What have you done for me lately?

Changing deal dynamics in venture and a plea for better broadcasting in the NBA, accounting is hard, an abundance dinner

The deal dynamics in venture have changed: once upon a time no one knew for sure what a good company looked like or how to underwrite it. Today, once a company is obviously awesome and consensus, it won’t have a hard time raising capital.

Every great company will get multiple offers at good prices from respected investors.

So you’re not doing seed investors a “favor” by putting more money into obviously great companies. We’re doing you a favor by putting you in line to win the deal.

Calling me out of the blue to ask for intros to hot companies is unlikely to work. Not because I don’t love you and want to win together but because you’re the Nth person to call in a week and I haven’t heard from you since the last time you wanted inside info.

If you actually want early/preferential access, here’s how to get it:

1. Take real risks on companies that we think are great but aren’t obvious yet. Show conviction worth repaying in kind.

2. Send me great companies/founders to work with early. Help me help you.

3. Be a thought partner. If I get better by being around you, I’ll want to force you to be around me.

4. Perks work. I am partial to basketball, jet skiing, and publicity.

Being a great board member, honoring at least my full pro rata, and being my bud is necessary but insufficient. If you want to get special treatment to do real business together, the rules of engagement have changed.

So what have you done for me lately?

I Wrote

• What have you done for me lately?

• The basketball is great but the NBA sucks as a media and entertainment product. Too much sports betting in the broadcast. Games start late. Too much late game stoppage. The media environment sucks (and is league sponsored). The league promotes the wrong players. Too many techs. The streaming environment makes it impossible to actually watch.

• Accounting for complex companies is a nightmare.I’m not sure that there’s really a company to build here (at least not a straight book keeping one) but it feels like the market needs more flexible tools for GLs and bookkeeping as more high growth startups get into the real world and multi-party businesses. Definitely a real need within my portfolio and a problem I see time and time again.

Abundance

I’m hosting a dinner with the Abundance NY team in a couple weeks. I had hoped to gather up some of my network and colleagues (tech, finance, venture, etc.) to talk about how we can get productively involved in making NY work better and for everyone. We need to orient our government around housing, public safety, and renewable energy while holding our leaders accountable not just to big dollars and pronouncements but results and outcomes.

This is an informational and community building opportunity to meet the Abundance NY team, talk about the Abundance Agenda, and learn about how folks can get involved in this new vision for NY.

The response has been fantastic and we booked out the room almost immediately. Assuming this goes well (why wouldn’t it), I see no reason not to run it back again. So if you’re interested in getting involved to help save NY, please let me know and I’ll put you on the list.

In the meantime I’ll be going to the ANY happy hour next week.

I Read

• Narendra Modi’s Populist Facade Is Cracking - The Atlantic. The biggest thing that my trip to India impressed on me is how it’s not a monolith (in retrospect, duh). But in the states we don’t hear much about Indian politics outside of Modi and this longform article is a great summary of the fractious politics brewing in the country.

• Bullshit Jobs are Hard Work - Cartoons Hate Her. CHH has become one of my favorite substacks over the last few months since I subscribed to/paid for it.

• Four Reasons People Leave Venture Firms - by Charles Hudson. With so many people leaving, worth remembering that the reasons are actually pretty straightforward. I expect more people to leave more firms in part because retirements are going down/away: with less money sloshing around, the people at the top are sticking around longer and there’s fewer GP seats to go around at established firms.

Welcome to the team

Ariana just started as an associate at Slow with me in NY. She’s great and is gonna be helping me across everything I’m working on.

If you have one thing that a new junior VC **has to read** what would it be?