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Betting Beyond the Bowl: Investing in Sweetgreen Was Always About More Than Salad

Revolution

something that sounds obvious today but was rare circa 2007. A First Mover Mindset: Sweetgreen had a digital-first approach early on in a sector that wasn’t quick to adopt tech innovations. Greener Greens: At the root of Sweetgreen’s farm-to-table concept was a commitment to sustainability. As a long-standing partner?—?Revolution

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Why We Think B2B Crowdsourced Logistics Will Be a Big Hit

Both Sides of the Table

Six months ago Upfront Ventures announced its first Partner hire since 2007 – Greg Bettinelli. He immediately started meeting with every eCommerce business and has a few themes on where he thinks innovation at the brand level will come. I wrote about him here.

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A Seed Fund Grows in Brooklyn: Announcing Brooklyn Bridge Ventures

This is going to be BIG.

In fact, it’s what Henry Blodget told me I should do the first time I met him--back in May of 2007 during a pre-Business Insider lunch at Coffee Shop. New York City, more than any other innovation hub, has been built on community and I’m excited about continuing my journey as an inspired participant.

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When Should You Allow Exclusivity in Deals?

Both Sides of the Table

Before weighing in on the subject I would point out one thing that should be obvious to many of you – the iPhone was originally launched in 2007 in an exclusive partnership with AT&T and this was vital to both Apple and AT&T and was a hard negotiation throughout 2005 and 2006. THAT is the power of exclusivity.

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Social Networking (the Shorter Version) Past, Present, Future

Both Sides of the Table

Facebook had grown stratospherically from 2004-2007 to 100 million users and was everything that MySpace wasn’t. But the critical distinction in the direction of both companies was that while MySpace was putting up moats to keep outside companies from innovating and making money off their backs, Facebook took the opposite approach.

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What the Past Can Tell Us About the Future of Social Networking

Both Sides of the Table

So Fox ludicrously set up a quasi internal innovation center called Slingshot Labs. The goal was to create innovations outside of MySpace and then MySpace would acquire them at pre-agreed prices based on how well they performed. This was Politburo-style innovation and was laughable. Enter Facebook.

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Why You Should Put Yourself Out There and Try New Products

Both Sides of the Table

In 2007 I started using Twitter and most of my friends & colleagues wondered why people would care what I ate for lunch. Sometimes they take off and they reward the early innovators. In 2006 I started using Facebook and most of my friends & colleagues thought I was strange. In 2008 I started VC blogging.