Caution: excessive stereotyping in this post! People quote Skype ad Nauseam when talking about category changing models from Europe. It’s time for the new generation to come up with businesses that actually take advantage of the unique makeup of Europe and show that we’ve got it. I’ve been looking at the various European grant and […]
Author Archives: Philipp
Why Apple doesn’t get community
I was reading [this great post by Tom Tunguz](http://tomtunguz.com/social-disambiguation) on the tube and realized one thing: apple doesn’t get the ‘community’ aspect nailed in their software because they don’t have the culture and values across their customers like our other great social products do. Reddit, tumblr, soundcloud, Instagram – all amazing social products have their […]
Secret road life tips
Each year, we go on a 3 week trip with about 25 of our founders. We take them all around the US – New York, Boston, and San Francisco. The calendar is filled back to back with meetings, and we are constantly travelling. What I learnt from the past three trips is how you travel […]
How do you decide on the CEO if you haven’t yet
One from the email outbox, regarding a founder who asked about focus for each cofounder, as they were feeling they were duplicating work. My answer: Think about the three things that are most important for your business at the moment, and where you spend the most time. I would assume it is something like building […]
What’s cool with the kids these days?
I sat near a young family on my flight to Berlin last week, and was able to listen in on a very interesting conversation on what’s currently cool with ~16 year olds. I heard a lot about various apps, learned a lot about fashion, and was able to confirm the my suspicion that headphones are […]
Using big data for investment decisions
“For instance, we often ask startups for their analytics logins during due diligence and compare what we find there to patterns from our successful investments. This morning we will be meeting to discuss how to systematize this effort and support it with some actual technology so that we can more easily discover and track new […]
Sorry mate, no silver bullets.
Growth is hard. In the past weeks, one topic came up again and again, in scarily similar situations and conversations. My job puts me in touch with hundreds of early stage (and I mean early) companies and their founders. Usually these guys haven’t started a company before, and also haven’t spent too much time in […]