Disqus - Latest Comments for stefanobernardi

Re: Speaking at the Aspen Entrepreneur Showcase on August 13th

Stefano Bernardi — Sun, 05 Aug 2018 05:56:16 -0000

Hey Brad, will this be streamed or recorded? As a new mountain town resident I'm interested in your thoughts on Innovating in rural communities (on top of the great Startup Communities book).

(Also, didn't know you moved to Aspen!)

Re: Saracen Freewheel

Stefano Bernardi — Fri, 27 May 2016 11:49:47 -0000

Thanks again for this awesome website. The Saracen looks perfect, but I wonder if there's any space for the rider to rest their feet when going downhill? The Commencal Ramones 12 would be perfect for that but has no brakes and is expensive. Any way I could mod this one?

Thanks!

Re: How Specialized VCs Will Outperform the Market

Stefano Bernardi — Mon, 19 Oct 2015 14:48:35 -0000

Agreed. I've written about this a while back: https://medium.com/fintech-...

I do feel like "consumer software" on its own might be a bit too broad, and might need a deeper classification (eg. social, media, ecommerce, etc.) but maybe not :)

Best of luck!

Re: Starting a Company Is Hard But....

Stefano Bernardi — Mon, 12 Oct 2015 21:00:32 -0000

I didn't like Paul's article because it's just too extreme, while what Jason says mostly resonates.

After having been an employee, a founder and a (minuscule) investor, I've formed the opinion that sharing the really harsh parts of it is a good thing.

It might not be a good thing for society as a whole (and investors), given that obviously more companies started equals more chances of starting the next FB, BUT investors often forget that on the other side there are human beings, and this culture is very dangerous for a wide set of people who lured by Techcrunch's funding announcements put everything they have in (often terrible) companies without ANY clue of what it will take.

Having a lot of friends not in SV, that's the thing I've seen the most: people have no clue how hard it is and they constantly underestimate every single thing about it.

So, it's really tricky: on one side, you want to encourage people because they might strike it and have it in them and get lucky etc. but on the other, we kind of all have at least some bankruptcies on the conscience and some ruined lives of people who might have been WAY better off just working for another tech company instead of trying to start their own.

Re: Stefano Bernardi — Updated list of venture studios and startup foundries

Stefano Bernardi — Fri, 04 Sep 2015 12:04:55 -0000

Do you create your own products?

Re: Building Enterprise Networks Top Down

Stefano Bernardi — Sun, 22 Feb 2015 11:23:03 -0000

The caveat to this is that the experience for the invited party needs to be great.

Too often I see such platforms where people are forced to import collaborators or suppliers, but the value prop is skewed super hard towards the party who the software was sold to.

That means that the invited party is stuck with a solution that doesn't cater to them and is forced to use it because it doesn't have leverage. I think that's a bad recipe.

That being said, if you can solve for that, then it's a total win.

Re: Updated list of venture studios and startup foundries

Stefano Bernardi — Wed, 10 Dec 2014 05:54:01 -0000

http://bernardi.me/post/101...

Re: Successful Products: Solving Problems or Creating Novel Technology - Jason Shah

Stefano Bernardi — Thu, 22 May 2014 20:26:05 -0000

I think there are a couple of challenges.
1) It's ok to choose a small niche, but it needs to be one you can expand from fairly easily.
2) You have to understand when it's a major behavioral change vs a small workflow change.
People are lazy and adding steps or more complexity to their workflows is a no-no.
There are exceptions for this (eg. product mandated by management, etc.) but generally you really need to figure out how to fit in the customer's current flow and still deliver undeniable value.

Would be great to chat about your product.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

Stefano Bernardi — Fri, 21 Mar 2014 20:41:45 -0000

I agree. The problem is that even giving $5 a year to every us person is already a $1.25B effort if we only count 250M people in the US.
If you take Social Security's budget of $12.5B for FY2015, that is basically like giving out $50 per year to every person in the US.

That's pretty useless. To make it realistic it should be something like $5K per year, which brings the budget to $1.25T. Not really doable anytime soon.

Re: The importance of being in Silicon Valley

Stefano Bernardi — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 12:05:11 -0000

Not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is: if you do have the metrics, etc. and you're outside of SV, then it's much harder.

Building a successful business is still mandatory.

Re: The importance of being in Silicon Valley

Stefano Bernardi — Wed, 12 Mar 2014 14:27:49 -0000

Exactly. I also believe it's much easier to build a world-changing business here - but that's not the point of the post.

Re: Configuring CloudFlare DNS for a Heroku App - Higher Order Heroku

Stefano Bernardi — Tue, 04 Mar 2014 02:06:07 -0000

Hey there - I know I'm really late for this.
Is there any way to get the HTTPS to work on the root domain without the www?

Re: Bitcoin is awesome, but it sucks.

Stefano Bernardi — Thu, 13 Feb 2014 20:34:41 -0000

Delete—
Sent from Mailbox for iPhone

Re: “To make an end is to make a beginning”

Stefano Bernardi — Thu, 02 Jan 2014 14:22:55 -0000

Good luck Zee! Very much looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

Re: "Did you learn anything useful in VC?"

Stefano Bernardi — Tue, 26 Nov 2013 12:39:47 -0000

Great post Sarah.

I also think that the stage of company you join will have different pros and cons.

I moved from VC to a 2-people startup and can definitely agree to all of these, but would include several more.

For example, something I learnt and still am is hiring - in a fund you rarely have to hire people and never at a fast-growing startup scale.

Would be great to meet up and chat about it if you have some time next week.

Re: Say what you want, but VC is still about finding the best companies first

Stefano Bernardi — Fri, 22 Nov 2013 22:19:43 -0000

Never received a response to my reply. Good luck to you!

Re: Say what you want, but VC is still about finding the best companies first

Stefano Bernardi — Fri, 22 Nov 2013 22:03:15 -0000

I haven't deleted a single comment ever. Which one are you referring to?

Also, it's good form to comment with your real name.

Re: Say what you want, but VC is still about finding the best companies first

Stefano Bernardi — Fri, 22 Nov 2013 20:05:56 -0000

John, I've learned to not dismiss anything because there's no clear monetization path and anyone following the internet and mobile space should try to do that as well - most apps and companies don't die because they don't make money, but because they don't get enough users. But that's a much larger conversation which I suspect you wouldn't agree with.

Anyways, as I've replied above there are a number of ways to do it and I'm confident the team will figure out the best way. Not sure it's an immediate focus.

But it's an amazing product which gets people engaged in a huge market - so yeah, I still believe it has the potential to be a very very good investment.

Re: Say what you want, but VC is still about finding the best companies first

Stefano Bernardi — Fri, 22 Nov 2013 20:02:18 -0000

There's some great opportunities for sponsored content, as well as applications in the education space and licensing deals.

But it's definitely a very tricky game to monetize. These guys have been at it and know more than anyone else on the trivia space, so I'm confident they'll figure it out.

Re: Say what you want, but VC is still about finding the best companies first

Stefano Bernardi — Thu, 21 Nov 2013 12:40:35 -0000

Not really sure I get your point, and actually if Sequoia and e.ventures got the same terms as the other Series A investors it might be an even more awesome deal.
But the point is that they were able to invest at the perfect time - while previous Series A investors took a much bigger risk when there was no app to look at.

This doesn't mean that those investors are not great, quite the opposite.

Re: Updated list of venture studios and startup foundries

Stefano Bernardi — Wed, 20 Nov 2013 12:23:47 -0000

how is that a foundry?

Re: Updated list of venture studios and startup foundries

Stefano Bernardi — Tue, 19 Nov 2013 13:55:15 -0000

that's already in there.. last one.

Re: Updated list of venture studios and startup foundries

Stefano Bernardi — Tue, 19 Nov 2013 13:54:02 -0000

Fixed - thanks!

Re: #bastacazzate – una check list per la tua startup

Stefano Bernardi — Fri, 08 Nov 2013 14:47:21 -0000

Veramente accuratissimo.

Aggiungerei:
- non hai un prodotto, ma hai già un CFO - un amico appena uscito dalla Bocconi.
- hai avuto un'idea e la vuoi vendere a Google o Facebook - senza sviluppare un prodotto.
- quando presenti la tua idea dici che (inserisci startup di successo o società quotata) sta sbagliando tutto e non capisce i propri utenti, quindi tu farai (nome di cui sopra) ma meglio. Il fatto che abbiano centinaia di milioni di utenti non importa.
- nel tuo modello fai $5b di revenue nel terzo anno - con un team di 10 persone.
- hai 23 advisor ma nessuno ti ha dato una lira.
- hai avuto l'idea di (inserisci startup di successo) 5 anni fa.
- (inserisci startup di successo) ha avuto culo, se anche tu avessi avuto quell'idea ci saresti riuscito lo stesso.

Ma la migliore per me rimane quella che corrisponde al 50% dei messaggi che ricevo:
- hai un'idea ma non sai a chi "presentarla".

Re: Some Thoughts On The Big AngelList Deal

Stefano Bernardi — Tue, 01 Oct 2013 18:01:10 -0000

I get something else from what you wrote.
I'd phrase it like so:

Backers: people on AngelList who can act as LPs by backing the syndicate lead in their future investments.