Remove incumbents Remove investing Remove investment
article thumbnail

How I Invest

Both Sides of the Table

During the Q&A I was asked about how I make investment decisions in early-stage businesses. I know that sounds trite but it’s the best way I can describe my early-stage investments. If I don’t do both then it’s highly unlikely I will invest. I answered in the same way I always do so I thought I’d just write it publicly. “I

investing 254
article thumbnail

Understanding How The Innovator’s Dilemma Affects You

Both Sides of the Table

The framework of his book has profoundly altered how I think about the technology market and affects how I thought about building my businesses and how I think about investing in venture capital. It should affect how you think if you are an incumbent but also if you’re a startup. Incumbents feel threatened.

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

What To Do When Your Competitor Gets Funded?

Both Sides of the Table

Conventional wisdom says I shouldn’t tell you this because I invested in their main competitor, MakeSpace. Clutter is LA based and many of my friends invested. And our competitors are not really each other but the incumbent businesses that have 99.9% ” In summary: The competitors are the incumbents.

article thumbnail

The Future of Corporate Venture Capital

500

Conventional wisdom dictated that incumbents should focus their innovation efforts on R&D and growing their cash cows while investing in a few startups. But the rate of change has accelerated and with it, the balance of internal versus external investment. We believe the new corporate landscape calls for new strategies.

article thumbnail

The Opening

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

I like to think of investing in new things a bit like a football running play. So the existing incumbents are the defensive line. And they are not taking on any of the incumbents directly. Imagine you are the running back. You’ve been handed the football and you are looking for a hole to open up and run through.

article thumbnail

Sequoia Heritage, Stripe and others invest $200M in African fintech Wave at $1.7B valuation

TechCrunch

The investment is the largest-ever Series A round for the region, and it values Wave at $1.7 Four big-name backers jointly led the round — Sequoia Heritage, a private investment fund and a subsidiary of Sequoia; Founders Fund; payments upstart Stripe; and Ribbit Capital. . ” Going up against incumbents.

investing 124
article thumbnail

The next wave of supply-chain innovation will be driven by startups that help incumbents win

TechCrunch

Steve Sloane is a partner at Menlo Ventures where he invests in inflection-stage companies. For years, the prevailing narrative for innovation in supply chain has focused on the disruptors: Upstarts that enter the industry with new technologies and business models to displace incumbents. Steve Sloane. Contributor. Share on Twitter.