.
@HowardU
welcomed my father as he rebuilt his life in America. Today, on behalf of the
@PishevarHaynes
family, I am proud to announce the creation of the Dr. Abraham Pishevar Endowed Chair in Finance and Entrepreneurship
@HowardHUSB
. Happy Father’s Day, Papa.
I met with Kobe Bryant in late December 2019. Kobe wasn’t happy with Nike and was going to leave it in 2020. Kobe was going to start Mamba, a shoe company owned by players. He passed away weeks later. What he was about to do in business was going to eclipse his sports career.
Met up w/
@michael_saylor
tonight in Miami and he convinced me that Bitcoin will one day be worth $1,000,000. All future treasuries, like he did with Microstrategy’s treasury,will be tied to Bitcoin. Michael is one of the smartest people I know and I listen closely to his insight
2/ These were the designs my team did to show him that day for an independent Mamba shoe company. Here’s calendar details. There were witnesses to the meeting and Kobe’s plans like Gina Ford, who manages Usain Bolt.
My takeaways from dinner with Argentine President Milei,
@naval
@pmarca
@martinvars
@markpincus
and many others. I was so impressed with him. We need more world leaders like him. My takeaways are he is the closest we have to Plato’s Philosopher King. A true intellectual, a life
I agree with Peter Thiel on this: Emotional Intelligence (EI) becomes more valuable as AI and AGI rise. Emotional intelligence and verbal skills will rise in value. Super-intelligence doesn’t guarantee empathy and communication skills. Humans can catch the most invisible human
If you’re thinking of starting a company I have one piece of advice: Begin. Don’t hesitate. Set sail. Sooner the better. I’m talking to founders from all over the world. You’ll never regret becoming an entrepreneur. You might fail at first. But keep going. One day it will click.
Dear
@NFL
/
@nflcommish
, Let me help you out: “We’re proud to engage & reinstate
@Kaepernick7
, donate to his
@yourrightscamp
. The world is kneeling in solidarity in memory of George Floyd. We kneel in his honor & recognize Kap’s tireless sacrifices to make all
#blacklivesmatter
”
We, the NFL, condemn racism and the systematic oppression of Black People. We, the NFL, admit we were wrong for not listening to NFL players earlier and encourage all to speak out and peacefully protest. We, the NFL, believe Black Lives Matter.
#InspireChange
CEO of Marriot just set the gold standard in how to communicate bad news. Watch to see a master class in a empathetic, transparent, authentic voice in a crisis.
I became a venture capitalist in mid -2011. I’ve never had an investment go public. After 8 years of investing, appears ~6 or so of my investments might go public in next 12 months. Patient capital is the best capital. Founders & companies need time to till their gardens🌱
After SpaceX goes public + humans land on Mars, Elon will become the 1st trillionaire. Don’ t @ me if that irks you. Elon will do so much for humanity and make us a multi-planetary species. Go complain about those making billions polluting our planet or destroying democracy (FB).
Progress on the design of the Edison HealthOS open-sourced ventilator. Please email Dr. Sarah Haynes at sarah
@edison
.co to collaborate. Need project management, engineering and medical volunteers.
A decade ago a mentor told me to become a VC. Started off a rookie. A decade later I’ve returned billions & an average of 88% IRR. Startups & founders I believed in super early are helping make our world better. Here’s to a new decade of backing great founders. Happy new decade!
Travis Kalanick told me in 2010-11 that he believed UBER would help replace car ownership. He again called another major global shift to Cloud Kitchens (CSS) in 2017. Not many people are right twice about a massive global shift and have the guts to act on it.
@issaphilly
It’s about the 1 year anniversary of when I met him for over 2 hours. It a made me reflect on the greatness that he exuded that day. After, he came out to my car to give me the volumes of a children’s book he wrote. He was in full bloom of the full realization of his talents.
@d4bbasi
He wasn’t happy with Nike’s marketing and promotion commitment to Kobe’s line. And the sales of his shoes were anemic and he blamed Nike. He retained tight control because he didn’t trust Nike’s judgment in design.
*the the idea of the tracker in back back (attached by strong magnet) connected a great Mamba fitness app and integrated coaching/motivational features.
There’ll be new cities valued in the trillions like Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft.
Except millions of new millionaires will be created by new cities.
There will be thousands of new cities created in our lifetimes.
Entrepreneurs will create new cities like new companies
When I started as 1st Iranian-born full partner in VC in Silicon Valley (kudos to Menlo) I was blocked in a deal by a partner at a top tier firm. Went to breakfast & after hour of niceties he wouldn’t budge. I kept pressing & he said: “You dont belong here. You’re not from here.”
Just had an angel investor that I brought into the Uber round that I led at Menlo in 2011, tell me that the $50,000 he put in is now worth $11m. He was part of a music industry group that put in a total of $250,000. He held on and hasn’t sold a share. These types of stories make
Thank you Larry Ellison for defending
@elonmusk
"He's landing rockets on robot drone rafts in the ocean and you're saying he doesn't know what he's doing. Well, who else is landing rockets? You ever land a rocket on a robot drone? Who are you?"
Someone at breakfast said Harvard is a hedge fund masquerading as a University for the tax efficiency, and it made me pause. Also made me realize YC is the true Harvard of our time and makes me wish they’d become a University masquerading as a incubator/fund (kidding not kidding)
I consider Eduardo Saverin’s $25,000 (now $14,000,000,000) investment in Facebook to be one of the greatest of all time (and, yes, I consider it technically an angel investment).
Elon vs Bezos will be the defining genius duels of the first half of the 21st Century. And our planet and all its living beings, our 2nd planet, Mars, and all our future satellite homes across the galaxies in the future, will be the beneficiaries.
.
@vkhosla
is the greatest VC of his generation. And Vinod paved the way for all of us South Asians, Central Asians, Asians, Persians and Arabs who didn’t have anyone that looked like them or came from where we came from anywhere on Sand Hill Road.
I had a long call with
@vkhosla
yesterday. We talked about investing, tech companies and technology in general.
He is simply the best venture capitalist of our generation.
The breadth of his intellect, curiosity and success is mindboggling...someone should be documenting it.
@Bmgentile
That is my dream. Sports teams and sports product companies could and should be owned by the players. PLAYER OWNED BUSINESS MODEL is superior to other models.
When I was 22 I randomly emailed
@mkapor
for advice & he responded. When I was 22 I cold called Jamie Dimon & he invited me to dinner and seeded funded me. I emailed
@mcuban
in my 20’s & he responded. Their humility and generosity of time changed this immigrant war refugees life.
again, give a vc zero credit for opening an email.... which is literally the easiest thing a human could do.
there are people out there running into burning buildings, fighting wars and teaching our children -- that's hard work.
what investors do is the easy work, trust me
We’ve been working on next generation masks with all of the features
@Balaji
describes. Including noise-canceling headsets, noise muffling so use doesn’t create noise pollution around them, AR/VR, filters for pollution, pollen and airborne viruses.
Next-generation masks could be to N95s what jets are to biplanes. A massive new wearable category. Combine:
- AR
- HUD
- infrared
- internet
- 360 camera
- microphone
- computer vision, audio
- flexible display for styling
- protection vs infection, pollution, face recognition
The company that figures out how to create a real time, personal health dashboard seamlessly integrated with real time data fed by signals and trends from multi-modal, quantitative health form factors, will create trillions in value.
If you are a startup founder or engineer and thinking of moving to Miami or Austin or elsewhere please make sure to contact the Mayor of Miami
@FrancisSuarez
on Twitter. He and his team will get back to you.
Just spoke to
@FrancisSuarez
. Proposed a
#Miami500
initiative where tech companies support a min of 500 employees to move to diverse Miami and remote work from here and hire 500+ local employees. If we recruit min of 10 companies we’d add 10k jobs. List of companies like:
Founders, if a VC has never started a company, had to make a pay roll, sold a company and/or failed/shut down a company then you should pass. That’s like going to a veterinarian for your heart surgery. Could work, but you could be barking after surgery.
Let’s be clear: it should be illegal for any company to read private messages and target ads across multiple apps based on those private messages. It just needs to stop and we need lawmakers who will outlaw it.
My first seed checks were $5k and $10k checks. I’ve taught many people that you can invest small checks. These small checks multiplied and I kept doubling and tripling down. Suddenly 88% IRR on average across almost a decade.
Taking in small, <$10k angel checks is very common and most founders I know who have raised recently have done it (including me!)
Here's a quick guide for how to structure a party round while not destroying your entire cap table
1/
My experience has been I always back the great founder first because that business might fail but the probability of their 2nd or 3rd attempt after that goes up. And founders almost never forget those who backed them early and stuck by their side through thick and thin.
One of the toughest decisions in venture I've found is when you love an entrepreneur but don't like the business they're going into. I think about how to weigh these two elements - clearly founder is >50% importance, but is it 99%? Curious how others think about it.
Unicorns are born after black swans take flight. Uber & Airbnb were started in midst of the Great Recession. Facebook started in 2004 when everywhere was looking the other way. Same with Tesla and SpaceX. Amazon thrived after the dot com crash. I’ll be on the lookout always.
1/ City as an economic engine is dead. Remote work will offshore white collar office work. Modern offices have been economic glue that kept us within 100 miles or so in urban and suburban zones. Talent can now live and work anywhere decoupled from cities or even suburbs.
Team Edison Research arm has been working on design. Idea is to open source a high quality, super cheap ventilator and give away any IP. Need project management volunteers to help. This is super early stage but sharing in real time any progress to inspire others.
A Tesla + Uber merger makes a lot of sense. It would create a $2T+ company over next 7 years. The combined company would reach nearly $1T in gross sales within 10 years. Self-driving Tesla’s cars and trucks combined with Uber’s ridesharing, freight and food delivery platform=🔥
In 2010 as part of my diligence I tested Airbnb in cities around world like Paris, Munich, London, NYC. My Paris Airbnb was a 2 level apartment with glorious view of Norte Dame and River Seine. I wrote an essay predicting Airbnb would become bigger than all hotel chains combined.
India should support crypto as a pillar of its foreign & domestic policy.
It defends national security by preventing deplatforming, deters fraud via on-chain accounting, and offers a decentralized alternative to a new Cold War.
@nsitharaman
@narendramodi
Zoom will be a $500B+ co. Zoom is the Operating System for how business communicates and collaborates now. It’s a permanent displacement. Hundreds of billions of deals, partnerships & investments have been powered by Zoom. ZAPP Store will be as big as the App Store in 10 years.
Today we launched Zapps, or apps in Zoom, with 35+ best of breed partners. Check out the virtual demo day on
@ProductHunt
to see how these in-meeting apps can up-level your meeting experience.
Laughing at VC’s comparing themselves to Michael Jordan. No pal, you were Jerry Krause. He pushed out the greatest basketball player in history. You helped push out one of the greatest founders ever. Guess who people will remember as great. Your legacy is Krause not Jordan.
Crypto is 1st foundational silo needed to for a Cloud Governance and Cloud Government to evolve into future Startup Cities, New Cities, City-States running off a global cloud governance & cloud regulatory framework. Government policy will become more AI/Quantum computing driven.
The largest number of Jews killed in one day since the Holocaust. Let that sink in. Yesterday, 10-7, was Israel’s 9-11. The world can’t sleep while terrorist, racist and hatred murders and kidnaps children, grandmothers, mothers and young people dancing for peace. The world must
The market has rendered a decisive victory for Bitcoiners.
When investors needed a safe haven asset, they ran to the hardest money that’s ever been created.
@naval
@LexSokolin
All content and data should not only be linkable but programmable. And every interface and interaction should also be linkable and programmable. The public blockchain enables so much more than a unique address. Programmable nodes exponentially scale network value.