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Here is Why Non-Obvious Startup Ideas Can Yield the Largest Results

Both Sides of the Table

Try to imagine if you *didn’t* already know Amazon and the company walking into VC meetings telling people they were going to disrupt the selling of all goods starting with books but then extending into electronics, apparel, toys and so forth. The value prop is pretty clear. And here’s the thing. Are the dinosaurs worried?

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The BS List - We Don't Like This Space (No. 52)

This is going to be BIG.

One of my favorite startups to have backed was a travel company called Noken. you know there would be VCs lining up to fund it. I’m sure he could get a seed round for a travel startup without any issue. So how did I get other VCs to take a look? So how did I get other VCs to take a look?

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After Investing $100 Million Into New VC Firms, Here’s What I Look For: Traditional But Better, or Different & Excellent.

Hunter Walk

In these cases we’re asking ourselves, can this individual/partnership execute a ‘known’ playbook better than incumbents, because it’s not very interesting to put people in business who are going to be Traditional But Average. But we’re interested in taking this risk when the person and opportunity warrants it.

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Both Things Can Be True: Bias and Bad Fundraising Advice

This is going to be BIG.

The startup ecosystem is a terrific manufacturer of bad fundraising advice. Any VC will tell you that the ones they said yes to, they mostly got there right away—and that there are very few “maybe” deals that get tipped over the fence. Well, if you add it to your startup, it does a few things. That adds risk.

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The VC tide has gone out. A real innovation wave is now arriving.

Founders Coop

Startups booking sales to other startups laundered the money flood and called it “blitzscaling”. But VC bubbles deflate slowly. LLMs are compute and energy hogs, and renting state of the art bundles of compute and energy by the millisecond is what tech incumbents do best. So what’s a founder to do?

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Why I Backed a 24-Year-Old Trying to Assess Human Potential

Both Sides of the Table

Today Upfront Ventures is announcing that we’ve backed Rebecca Kantar ’s startup Imbellus , a company designed to assess human potential and ultimately change the way we teach children. I speak a lot on college campuses and entrepreneur events and amongst the most common things I’m asked to talk about are: What do VCs fund?

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Revolution co-founder talks Living Social, ZipCar, Steve Case & GroupOn Super Bowl Ads

Both Sides of the Table

I run Revolution’s VC investments. We look at huge markets where there are large incumbents that might not be incented to innovate or react to what they perceive as an insurgent. Both AOL and Time Warner had existing VC operations. Startup America , an Obama administration initiative headed up by Steve Case. -

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