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[sparkcapital]

Our friend Fred Wilson joined us today for our 23rd episode of Hallway Chat.

Show notes:

-questions from Twitter, including how Fred started investing in social media, & YC’s recent move to recommend exercising options from 90 days to 10 years

-Fred’s post, The New Entertainment Bundlers 

-Chris Dixon’s, What’s Next In Computing? 

-Why haven’t we seen a new breakout consumer app

-AI/machine learning

-Steph Curry vs Michael Jordan

Thanks to everyone that tweeted us questions for the show, and thanks Fred for joining us! 

[sparkcapital]

Hallway Chat, Episode #22

Yesterday, Nabeel and I recorded another episode of our podcast.

Show notes:

-Responded to questions by Hallway Chat listeners/friends Semil and Steve Kane

-How do we work with founders “after we write the check” -Impact of social media in politics

-Perils of optimizing for valuations -Upfront Summit & thoughts on current state of the market -Andy Rubin’s new AI initiative & the future of VCs

As always, thanks so much for listening and send us your questions and feedback.

Cheers!

[sparkcapital]

Our Spark Sessions newsletter is out! This time, the topic is scaling engineering teams.

Learn from:

- Nabeel Hyatt, Spark Capital General Partner

- Chris Fry, Angel Investor and former SVP of Engineering at Twitter

Read, watch, or listen to them here.

[sparkcapital]

Thanks to everyone who was able to join us for The Spark Sessions: Scaling Operations, which took place at our NYC office on December 15th.

Thanks to our speakers, Andrew Parker of Spark Capital, Maria Thomas of Etsy and Beth Ferreira of WME Venture Partners.

Also, if you haven’t had a chance to sign up for our Spark Sessions newsletter make sure to subscribe here.

[sparkcapital]

Our Spark Sessions newsletter is out! This time, the topic is designing for mobile.

Learn from:

- Mo Koyfman, Spark Capital General Partner

- Stephen Parker, Senior Designer at Squarespace

- Shaun Tollerton, Product Designer at ustwo

- Toph Brown, Project Manager at ustwo

Read, watch, or listen to them here.

[sparkcapital]

Thanks to everyone who was able to join us for The Spark Sessions: Effective Communications Strategies which took place our our SF office on December 1st. 

Thanks to our panelists, @nabeel of Spark Capital, Dorothy Jean Chang of @foursquare, Kate Wauck of Wealthfront and Sean Garrett of Pramana Collective.

If you haven’t already, check out our newly launched section of our website where content from all of The Spark Sessions, our actionable workshops for entrepreneurs, lives. Lastly, make sure to sign up for our newsletter to receive updates on new content.

[sparkcapital]

Collective participation for good

The best thing about the internet is we can all help each other. 

The collective participation on Wikipedia, Stack Overflow, Foursquare, Twitter, Tumblr and others allow us to contribute towards something bigger than the individual. 

It’s a powerful notion when you fully consider the scale and impact. 

Another fine example of the collective participation is crowdfunding. 

This year Lauren and I have started a crowdfunding campaign on Crowdrise. We are attempting to raise $5k dollars for Charity Water. 

This is what I wrote this morning to get my campaign going:

Hi everyone. This time of year, we receive some nice gifts of all types from friends and business associates. This year we wanted to encourage folks to make a donation to our fundraiser instead of sending us a gift. It doesn’t matter what size. It’s the thought and the act of doing something that matters. We are trying to raise $5,000 for this holiday drive. The money will go to charity : water which is one of my favorite charities. To kick it off we are going to make a $1,000 contribution. In addition, we will match the total of the contributions made by December 31, 2015. I hope you will consider making a donation. Happy holidays.

Today is Giving Tuesday. I love GivingTuesday much more than Black Friday or CyberMonday. 

It’s way better. 

[sparkcapital]

Our second Spark Sessions newsletter is out! This time, the topic is recruiting & hiring. 

Learn from:

- Alex Finkelstein, Spark Capital General Partner - Brad Katsuyama, President & CEO of IEX Group - Joe Riggione, True Search founder and partner - Scott Crouch, CEO of Mark43 - Christina Sass, co-founder and COO of Andela

Read, watch, or listen to them here.

[sparkcapital]

The best place for creatives to express themselves

Last night my dear friend David Karp was honored at the NYSCI gala. I didn’t know much about NYSCI but it was an event to honor David and I felt compelled to be part of the celebration. It turns out that the NYSCI is a very cool organization that is deeply part of New York City’s history for the last 50 years.

Our table at the event was awesome. The early members of the Tumblr team came out and I even got to see Marco Arment wearing a suit and tie :)

David gave a wonderful speech that started with a few fun jokes. But then he passionately went into why Tumblr exists.

David wanted to build the very best place for creatives to express themselves. To create and share their art with the world. And that would make the world a better place because the world needs more art.

I had all these flashbacks of David telling me the same thing, ever since he was 19. It deeply matters to him. You can just feel it in his words, his eyes and his work.

And the best part? He did it. I believe Tumblr is the best place for creatives to express themselves and I am reminded of that every day.

[sparkcapital]

Thanks to everyone who joined us at our NYC Office Warming party last week.

[sparkcapital]

Announcing Our Spark Sessions Newsletter

We’re excited to announce that we now have the content from our Spark Sessions workshops on our website and in a brand new newsletter.

The Spark Sessions are invite-only actionable workshops for targeted groups of entrepreneurs that we have been hosting for the past couple of years.

Don’t miss out on getting updates about new nuggets of wisdom and subscribe here.

[sparkcapital]

Welcome to the Spark Capital team Megan!

Welcome, Megan!

Today I am super psyched to announce Megan Quinn has joined our team at Spark Capital as a General Partner based out of our office in San Francisco. Megan has written post on the news over on Medium. 

We have known Megan for a long time and have admired her body of work. Megan has lived and worked in the United States and the UK. She has a unique and special set of professional experiences with significant operating roles at Google and Square — and most recently as an investing partner at KPCB where she backed a number of amazing startup companies.

You can feel Megan’s limitless curiosity and intellect when discussing technology, society and startups. She is immensely passionate working with entrepreneurs.

Yesterday we had a partner offsite meeting where we discussed strategy and our plans going forward. It was also Megan’s first official day. It felt so natural and like she’s always been part of our team. And I’m still thinking about her insightful comments from the day.

Last month, I wrote about my observations about what makes a great VC.

My own observation is its more about endless curiosity, a passion for learning, a rigorous work ethic, an ability to connect and inspire, empathy, patience, and a natural ability to believe what others don’t – and of course some good luck along the way.

That sums up our feelings about Megan quite nicely!

[sparkcapital]

Insiders vs Outsiders

At the age of 13 I was a geeky outsider, and online life (BBSes in that pre-Internet age) allowed me to find the first tribe of people that I really related to. It was that little band of outsiders that got me into coding, hacking, design, and startups. In my first experiences with the online world no one knew your race, age, gender, or really anything except for your ability to make words, code, or art.

Silicon Valley thrives and survives because it is a meritocracy, perhaps the most inclusive place in the world. Years ago Paul Graham wrote a piece on “Cities and Ambition” that still resonates with me. His premise was that every major city has a culture with a prevailing value: Cambridge, MA values how smart you are above all else, LA values fame, NY values money, etc. For me the best version of silicon valley has been the embodiment of that early online community; valuing what you could make above all else.

But that’s not the only silicon valley.

Chamath wrote a provocative piece this week (“Bros Funding Bros”) that underneath its sensationalism resonated strongly. The worst version of silicon valley is a Hollywood-like club of insiders where you are on the career track from Stanford to high-growth-startup-of-the-month to Y-Combinator and beyond. It’s hard not to think of VC dinners I’ve been at where I had the oddest name in the room, and there wasn’t a single woman there.

So now we’ve started trying to measure diversity, to chart it out and rank it. I think it’s valuable in one sense, to illuminate where we are really underrepresented. But I also worry that staring at one or two imprecise KPIs is not going to get us any closer to the world we want. The issue lies much deeper than simply watching a male/female % chart and declaring victory if it ticks up.

For instance in the rankings attached to Chamath’s piece, why do Asians count as an ethnic group but Arabs do not (perhaps surveyors were making the common mistake of confusing ethnicity with race?). Similarly, Erica Joy wrote yesterday about her experience at a Google event on diversity where “there was no mention of any other forms of diversity besides ‘women’”

Once we are talking about women, and African Americans, shouldn’t we also be talking about socio-economic diversity as well? Ultimately, we should also hire more LBGT, Arabs, Turks, Asians, Kenyans, rural Kentuckians, etc.

I have now made some personal rules now about investments I will make, events I am willing to attend or promote, but I want to be able to do more. And in order for us all to do better, we need to enlist one of our best traits, our culture of learning.

We have been teaching each other about the craft of startups every day, from LTV calculations, to K rates, to how to manage people. Now let’s talk through the mechanics of how to build a startup culture that is still a tribe, but one that self-organizes around valuing differing backgrounds.

We should do these things not to make a diversity ranking chart go up, and not even as a moral imperative (although that’s a good enough reason). We should do it because seeking out differing views and maintaining the outsider mentality has allowed so many wonderful things to be created here.

From Apple to eBay, and more recently from Lynda.com to Postmates, there are stories again and again of immigrants and outsiders pushing through and finding a way to make their dent in the world in this town.

It’s why I’m here, to help us all build the largest group of outsiders ever assembled.

—

Thanks to Andrew Parker, Kevin Thau, Lo Toney, Maureen Fan, Sara Mauskopf, and Siqi Chen for reading drafts of this post.

(Cross posted from Medium)

[sparkcapital]

Under 35 and Crushing It: Meet the most ambitious young founders in New York who are building the next giant companies via @businessinsider

[sparkcapital]

What makes a great VC?

I get asked this all the time.

Let me start by giving my definition of a great venture capitalist.

At the end of the day it’s someone who generates significant (actual) returns on invested capital, treats founders with care and respect, learns from their mistakes and is a pleasure to work with (works hard, committed to a portfolio company) and can do this work at this level over a long period of time.

My partner Santo is a good example. He led a number of Series A investments resulting in outsized winners (i.e. over 9 figures in proceeds) in each of our first three funds. The fourth fund is still early but I’ve seen his work and I have little doubt he will keep the streak going. And he treats founders directly and fairly. He has now backed 4 founders in this fund that he backed previously. And we are talking to another one right now.

There are plenty great VCs by my definition above in our in other firms worth highlighting. Without a doubt that list includes Fred Wilson, Brad Feld, Josh Kopelman, Bill Gurley, and Mary Meeker. I should probably stop naming names because I’ll inevitably forget someone (but one thing for sure: any list that doesn’t factor in actual returns or cost basis isn’t useful).

So what are the common characteristics of these VCs?

Well here’s my take: it’s not necessarily someone with direct startup experience. Its not gender. It’s not where you went to school. It’s not pre-venture success. It’s not operating experience. It’s not where you were born and it’s not where you live.

My own observation is its more about endless curiosity, a passion for learning, a rigorous work ethic, an ability to connect and inspire, empathy, patience, and a natural ability to believe what others don’t – and of course some good luck along the way.

[sparkcapital]

August and Alfred unlock an even smarter home

At Alfred, we’ve been hard at work building a service that makes the luxury of a home manager who takes care of all of your chores and daily essentials, accessible.

In essence, it is like having access to the staff at a hotel (say, for example, the Mandarin Oriental, minus the buy-in), weekly at your house. You come home to fresh flowers, your clean clothing folded and put away, with your grocery selections delivered and put in your fridge. We even do a room service-style tidying, making sure everything is in its place. All for around $100 dollars a month.

To do our jobs well and allow our users to #comehomehappy, one of the friction points we’ve had to solve for is access. Alfred home managers are all trusted, deeply vetted employees, but they need a simple way to get in and manage access to the homes they look after.

Fortunately, technology has an elegant solve.

Enter the August Smartlock. Designed by Yves Behar, this futuristic device is a new lock and access system that allows you to send a virtual key to anyone you choose to have access to your home. Securely. Check out how it works here.

The deal we are announcing today combines access through August’s smart lock technology with Alfred’s trusted home managers. We’ll even get the lock installed for you.

We are so excited to evolve the idea of a smart home into something more personalized, anticipatory, and useful. And thanks to the technology of our friends at August, we can do just that.

Interested in trying the service? Sign up for Alfred here, and get 1 free week with our compliments.