AVC - Musings of a VC in NYC

Time 2020-07-06 10:04:39

Web Name: AVC - Musings of a VC in NYC

WebSite: http://avc.com

ID:20563

Keywords:

of,Musings,AVC,

Description:

My partner Nick blogged about this Kickstarter project yesterday and I immediately backed it.Second Chance Studio is a nonprofit digital media company that trains and employs formerly incarcerated individuals.You can back their Kickstarter project here.I am a fan of the slow and steady approach to building a business. I call it crawl, walk, run. I have seen many founders try the run right away approach and it is super hard to make that work. An example of run right away would be to raise a $30mm seed round, hire a couple of hundred employees, and go for broke. That mostly results in being broke.Of course, there are examples of founders who did that and succeeded. But they would be the exceptions that prove the rule.Crawl, walk, run generally means start small, do one thing really well, then get a little bigger, do a few things really well, then get a little bigger and do a few more things really well.Crawl, walk, run is more resilient. It allows for mistakes that aren t fatal. It takes a bit longer to get to the finish line this way, but the probability of success is way higher with crawl, walk, run.Crawl, walk, run is a mantra for doing a startup and I recommend it to everyone.I m sitting outside of my favorite coffee shop sipping on a coffee and writing. I do this many mornings.When I walked into the coffee shop this morning I was wearing a mask:I counted all of the people in the shop waiting in line (six feet apart) and waiting for their coffees. There were twelve people in total, including two people behind the counter making coffee and taking payment.Everyone in the store had a mask on and was wearing it properly.That s how it is and how is has been in that coffee shop since May 1st when we arrived here.Wearing a mask is easy. I keep a bunch in my car and one in the pouch on my bike. It s no big deal to put it on every time I go indoors anywhere other than our home.I can t think of anything simpler and more powerful that we can all do other than wearing a mask. I wear one proudly and I hope everyone else does to as long as the pandemic continues.I got a question this past weekend that kind of stumped me. The question is are there any really good mail hosts other than Gmail and Outlook? I realize that Yahoo still operates a mail host as does AOL. And that many of the ISPs offer mail hosting. But all of those feel like 20 year old technology. Of course I could be wrong about that.I am not talking about mail clients like Superhuman and Hey and others (including Apple and Microsoft s mail clients). I feel like there has been a lot of innovation in that area over the years.I am talking about the hosting platform that receives the email, filters out spam, and provides the connectivity to the mail client.If you know of a modern and reliable mail host that supports the various third party mail clients, I would love to know about it.If you are reading this on the web, please click on the button that says Discuss On Twitter and share your suggestion with me and everyone else who is interested.If you are reading via email, please reply to this email or go to the web and share it with everyone via Discuss On Twitter. I appreciate the replies!!Many of us have been working from home or some other remote location for over three months now. We have learned a fair bit about this approach to work and we have more to learn in the coming months. I don t think we will be done with remote work until the pandemic is over.It has taught me three conflicting things:1/ I can be a lot more productive working remotely than many of us believed before the pandemic2/ Those with kids at home don t experience the same productivity boost3/ I can t wait to be back working together in personOn the first point, I am able to get a lot more done in a day working remotely than I am able to do in the office. I now regularly do days with ten to twelve meetings/calls/videos. I don t think I was able to do that in the office. I have also found it easier to find time for work that requires a lot of focus (writing/modeling/analyzing/etc). And I ve been much better at keeping my inbox and other communications up to date and current.And I can do all of that while making time to go biking, do yoga, meditate, etc.It is a revelation to me how productive I can be working remotely, particularly when our entire team is doing the same. All of that said, my friends and colleagues with kids at home have not experienced the same productivity boost. They get some of the benefits of working from home, but they also face distractions, double duty, and more. If we cannot reopen schools in the fall, it is going to be a very challenging time for parents.It is also the case that I miss the feeling of being together with my colleagues. Today we will spend four to five hours on Zoom in our weekly team meeting. It is way more enjoyable doing it in person around our conference table.Reconciling these conflicting realizations will be the key to what happens when the pandemic ends. I am certain that we will all want to retain some of the convenience and productivity that comes with working remotely. But I am equally certain that we will want to work together again.I wrote about this project to financially support people who were laid off because of the Covid pandemic back in early April. We also participated in the project and supported a family in the NY metro area back then.I saw this tweet yesterday:1/ So proud of @1kprojectorg reaching $1,000,000 in sponsorships for families impacted by the pandemic. To celebrate, we made this infographic. Please take a minute to scroll through it and re-share. pic.twitter.com/CFDUqYiBPU Alex Iskold

TAGS:of Musings AVC 

<<< Thank you for your visit >>>

Musings of a VC in NYC

Hot Websites