2.5x is the norm, how does that compare to PE funds. And if PE funds are better or the same, wouldn't that dictate over time cash from allocators flows from VC back into PE? Would think VC funds have much higher incidence of <1.0 returns than PE funds and not sure how many more incidences of > 3,4,5x. Seems to me over time less cash should be allocated to this asset class if only delivering those returns

Re: Fractionalizing Home Equity

Alan Warms — Thu, 12 Sep 2019 12:29:32 -0000

I love this. I also think this could go a long way to allowing home ownership for much younger people. I remember when I was out of business school, just starting a family, would have loved for someone to "bet on my house" to enable me to buy a bigger one. They would be behind mortgage and ahead of me, and I'd be buying a great section of town. Obviously much more exacerbated in SV today than in Lincoln Park, Chicago in the 90s!

Re: Learning The Hard Way

Alan Warms — Thu, 05 Sep 2019 13:18:52 -0000

It's a little bit too easy to say, "no these aren't companies, their networks" isn't it? The fact is you put out risk capital in the expectation of earning a return. When ethereum plain doesn't work, is ultimately centralized on the edge, and other major problems, that makes it super hard for these returns to come. I thought your post yesterday was spot on.

Re: Uncertainty Wednesday: Working for a Startup

Alan Warms — Thu, 04 Apr 2019 14:42:19 -0000

I don't know. I was number 11 guy with Sunil Paul and Mark Pincus at FreeLoader in 1996. First BD guy. I had enormous purview to go out and get stuff done. Nobody knew about the internet, and it was Mark's and Sunil's first gig also. If you're early you have infinite opportunity to make things happen and help set the course of company

Re: Uncertainty Wednesday: Working for a Startup

Alan Warms — Wed, 03 Apr 2019 16:07:16 -0000

Thank you for your service! I'm a little younger - had an Army ROTC Scholarship that I had a one year option on that I ended up declining. Turns out my whole class went to Desert Storm. But a lot of folks went to the military (RPI) back then - and were taught to be accountable.

Re: Uncertainty Wednesday: Working for a Startup

Alan Warms — Wed, 03 Apr 2019 12:38:11 -0000

Albert - one point I would add - the real opportunity I believe working in startups is responsibility and career growth There's an analogy to starting one's career in the military - you get tremendous leadership experience at a young age. At fast growing startup, you get to take as much responsibility as you can handle and really make an impact vs. going to a larger company. You will end up learning a lot more. The startup to startup comparison in my mind should be based on company growth prospects - external growth drives internal opportunity.

Re: The Pitch Meeting Setup

Alan Warms — Thu, 29 Nov 2018 12:31:42 -0000

Do we still need PowerPoints? I find them distracting. Is it possible anymore to come in - just talk have a conversation, and then go to a demo?

Re: When To Join

Alan Warms — Sat, 10 Nov 2018 09:42:13 -0000

Jeff great post. Here's how I like to think about it. Don't join any early stage startup as a financial move. What joining a sub 15 or sub 50 or even sub 100 person company give you, more than anything, is experience - the opportunity to have outsized responsibilities and impact much earlier in one's career as one would in a large company....similar to what you get if you join the military out of college. It's easy to make stuff happen at companies that size in terms of no organizational blockages. It's also a great opportunity to brand yourself, network, and become an expert and really know in depth an area that is new and exciting. But in general, the math doesn't work for someone that early stage getting 1-2% on fully diluted basis - especially when you look at percentage that make it all the way to liquidity. On the other hand, there are companies out there that are known rocket ships, generally past the B round (probably C) who are hiring like crazy - you're going to get a lot less stock in those instances but to your math above you should be able to get a sense of upside from your shares.

Re: Criticism Should be Welcome: Roubini Crypto Edition

Alan Warms — Mon, 15 Oct 2018 09:55:09 -0000

Yes I think there will be varying degrees of "decentralization" on nodes, custody, transaction processing, etc. all driven by the optimal outcome desired by particular blockchain participants (transaction speed/mainstream use case) is one as example. Key to all these is that blockchain implementations as a class give you a) faster speed to dev as persistence layer built b) ability to exchange tokens for fiat

Re: Criticism Should be Welcome: Roubini Crypto Edition

Alan Warms — Fri, 12 Oct 2018 15:33:11 -0000

Albert thanks for posting this. This is a great read - frankly I agree with most of what he says - you already know my thoughts on wallets etc. I was also struck by his point on decentralization - something you can see already for example with the use of Infura.io by so many to get on Ethereum. Reminded me though of your point in the Internet 3.0 podcast about what does privacy really mean - that sometimes if everyone knows your business do you mind as much for example (I paraphrase poorly) - that values are what matter. We believe that AML/KYC here to stay, some level of centralization will be required at various points of the crypto ecosystem in order to make them usable, scalable, and secure. I think what he misses is the vision of crypto as powering the tokenization of our economy.

Re: Browser, Wallet or Something New? Looking for Crypto Ease of Use

Alan Warms — Sun, 05 Aug 2018 12:24:23 -0000

exactly the point. you reset your password - you never knew your private key. you didn't know your public private key combo. was all done centrally. private key never exposed.

Re: Browser, Wallet or Something New? Looking for Crypto Ease of Use

Alan Warms — Sun, 05 Aug 2018 12:06:06 -0000

1) Crypto needs to be invisible to the end user (think https) 2) Need to have no risk of "I lost my keys, therefore I lost my money, ability to transact" which is not how we are trained 3) New encryption technologies (Vault, e.g.) make it possible to provide cloud based highly secure centralized key storage; MFA to authenticate account. Where pcrypto.io is heading.

https://medium.com/particip...

Re: Will IBM's USD Anchor Be Weighed Down By Stablecoin Limitations?

Alan Warms — Wed, 18 Jul 2018 10:05:42 -0000

Errr, isn't the point that the dollars will be held at Prime Trust as 1:1 collateral for the USD token that represents them on Stellar? And in that case they are actually fully insured? You may want to revisit your article.

Re: Credit Bureau Blues

Alan Warms — Sun, 08 Jul 2018 22:12:26 -0000

grt thanks

Re: Credit Bureau Blues

Alan Warms — Sun, 08 Jul 2018 21:51:27 -0000

JLM - really enjoy your comments here - thank you for participating in the forum - always super value add. On this point - only issue with using a corp vs. LLC is there are some assets you own where you want to operate via LLC to take the losses generated by depreciation (you need other passive income to cover). Do you have different thoughts via the "pierce-ability" of a DE LLC?

Re: Governance

Alan Warms — Sun, 08 Jul 2018 11:58:56 -0000

Fred great post. While I agree governance the key issue for many new crypto businesses - I remain skeptical that a community governed organization can react and iterate anywhere close to the speed of a centrally owned organization. Why the vast majority of "winners" out there are corporations vs. mutuals or cooperatives. I think crypto will change that math - and a lot more decentralized can "win," but will still be the minority. FB won not just because of inherent network effects, but because of Zuck's brilliance - the news feed never launches if it is a "community" decision. Maybe Twitter is different. But the last 10 years have been about speed to learn, speed to iterate ,speed to A/B test. I think community governance is a significant counter to those attributes.

Re: Keeping Your Blinders On

Alan Warms — Tue, 03 Jul 2018 10:28:45 -0000

Fred love it. Reminds me of the one line my Dad told us growing up, must have heard it at least 20,000 times: "The World Isn't Fair," or "TWINF" - otherwise known as "stop complaining and put your head down and work"

Re: Taxation Of Carried Interest

Alan Warms — Thu, 07 Jun 2018 10:13:16 -0000

VC and PE are a lot more than asset managers. They roll up their sleeves, work hand-in-hand with executive teams - in PE's case they actively provide direction and often corp dev leadership. Much much different than asset manager of public securities.

Re: Taxation Of Carried Interest

Alan Warms — Wed, 06 Jun 2018 13:19:50 -0000

Fred, to me, carried interest is EXACTLY like ISOs you issue to management. They get ltcg on those.. So should VCs, PEs, who are doing a ton of heavy lifting in partnership with management to do so

Re: Are We Decentralized Yet?

Alan Warms — Mon, 16 Apr 2018 09:38:47 -0000

That's not my understanding of the Stellar Consensus Protocol. I do know that for the Dapps that get build you have truly distributed and transparent ledgers. Yes there's the concept of trusted nodes - but far from one entity - it's not a "private" blockchain.

Re: Are We Decentralized Yet?

Alan Warms — Mon, 16 Apr 2018 08:17:51 -0000

Premise here is we're measuring the success of the protocol based on distributed or lack thereof of ownership of tokens. Not sure that's right. I am a huge believer in Stellar and currently working on some exciting Dapps (although Stellar calls them "Stellar Integrations") with top enterprise architect partner - that is a protocol that scales, is fast, and is designed for the get-go for developers to build real applications on top of it. On the other hand, as this blog post articulates ( https://medium.com/@brian.k... ) , I am not sure the "value" of XLM will rise accordingly with Dapps as transactions have to stay cheap in order to make it an attractive protocol. So I think there's other ways that will be needed to measure "decentralization progress."

Re: Yubikeys

Alan Warms — Tue, 16 Jan 2018 10:20:41 -0000

Do your banks do it? Neither of mine do.

Re: Yubikeys

Alan Warms — Tue, 16 Jan 2018 09:53:45 -0000

I am still amazed that my bank and brokerage do NOT have any kind of two factor authentication. Scary as heck. I am more protected on Twitter/Coinbase etc than I am with my actual cash