Anatomy of a (Good) Investor Update

Now that I’m an investor, I am on the receiving end of a lot of investor update emails from startups. Some are clear, consistent and excellent. Some are confusing, some are sporadic, many are bad. As an investor, the quality of a startup’s communications...

The Challenge of Rolling Solo

Being a solo founder is hard. It’s almost trite to say, but I’m in it and it’s real. I’m not sure if it’s just the fact that I’m a solo founder or the solo person employee. Even though I’ve started 3 companies before and had...

Thanksgiving Letter to My Portfolio CEOs

From: Matt Mireles Date: Fri, Nov 23rd, 2018 at 9:56 AM Subject: Thankful To: Founders   Hi Folks, On this Thanksgiving holiday, I am thankful for… you. You are my tribe. A lot of you are the people I talk to most and have become some of my closest friends....

Moral Courage: Not Taught at Harvard

An irony of facebook’s situation. Sheryl got her MBA at Harvard. One of the most famous cases (Extra Strength Tylenol) in one of the most famous classes (Business History) she took: in 1982, someone put cyanide in Extra Strength Tylenol capsules and killed 7...

How to Size a Market in 5 Minutes or Less

My basic approach to market sizing is this: # of potential customers x average selling price = Total Addressable Market Don’t know average selling price (aka ASP)? No problem. Then use economic value creation instead as an upper threshold for price. Economic value...

Poor. Hungry. Driven.

In hiring and investing, we are all biased. My bias? I bias toward and pattern match on PHDs: Poor. Hungry. Driven.  I look for people who’ve taken it on the chin in life and come back determined to win. I look for hustlers who’ve risen beyond their...