Showing posts with label Greylock. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Greylock. Show all posts

Saturday, June 21, 2014

The next Facebook may not be found online after all

It’s not very often one comes across an article, a cover story at that, in Newsweek on the start-up scene & VCs – So there was no which way I could have let-up an opportunity to read through, read in between the lines, postulate, extrapolate and generally make my own merry conclusions on stuff the article never intended to dwell on - Call me extreme, that’s okay – like the partners at Greylock, I don’t back down easily either :-)

It isn’t perhaps about trying to find/ fund the next Facebook at Greylock

While the title has enough oomph to grab eye-balls, it could be fundamentally misleading. A quick look at the recent investments (mentioned within the article) of Greylock partners shows it is bullish on startups that are waltzing back into the realm of real-life albeit through cyber gateways – i.e. ones that have built revenue models on O2O commerce platforms;  think Airbnb; Coupons; OneKingsLane; Shopkick (all Reid Hoffman investments..); Sprig; (Simon Rothman) – Though it’s just one subset of investments primarily by one partner, the sheer millions pumped in indicate there’s a lot of enthusiasm at Greylock on O2O commerce.

Just may be David Sze should display a real apple (besides Apple Newton & Apple iPhone) in his timeline collection of technologies – a sweet reminder that any technology’s ultimate potential lies offline

Incubate a potential acquisition? – Sounds like a nice strategy or is it?

It is perhaps a strategy/ wish to utilize the (insider) knowledge of a current investee companies that are avid deal-hunters themselves by way of incubating a few custom designed startups & facilitating (evetually) their acquisitions by the aforesaid companies – Consider the investments in Nextdoor, Path, Jelly, Medium, Pandora (all David Sze investments..) & the likelihood of these companies getting acquired by either Facebook or Linkedin at some point of time.

Startup scene in USA is raining Asoks* – and they’ve been raking in some moolah, finally

The article starts with Gagan Biyani (Sprig), dwells on Aneel Bhusri (Greylock) and mentions the likes of Nirav Tolia (Nextdoor) – not an inconsequential acknowledgement of the increasing presence of Indians in the American entrepreneurial scene.  
*’Asok’ is used in the context of any techie of Indian origin rather than just the IITians.

A final dig I can’t help – The article by Katrina Brooker is far superior to anything related I’ve come across in HBR magazine till date.