Playing With Unicorns

It's been a year since my last Ask Me Anything session. A lot has happened since then across AI, marketplaces, macro, and the broader tech ecosystem. Here are the questions we covered: ·       4:22 Why does AI feel so widely feared or disliked right now? ·       8:48 Why is AI driving massive progress while politics and public systems lag behind? ·       13:34 What are the real opportunities in co...

Over the past few weeks, a growing narrative has emerged arguing that AI could destabilize the economy and disrupt entire business models. Last week, I published my view that AI is far more likely to be a productivity revolution than an economic collapse. But what does this mean specifically for marketplaces? Many founders are asking: •    Will LLMs capture discovery? •    Will AI compress take ra...

I had the pleasure of chatting with Zach Resnick, the founder and CEO of Ascend (formerly FlyFlat), a membership program for frequent travelers that eliminates 90% of travel decisions and saves 35% off biz/first class flights. Ascend has been helping my partners Jose and Jeff with all their travels for a couple years now, saving FJ Labs over six figures since we first learned about them. Prior to...

The venture market is in flux. AI is booming while the rest of venture is in the dumps. Venture capital as an asset class is evolving and retrenching. Fewer deals are happening at higher prices. New marketplace types are emerging. AI is impacting marketplaces in unexpected ways and new technologies are coming of age. There is much to discuss! You can follow along live on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTub...

Clutch  has had an incredible ride. As the "Carvana of Canada" it was a highflier in 2021. It had a brush with death in 2023 and effected an incredible turnaround. They are now once again on a tear. Dan Park, Clutch's Founder & CEO, joined us to share all the lessons learned along the way.  

I had not done an Ask Me Anything session in over a year which led to many questions on a wide variety of topics: macro, marketplaces, AI, fundraising, wealth management, education, island shopping, India, how to lose your accent, adventure travel, climate tech, the state of VC, and much more. Here are the key questions we covered: 00:01:17 How will all the geopolitical changes, tariffs, and Trump...

Given that I have been building and investing in marketplaces for 26 years you might think that everything that needed to be built has already been built, but nothing could be further from the truth. In many ways, we are still at the beginning of the marketplace revolution with lots of exciting new trends. In this episode, I cover:  Cross border commerce. Live commerce. New goods verticals support...

While AI investing continues to reach new highs, we have been contrarian. Given how non-consensus we are, I wanted to share our thoughts and perspective.  In this episode, I cover: The general state of venture. The explosion in AI investing.  The varying fortunes of AI startups. FJ Labs' perspective on AI. FJ Labs' AI investments.  The episode was highly interactive with dozens of audience questio...

I had not done an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session in over a year which led to many questions on a wide variety of topics: AI, augmented reality, crypto, macro and much more. Here are the key questions we covered: • 00:01:44 Artificial Intelligence: Where are we now? Where are we heading? What is the timeline? Why is FJ Labs a way contrarian on the AI trend? • 00:09:42 What's your perspective on augm...

People often ask me how I manage to accomplish so much while leading such a rich, passionate life as illustrated by my 2023 year in review . In this episode I share all my secrets. I will cover everything from general productivity tips to how and what you can outsource in your professional and personal life.

I had the pleasure of receiving Julio Vasconcellos on the show. Julio is the Founder and Managing Partner of Atlantico , a leading early-stage venture fund in Latin America. It was Julio's role as the inaugural Facebook employee for Latin America that initiated his path in the startup world in the region after starting his career in Silicon Valley. He later co-founded Peixe Urbano, scaling it to o...

I had the pleasure of being joined by my good friend Kevin Ryan. He's often been called the "Godfather of NYC tech." Kevin is one of the leading internet entrepreneurs and investors in New York. He is a co-founder of MongoDB, Business Insider, Gilt Groupe, Zola, and Nomad Health, and founds new companies with AlleyCorp every year. Earlier in his career, Kevin helped to grow DoubleClick first as Pr...

It had been over a year since we did the last Ask Me Anything (AMA) so the time had come. As requested by the audience, my son François joined us for the first part of the show. He was his usual epic self: calm, poised, and playing along cutely. His presence clearly played a part in the success of the episode which was one of the most watched ever across all the platforms and was by far the most i...

This week, I had the pleasure of chatting with my good friend Oskar Hartmann. He's had the most incredible unicorn experience: He was part of 10% of all German unicorns Made a $300M mistake on Ozon Managed to make money on Fab.com despite it going from $1.5B in value to $0 in 6 months Why selling at the point of maximum secondary liquidity is probably a bad time to sell Much more!

On this week's episode I had the pleasure of welcoming Nitya Sharma, co-founder and CEO of Simpl , to conclude our mini-series on the Indian tech scene. We had a fascinating conversation on the state of Indian Fintech, which in many ways is more advanced than the US. I am beyond impressed by the free C2C / B2B / B2C instantaneous real time payments allowed by UPI and the business models that emerg...

This week we are covering the state of the Indian tech ecosystem. We are joined by Luke Skertich, senior associate at FJ Labs, who is leading the charge with our Indian investments. In this episode, we cover: The history of India's tech ecosystem and the recent explosion in unicorns Why we are short term pessimistic, but medium and long term super bullish Why we are focusing on Picks and Shovels,...

In this episode, we cover: Niraj's path to creating Spinny, including creating two much less successful startups right out of college The differences between the US & Indian car markets Spinny's unique solution to the market considering the specifics of the market Spinny's ambitions on a go forward basis The impact, if any, of the massive global multiple compression in comps like Carvana and Cazoo...

Lorien Gabel is the Co-Founder of Figment Network. He holds an LLB from Toronto's Osgoode Hall Law School and is a member in good standing with the Ontario Bar. In 1994, at the age of 24, 6 months into practicing law, Lorien quit to help his brother Matt run a bourgeoning internet company, Interlog. Over the next four years, they managed the growth of Interlog to over 150 employees, 65,000 custome...

These days every meeting seems to start with a conversation on market conditions. In the next episode, I am sharing my perspective on what has been happening in the public, crypto, and private markets, and what it means for investors and founders.

Mark Lurie is the CEO and co-founder of Shipyard Software . Shipyard Software builds decentralized exchanges (DEX) for specific types of trades, traders, and instruments, starting with Clipper , a DEX with the best prices anywhere on retail trades

Laura Behrens Wu is the co-founder and CEO of Shippo. Shippo is an API-first company focused on building shipping for 21st-century e-commerce. Top takeaways Build something that's a pain killer, not a vitamin. This means finding a true pain point and solving it. Constantly seek new customer acquisition channels. Keep in mind that people who succeed at corporations are not always successful at earl...

Alisa Cohn ( @AlisaCohn ) is a prominent startup coach who has advised founders and executives at Venmo, Etsy, DraftKings, The Wirecutter, Mack Weldon, and Bloomberg. She's one-time startup CFO, strategy consultant, and current angel investor and advisor, she was named the number one "Global Guru". Her articles have appeared in HBR, Forbes, and Inc and she has been featured as an expert on Bloombe...

Thomas Plantenga is the CEO of Vinted. He was born and raised in the Netherlands. Thomas was previously a Venture Partner at FJ Labs and an early member of OLX. Thomas never intended to join Vinted. He flew from New York to Vilnius for 5 weeks to simply to have a deeper look at Vinted's metrics. At the end of the 5th week, Thomas proposed an aggressive plan to the team, and to his surprise the tea...

In episode 27, I took a stab at which categories investors and entrepreneurs should focus on for the coming 5 years. In today's episode, I wanted to cover the themes and trends that emerged in the last 12 months. Ten trends clearly emerged as we saw them time and time again with a plethora of competitors in every geography. There was no unifying theme across all of them, but four of the trends cov...