Quote of the week
Uber acquired Postmates
Imagine spending 10 years of your life building a company, selling for a billion, and the deal leaves you with $25mm personally.
Then some random guy in Florida develops a slot machine app and makes that much in 6 months. https://t.co/1jNdNyexYF
Chris Bakke @ChrisJBakke
VCs vs Taylor Lorenz (Reporter)
Taylor Lorenz, the disgraceful current journalist at the New York Times Company, is ranting on Twitter about tech again. Her posts are incoherent, but it's unsurprising to see tech "journalists" perpetuate falsehoods about an industry they have 0 understanding of 😄
Taylor Lorenz, the inspiring story of one woman who climbed the ranks from a $90,000 Swiss boarding school, to NYU, to doxxing, and then finally writing about TikTok teens shaking their ass while screaming about Bernie Sanders. The dream for millennial reporteresses.
.@TaylorLorenz is an excellent reporter. Even if she wasn’t, she shouldn’t face harassment for her work. Beyond that though, too often when people who are outspoken or “polarizing” on Twitter get harassed or threatened other media colleagues stay silent - that needs to change
genuinely curious if certain venture firms or individual VC’s will get the same amount of deal flow after this week of squabbles
like does it go down or up, and what types of people will they attract or repel bc of it
You are reading this on Substack!
2nd Acquisition of the week
$LULU buys Mirror for $500M, key takeaways:
-Lulu had no recurring relationship w/ consumers
-Lulu consumer engagement tied to store/classes
-Not clear what % of clientele would go back to gyms + more SIP coming
-Peloton can disrupt w/ apparel line
-Big win for Female CEO + VC!
Let’s get rich!
I’ve set up a new constraint for the products I make:
• Development time cannot exceed 3 weeks.
• Revenue must be a minimum of $3 million in 90 days.
I’ve counted over 20 apps in the App Store that have achieved this, 3 that were launched in the last 3 months.
The best advice I got as a #founder was to stop trying to pitch investors and get customers first. Then my mentor took my laptop and showed me how to search for people on Twitter and just tweet at them about our product. Thats how we got our first customers #startup #vc #funding
First Broadway Exit
"From Friday through Sunday, the @disneyplus app was downloaded 752,451 times globally"
Meanwhile, @Quibi was downloaded 3 times, and once accidentally when someone mistook it for a food-delivery app.
Choices Choices
Or we will pay your team $50K to work on a startup. Choices choices.
Zak Slayback 🇺🇸 @zslayback
PPP rumors
Earlier today, there was an erroneous entry that Index Ventures applied for a PPP loan. We can confirm that Index Ventures did not apply for a PPP loan at any point. Our legal team is looking into why our name is listed and looking to correct it ASAP.
Bias bias bias everywhere
VC firms announced on TechCrunch they wanted to invest in more Black founders. A Black, female CEO sends them pitches & is ignored only for her Asian ex-Googler husband to send the same pitch then get follow ups.
A microcosm of discriminatory nature of VC
Learnings of the week!
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