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State of Venture in Fall 2023
Earlier this week, I held the annual meeting for K9 Ventures. As I mentioned in the meeting, I am grateful to the K9 Founders for allowing me to be along for the ride in the companies, and I am also...
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Beware of Fake / Scam Engineering Candidates
It has been a while since I posted to the K9 Ventures blog. I’ve been heads down working with K9 portfolio companies and spending my time running HiHello as the co-founder and CEO of that company....
View ArticleHit Start Media – Enabling Enterprise Companies to Own Their Narrative
Hit Start Media is my latest investment for K9. Historically, I have avoided content companies. In fact, if you look at my investment criteria you’ll notice that media is filtered out. But Hit Start...
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Introducing Avoma: Meeting Intelligence
https://www.avoma.com I’m pleased to announce and support the launch of Avoma, a K9 Ventures’ portfolio company that is making all of us who spend time in meetings more productive by utilizing AI. One...
View ArticleThe First Close Podcast w/Manu Kumar
I had the pleasure of chatting with Jessica Straus (@jstraus) at Carta, under the creative eyes and ears of Theo Miller (@theocmiller) of Hit Start Media, for an episode of The First Close podcast. We...
View ArticleI Believe
Today was K9 Ventures’ annual meeting. Each year that I do this, I’m amazed at what K9 founders and K9 portfolio companies have accomplished and I’m grateful to the K9 LPs for the ability to do what I...
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The Story of How/Why K9 Invested in Pragli
Pragli is a virtual office for remote teams that facilitates faster communication and increased closeness between teammates. Here is a quick video: It all started with this tweet by Jeff Richards of...
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Startups are never straight lines
This is a recent tweet-storm that I wanted to cross post here as well as I feel so strongly about the lessons. 1/ So much of building a product/company is about progressive discovery. You build...
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Solving Hard Problems: Traptic’s Harvesting Robots
A little known fact about me is that my paternal grandmother was a farmer. When we would visit her I remember running along the paths surrounded by fields of rice, wheat, grape vines, and apricots....
View ArticleWhat is the biggest enemy of a startup?
In 1998–1999, when I was running my first company, one of my investors, the late Don Jones, came by to visit us at the office. Don was totally a people person and just an all around great person to...
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10 Years for K9 Ventures
My typical Wednesday schedule is pretty grueling (by choice, to try and free up other days of the week) as I do between 9–10 back to back 45 minute meetings with K9 portfolio companies. I have a 45...
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AI Power: Introducing Currant
The home is getting smarter. We hear that every day and we’re constantly exposed to new devices that all help to bring this home of the future to us. From smart doorbells, to smart door locks, to smart...
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The future is keyless: Introducing Nexkey
Ah, the morning pat down: wallet, check; phone, check; keys, check. That’s been my routine for decades. That’s probably been your routine for decades as well. And yes, we’re carrying a super computer...
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Investors should pay their own legal expenses
Legal by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Alpha Stock Images There, I said it; right there in the title of the blog post. And I’ll repeat it again: Investors should pay their own legal expenses. I’ve never...
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What you didn’t know about TechCrunch Disrupt Winner Forethought AI
Yesterday, K9 Ventures portfolio company, Forethought AI, was declared the winner of the TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco 2018 Startup Battlefield competition. SAN FRANCISCO, CA – SEPTEMBER 07: (L-R)...
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Hi. Hello. And Bye Bye Business Cards!
I last ordered business cards in 2009. I think I ordered a thousand of them. And I haven’t run out of them yet — because most times when I need them, I don’t have them on me. They’re either at the...
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Browsers were meant for browsing, but with Workona they’re now designed for...
I’m excited to announce K9 Ventures’ recent investment in Workona. K9 led the initial financing for Workona in December 2017. What is Workona? Well, this video does a great job of explaining that… so...
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The Logical Evolution of Private Markets: A new class of company.
Recently I attended a lunch where we were all asked to present something provocative/mind-blowing. I thought about that for a while and realized that I want my provocative thought to not be something...
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Ideas Matter aka The Execution Myth
I’ve written about how Ideas Matter before. I’ve also written about Finding a Problem Worth Solving. And I’ve also written about my Contrarian Advice for Graduating Students. What follows is a set of...
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The Pre-Seed FAQ
One of the people I respect the most in the VC/PE media ecosystem is Dan Primack. I’ve been an avid reader of Dan’s Term Sheet while he was at Fortune, and now Pro Rata at Axios. His writings and...
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