Disqus - Latest Comments for nabeel

Re: Hallway Chat

nabeel — Fri, 04 Mar 2016 14:08:17 -0000

Any CEO who is optimizing for short term bilking of employees is not going to do a great job building a lasting company, so I think this is less of an issue. However, you are definitely right that any new model is going to cause nervousness on the part of some new employees even if it is being done to benefit them. That impact shouldn't be understated.

Re: Hallway Chat

nabeel — Fri, 04 Mar 2016 14:06:59 -0000

It's not perfect, but it's the simplest to set up right now and has integration into iTunes which is a bonus. Still plenty of opportunity in that space though.

Re: Chipotle Announces Food Delivery

nabeel — Fri, 24 Apr 2015 15:27:48 -0000

This headline is actually just wrong - see the NY Times article. The delivery fee for Postmates through Chipotle is capped at $7.99 and often just $4.99. Re/Code was doing the order before the deal was announced.

Re: bijan sabet

nabeel — Fri, 02 Jan 2015 21:43:02 -0000

Yup. I also think back to that decision about Tumblarity.

Re: bijan sabet

nabeel — Fri, 02 Jan 2015 16:46:36 -0000

I hear ya man. I've been thinking a lot about extrinsic vs intrinsic motivations over the holidays, and this is very much in the same space. When we take something we do because we love it, and we expose it for others to accept/reject, it is very hard for that not to change things.

Re: Yesterday Was The End of My Biking Career

nabeel — Mon, 20 Oct 2014 16:42:59 -0000

Hey man.. I don't know how with 1,000 connections in social media it took me three days to find this but I'm so glad to year you are ok. The first line I heard from a friend had me worried.

I'm glad you are seeing the leading indicators in your biking and making the call to stay safe. All the best.

Re: The Challenge in VC Over four years ago I wrote... - The Gong Show

nabeel — Wed, 20 Aug 2014 17:16:54 -0000

I think you are right it is certainly about access. But I'm not sure that anyone actually tried what you are mentioning here -- systematically trying to own the craigslist ecosystem. When investors do think thematically like that it often pays off, but it certainly requires a lot of conviction.

Re: The Hottest Startup Sectors

nabeel — Tue, 24 Jun 2014 21:33:36 -0000

This makes me want to invest more in games.

Re: Our Investment in Nix Hydra

nabeel — Thu, 29 May 2014 22:09:28 -0000

Congrats to Foundry and Nix Hydra.

Re: Goodbye Party Round, Hello Piggy Round: Should Seed Stage Founders Raise From Just a Single Investor?

nabeel — Tue, 20 May 2014 13:45:09 -0000

Oh there most definitely is, and more tight phrasing would have probably been "not unhelpful" -- but I leave it to the founder to be picking where they want to draw their line on the spectrum.

Re: Goodbye Party Round, Hello Piggy Round: Should Seed Stage Founders Raise From Just a Single Investor?

nabeel — Mon, 19 May 2014 21:20:03 -0000

Whatcha looking at this week?

Re: Goodbye Party Round, Hello Piggy Round: Should Seed Stage Founders Raise From Just a Single Investor?

nabeel — Mon, 19 May 2014 18:32:53 -0000

I believe you want as many fully committed investors as possible, that are helpful to you, that will accept their equity stake.

To break this down further:
A- fully committed (i.e. spending real time, likely to pro-rata or lead the next round depending on your goals)
B- helpful (i.e. not an ass)
C- will accept the terms (i.e their ownership stake it acceptable to you)

The problem with party rounds was it optimized for B and C without thinking much about A. If you liked the guy and his check was good who cares that he's from a VC that is barely going to pay attention to you over the next year but create signalling risk all over the place.

The problem I could see with a single investor taking the entire seed round is you are optimizing for C heavily and so you better be damned sure about A and B.

I still believe the smarter choice is 2-3 committed investors at the seed stage, with larger VCs being ok as long as they pass the A/B test (aka not passive checks, committed).

Re: Unexpected Trends in Startup Founder Equity Stakes

nabeel — Sun, 04 May 2014 23:33:24 -0000

Curious where the data is from? I have the data for Spark of course, but have a harder time getting good (anonymized) broader data.

Re: Mellow — test

nabeel — Wed, 23 Apr 2014 12:08:16 -0000

Excited.

Also worried about materials. Heat degrades plastic over time. I am comfortable with HDPE bags because they are single use, but seriously hoping the outside container is glass not plastic. Probably significant cost/difficulty, but will change the feel of the product immensely.

Re: PayPal's secret weapon: A Silicon Valley success story you've never heard of | VentureBeat | Entrepreneur | by Richard Byrne Reilly

nabeel — Tue, 25 Mar 2014 16:52:52 -0000

One of the real one's. So glad to see this article, you rock Stan!

Re: Five Fatal Flaws of 50+3

nabeel — Mon, 24 Feb 2014 18:33:44 -0000

Reading this reminded me that there is another reason to do away with State Championships and just replace with more City Championships. State Championships give point advantages based on where you live in the U.S.

Of course living in a big city is always likely to make getting to Pokemon events easier, but at the very least cities hold more people, so the easiness is offset by the fact that more people have access to those events. This is true for Cities, and Regionals, but is not true for states.

That is because state boundaries are a political, not a population based. That means that California & Texas, which hold 1/5th of the population of the entire country and take upwards of eight hours to drive across, get to have two state tournaments. While the Northeast, which holds just 1/6th of the population and takes a similar amount of time to drive across, has at least 6-9 states.

That gives people living in the Northeast a much higher chance of getting the requisite points that someone living in Texas or California. While there will always be a little disparity based on location this one feels particularly over the top. I'd much rather see more City championships, with a 50+3 format, and a couple more regionals.

Re: Thalmic's Myo Armband teams up with Oculus Rift for ultmate gesture controlled gaming

nabeel — Wed, 05 Feb 2014 16:17:22 -0000

Just to clarify Spark Capital does not "own" either Oculus or Thalmic Labs. The companies are majority owned by their founders, as it should be, and we are investors and believers in both.

Re: Benedict Evans

nabeel — Tue, 21 Jan 2014 13:17:08 -0000

Entirely predictable, in a good way. Congrats Benedict. :)

Re:

nabeel — Wed, 15 Jan 2014 14:42:11 -0000

True. It has helped me in the past to have a really upfront conversation about expectations on both sides (ideally with concrete examples of what they are doing with other portfolio companies). What have you done to try and adjust?

Re: Bijan Sabet — On Friday, 12/13, @nabeel and I recorded our...

nabeel — Tue, 17 Dec 2013 14:48:20 -0000

That's been our biggest issue, which sounds ridiculous but you just need to actually want to open a product. Too often for us it has been step 1: open app, step 2: oh god this feels like enterprise software, step 3: close app

Re: Why I Turned Down $5 Million in VC Funding

nabeel — Mon, 25 Nov 2013 14:12:36 -0000

I love that this site captures conversations amongst the partnership as well. Best thing about the site. :)

Re: Everpix, Snapchat and the Startup Lie

nabeel — Fri, 08 Nov 2013 17:46:28 -0000

There are things to agree with here but the fundamental premise is just wrong.

Easy to agree:
- VC funding is not the only way to raise capital or build a business. There are wonderful businesses, both big and small, that are built in other ways.
- As a startup culture we often over emphasize VC as a "step on the ladder" when it is more an explicit choice.
- VCs, as a group, are betting on high risk ideas with a chance at a big outcome. They are not small business lenders.

Wrong:
- You seem to imply that investors want folks to not focus on revenue because they just want to flip the company. This is simply not true - in fact many of the enduring companies that have changed the way we consume and share information in this Information Age are not focused on revenue (Including Twitter, Facebook, and Google) early in their life. The reason is simple - the easiest way to kill an early startup is to focus on everything at once - and although it is a tough choice, often the right choice for a consumer experience is to put all of your effort into creating an experience people will value. It's absolutely not always the answer, but the motives and business strategy are absolutely sound.
- You say that Everpix failed because they fell for the lie of trying to build the next big startup, and instead they should have set more modest goals. That may be true, but that simply might not have been the company they wanted to build and I don't believe in blanket dictating goals. I encourage people to be clear about their goals: if they want to "aim big" then more power to then I applaud folks reaching high, if they want to hit profitability quickly and control their destiny then great they should do that. But to presume that one is the "right" way and the other is a lie is unfortunate. Startups are about ambition and we shouldn't blaim the ambition for reaching high and tell them to lower their expectations.
-

Re:

nabeel — Wed, 06 Nov 2013 16:00:33 -0000

Shan -
What you are saying is that in 2007 because the stock market was high, you think people founding companies had were aimed at "bigger things."

Here are potential other conclusions:
1- when the stock market is high their are higher M&A exits and more IPOs, making angels and investors more flush with cash and simply more likely to invest in the seed market. This is just a situation of more "shots on goal" to creating a $1b company later

2- when the stock market is high those companies the top employees are more likely to be able to cash out their stock and start a new thing.

3- This is just a completely silly coincidence. I assure you that I could go look at 20 different graphs and find some other wonderful correlations for you to draw conclusions from. Corn prices in India overlaid on this graph is actually an almost perfect match but that does not mean there is a relationship. And that was the whole point of my post -- when people try and take anecdotes and make them look like numbers our brains can't help but jump to conclusions.

It's the same phenomena we have when a "black swan" event like 9/11 happens and then the media goes and finds the "guy who knew all along" and make him out to be a genius. Then they inventibly find that he is completely wrong about the next black swan event. Someone, out of the entire world, had to have guessed right, but that does not make the correlation real.

Look at 2010, for example, in the above graph.

Re: The Problem With Analyzing Unicorns | Strong Opinions @marksbirch

nabeel — Mon, 04 Nov 2013 00:39:49 -0000

We basically agree. Perhaps it was interesting to point out that there are very few $1b companies, but that has been pointed out several times even recently and certainly wasn't the focus of the article. The tone was clearly "these are the trends we have spotted" and my basic point, which you seem to share, is that these are not trends -- every one of these is a statistical anomaly.

Re: Be like Gillette: Why software is the razor blade of hardware companies

nabeel — Thu, 31 Oct 2013 15:29:22 -0000

While it is true that having some kind of recurring revenue can help a hardware business, I find it very interesting that the most successful hardware company in the world (Apple) has exactly the opposite approach from what you describe here.

Like anything, the rule of thumb is always worth re-evaluation.