Micah Rosenbloom
@micahjay1
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Seed stage investor at @fcollective . Over 50 founding teams served & counting! Founder of 3 tech companies - Handshake, Brontes (acq by 3M) and Sample6/Corvium.
New York City
Joined June 2009
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In order to respond to the question "what do you invest in?" from founders, angels, scouts, VCs, LPs, and my mother... we've created this easy to use cheat-sheet. Only 26 categories - guess we don't follow that many themes ;)
We’re often asked by entrepreneurs, VCs, and others in the entrepreneurial community, “What kinds of companies do you invest in?”
The short answer is – almost anything.
We’ve backed startups developing solutions in industries ranging from AdTech to Zoological DNA tests.
/🧵
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I’m in an Uber with a driver obsessively checking his Robin Hood account. Either the market is going to crash or I am ;(
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Some of our fastest growing companies were founded by individuals that a) got rejected by YC, b) didn't go to a top tier university, c) are over 40, d) are in obscure geographies. Its a good reminder that we're in the business of exceptions.
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Entrepreneurs are often so fixated on “getting to yes” with a VC – and will go to great lengths to answer any question posed to do so – that they forget to ask the VC any questions.
Here are 12 questions that founders should ask potential investors more frequently:
1/19 🧵
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Just texting with a founder in Israel that was called up for duty. Told me that his shift was starting in 5 minutes but in the meantime was finishing edits on closing a $100K SAAS contract.
Running a start-up is courageous and hard. Doing it during an actual war is next level.…
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“Product Manager” might be the most fluid title in tech.
It can mean anything from a spreadsheet-obsessed APM at Google to a savant who can create new user paradigms from scratch.
But what makes for a good product leader at a *startup?*
/🧵
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Why is it that we’ll pay $39 a month for the millionth repeat of a fitness model doing squats and pushups but we won’t pay $10 a month for quality, daily journalism? I’m generalizing of course but I’m curious the psychology behind this.
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I'm trying intermittent fasting. Now going 32 minutes between snacks.
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A lot of VCs, engineers and founders are inherently anti-social at home, on wkds, at parties etc. For many incl me, its easier to be social around a topic - e.g. venture, tech, politics, etc. Its hard when there isn't an established context to break ice.
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Linkedin profiles don't seem well suited to the era of 2 jobs, 3 side hustles, 6 angel investments and random interests.
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I just read someone's personal deck. What a fantastic idea to write a deck about yourself. Everyone should do this. I'm going to try this over the holiday. History/strengths/weaknesses/how I think about the world/future plans/metrics
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Just a reminder, it is your job as a founder to pursue M&A opportunities when the time is right. It shouldn’t be a taboo topic w founders/investors. By a pure numbers POV, you’re going to sell your company at some point. 1/14
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I think we've entered a generation where highschoolers will apply to good schools, get in and never attend. They will post on their profiles - accepted to X great school and then will proceed to learn on their own, Lambda or something else.
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Job candidates should ask more about business metrics like revenue, margins, burn rates, forecasts and be less enamored by dollars raised, valuations and the brands of investors.
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Don’t let venture capital put you in business. (I’ve made this mistake) Only raise once you’re in business, have mapped out a clear direction and plan to execute regardless when and if you get funded.
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best reference question a founder can ask of a VC - pls connect me with a founder of a failed start-up that you were involved in
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Why are real estate agents still paid so much in transactions? I know the typical answers but it seems so dated.
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Startup Anonymous
In 1999, I built a failed dot com. Raised F&F. Scaled before product-mkt fit. Never did find it. Raised $3m, then $20 on $100. Hired dozens incl high priced execs, fancy space in LA, even made an acquisition. Don't be like me.
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Fundraising is happening at a torrid pace.
Speed dating and shotgun weddings between founders and VCs are happening everywhere and will lead to many unhappy unions.
Since there are no prenups at startups, here are questions you *must* ask before you sign that term sheet!
/🧵
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Venmo's public feed remains for me one of the most non-obvious features for a consumer product and I'm always shocked how transparent people are about their payments.
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Funny thing about VC. You can have a terrible portfolio and then one amazing investment can make you look good. Or you can have a great portfolio and none of the companies seem to find liquidity. It’s a strange and random job.
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🥈It's OK being
#2
🥈
🎉 Good News: You’ve just founded a startup with a unique take on the market. Sales are humming and you raised a seed from a top firm!
☠️ Bad News: You’ve got three direct competitors that each raised 3X as much and are getting better PR.
What do you do?
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Venture capital. We love disrupting others. We hate it when we're being disrupted.
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I increasingly hear entrepreneurs say they are raising a bit more in preparation for a potential correction (which makes sense). What I rarely hear, is "we're spending less in preparation for one."
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Hedge fund friend at dinner last night said "my book is down 80% and all my VCs marks haven't moved ... sounds fishy."
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when you're young, airline status is a prize, as you get older, its a message
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Feels like NYC is increasingly a beneficiary of the remote revolution. Our newly graduated NYU MBA associated shared that she speculated 90%+ of her class is staying in NYC. Unusually high.
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Encouraging founders to raise less VC feels like telling people to eat spinach when everyone in the startup world is munching on Shake Shack, but it has benefits:
🥇 Better partners
💰 Smaller preference stack
🛣️ More Options
😬 Less stress
💸 Self-control
⏱️ Time to grow
1/🧵
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Crisis in VC land -- VCs struggling to find new ways to add value since we mostly buy coffee and host dinners.
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Thinking about
@naval
’s comment that college degrees are the next taxi medallions. I used to think you could replace the education but not the network. But with YC, Chief, the Wing, Twitter...maybe he’s more right than I initially thought.
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Hard lesson of investing is that everyone starts as a nobody until they’re somebody. But we’re in the business of finding nobodys before they’re somebody.
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🏛️ Selling to government is hard
🏙️ Selling to enterprises is hard
🎓 Selling to schools is hard
🏥 Selling to hospitals is hard
🖥️ Selling to SMBs is hard
🛒 Selling to consumers is hard
Sales is never easy and (usually) a bad reason to "pass." (I write this to remind myself!)
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Imagine you're running a startup with solid, but not great metrics. You get two terms sheets from good VCs:
Investor A) Offers $5M at $25M post-money
Investor B) Offers $10M at $50M post-money
Which should you take?
It's not as simple as it seems...
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The first 6-12 mos of a venture should look something like 50% talking to customers to identify P-M fit, 40% building prototypes and 10% working on financing. Lately too many companies seem like they’re doing the inverse.
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the reason I like to look at financial models at the early stage is not to scrutinize the numbers but understand the main drivers of the business and to have a conversation with the founders about what they think the next year or two looks like
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One of the toughest decisions in venture I've found is when you love an entrepreneur but don't like the business they're going into. I think about how to weigh these two elements - clearly founder is >50% importance, but is it 99%? Curious how others think about it.
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what a lot of Series A funds are really asking is "what did you get done on that $1-2M seed money?" and if I extrapolate that with $5-10m...
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Founders may need to hear that a) not everyone is getting rich overnight, b) getting funding isn't a cinch for most, and most journeys aren't straight & to the right quarter after quarter. Despite the TC/Twitter chatter, most founders I know are one foot in front of the other.
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From a forthcoming post I'm writing -- VC economics often require billion dollar valuations. You do not, so don’t let your investor’s business model drive irrational behavior in fundraising, spending, or selling.
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I think college towns and midsize cities and towns are going to boom post this. Thinking of places like Boise, Madison WI, Princeton, Boulder. What others?
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one of the highest forms of flattery in VC is a referral from a founder that you didn't invest in - building rapport and helping founders not in portfolio is an important part of VC NPS
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Once a start-up is funded, employees/investors have 1 maybe 2 pivots that they can comfortably get behind, before they lose faith that the company doesn't have a solid direction. Pre-funding, a start-up can pivot many times. That's the flexibility afforded by waiting on VC.
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Fintech is hard.
SAAS is hard.
Deep tech is hard.
Consumer is hard.
I'm detecting a trend.
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the venture ecosystem has entered a full on mid-life crisis - feels like VCs are re-evaluating their love of the game, the way they play, the team they're on and whether it will exist in this form going forward
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Startups in the Bay are more likely to die of indigestion. Startups outside the Bay are more likely to die of starvation.
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Everyone’s going to have move back from Miami when they realize clubhouse is on PT.
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Raising a series A before finding product market fit creates undue pressure on founders and often disappointment. Intellectual honestly on where a company truly is is among the hardest and most important aspects of being both founder and investor.
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One unique attribute of the Bay Area is that when a company has an exit of some sort, the founders and others almost always become a formal or informal angel group. This perpetuates and strengthens the tech/start-up ecosystem. Hopefully we'll see more of this elsewhere.
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2020 and 2021 have been busy years for Founder Collective – In addition to making new investments, we were fortunate to have 19 exits. While this sample is neither representative nor statistically significant, I think founders could draw a few lessons from it.
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I can’t think of a university with a higher NPS than Univ of Michigan. All the alums I know (many but not me!) loved their experience and maintain a bond with the school. Are there others at a similar level?
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Five years ago everyone was talking about smart watches. Then the chatter fizzled. Now you look around and everyone’s wearing one. That sort of sums up consumer tech cycles in a nutshell.
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I'm excited to announce the arrival of Founder Collective V. Despite the many changes around us over the past decade, we've never had more conviction around doing what we do best -- staying small, being aligned to founders and seed & only seed.
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Founders and VCs are tasked with being therapists at least 15% of the time w/staff, managers, partners, founders, investors, board, etc.
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you can spend a year raising a fund, work hard to build deal flow, have 2,455 coffees, write 15,324 tweets, pick the best companies, work with them for a decade+, and hope to be a top decile fund
or just buy NVIDIA
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Sort of amazing that the credit card companies scammed all of us into believing that 1-2% back in cash and points is better than just lower prices across the board. A fairly unique American thing and also shows the power of convenience and psychology.
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VCs famously love to say, “Let me know how I can be helpful.”
One key way they can deliver value is helping you raise your next round of funding.
This thread breaks down how you can get the maximum benefit from your earliest backers!
/🧵
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We're hiring a principal! Looking for:
💡 Incandescent enthusiasm for startups (Required)
⛏️ Former founders (Strongly, strongly preferred)
💻 Startup working experience (Must have)
🏝️ Cool custom Zoom background? (Optional)
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It's fascinating to see founder "mafias" emerge. I recently learned that over 8 companies have been started by Jet alum. I know several from Gilt. What other companies have produced lots of founders (besides PayPal)?
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Talking to folks in "traditional" finance is often sobering and illuminating. They don't buy into any hype or narrative. On WeWork, my friend said "they take 10+ year liabilities and sell 30 day contracts. Feels like a tough bet."
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The impetus for more VCs to raise larger and larger funds to better compete may paradoxically reduce returns for all. Sort of mutually assured destruction for an asset class.
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I know more and more families taking their kids out of school for extended travel. The sanctity of school is diminishing as parents realize that perhaps they can better educate their kids with a backpack and a plane ticket. Interesting trend to see...
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In the Bay I found myself asking teams "when are you going to start charging customers?" In NYC, I find myself saying, "maybe wait and build an engaged community, before you start charging?"
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I recently tweeted about the importance of financial models in evaluating seed stage pitches (), I want to share a few notes about how and why they’re so helpful and illuminating. 1/19
the reason I like to look at financial models at the early stage is not to scrutinize the numbers but understand the main drivers of the business and to have a conversation with the founders about what they think the next year or two looks like
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Over a decade ago, Khosla, KP and others made a big push into "cleantech." Lots of deep tech investing that didn't pan out. It scared a decades worth of VCs from going down this path. Will this time be different? I hope so, because we need it.
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A founder said the line of the week to me “I want to partner with a VC that’s someone I’d want to hire but couldn’t.” I feel the same about the founders we work with.
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Over the last month I’ve had the odd experience of talking to a few founders who have built profitable businesses with double digit millions in revenue and they were… bummed out. It surprised me that profit (when coupled with slowing growth) could be seen as a crisis. 1/15
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in about 5-7 years as the millenials age, all the new CPG start-ups will be for reading glasses, joint juice and botox - mark my words
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What I look for in entrepreneurs -- Hungry - founders who have something to prove, a deep internal motivation; Quick on their feet - answers questions thoughtfully across business and tech; Founder-business fit - the right background and insights for a given opportunity.
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It's amazing how many VC partners have left funds for "performance" whose portfolios ended up crushing. Further evidence that no one knows a thing until its all said and done many, many years post investment.
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Even the nomenclature of Seed->A->B->C wrongly encourages progression as a sign of success - perhaps we should change it to "I sold more of my equity" - that might change the perception of continuous fundraising
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my second fave line from
@scottbelsky
#themessymiddle
was "often giving business advice is like saying, I won the lottery, want to play my numbers?"
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Oddly M&A is a taboo topic among VCs and founders and yet is among the single most important event personally and professionally for both founders and VCs. Feels like a lost oppt'y to learn best practices for whenever the time is right.
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VC brands are increasingly important it seems. Every Series A/B target list has the same dozen names, even though there are many many other potential targets. (our job as seed partner increasingly is to surface other names)
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I find remembering details from zoom meetings much harder than IRL meetings. The brain is good at associating multiple things - e.g. we met at that coffee shop, we had the same glasses etc. Without that additional context meetings feel similar and can blur. Anyone feel similarly?
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Covid-19 is top of mind for most people in the startup community this week. Thankfully, full-blown panic hasn’t set in, but founders should prepare so they’re not caught flat-footed.
Here are some things we're talking to our founders about:
1/13
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The best way as a founder to stand out at this moment may be to not be an AI company.
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My observation is that the best VCs spend the most time with their struggling companies even though its not the most optimized use of time - these co's need the help most and this is where reputations are won or lost
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Product is the best place to learn what it takes to build a start-up. Its the most cross-functional + gives access internally and externally. Requires left & right brain thinking. Its hard, but a great place to build competency. Wish more schools prepared folks for the function.
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At
@fcollective
we don’t believe that more capital necessarily leads to better startups.
So we looked at a decade of data – all 166 tech IPOs that occurred between 1/1/2010 and 12/31/2019.
The data seems to show that we are right.
More below:
/🧵
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Billy Joel should do a remake of We Didn’t Start the Fire with only 2020 references.
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I’m so thrilled to be back in NYC! Good thing I kept my sweaters :) And we’re hiring!
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Turns out commutes are both physical and mental events. Without the mental benefits of some downtime (podcast anyone?!) to transition to home / other activities, the blurring of work/home is more exhausting. I always thought of commutes as all negative, but no longer.
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Despite the deluge of VCs on Twitter, I think VC twitter is net positive. One can learn a lot about someone's POV from their tweets (and blogs). When I was raising VC money, I had very little insight into the individuals besides firm reputations.
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VC lifecycle - first 3-5 years build network/reputation, next 3-5 years milk said network and dealflow, next 3-5 years go back to phase 1 and/or hire next gen or firm gets complacent and less relevant (and these cycles may be accelerating)
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As the economy enters a tough era, we hope we’re able to work with a group of founders who will find weird and wonderful solutions to our current problems and invent a better world than we could ever have imagined. Fund 4 here we come!
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VC strategies over years
V0 - hang back on Sand Hill wait for founders
V1 - blog, tweet, post
V2 - full stack media business
V3 - value added services
V4 - dinners, summits, events
V5- AI, outbound sales machines?
What's next?
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the skill of actually calling and talking to someone on the phone is a competitive advantage when most defer to text and email
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Apparently the new cool gig post business schools is starting a bootstrapped CPG co.
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I always found it interesting that my most successful PE/Hedge friends don't blog, tweet, give quotes. Many don't have anything beyond a scant LI profile. Interesting relic of the past, or smart strategy?
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The Dot Com bust and suprime crises felt like big, surprising (at the time) shocks. Now I feel like everyone's standing around with their emergency preparedness bags, pointing at the oncoming recession and it's just not happening. Very strange feeling.
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Everything I ever needed to know about venture capital I learned in kindergarten math. $ + pre = post. Who knew my entire job would come down to a simple problem of addition.
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Interesting paradox I’ve noticed. The richer people get the more they complain about taxes.
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One important "value add" for VCs for their portfolio co's is interviewing and assessing talent. I think start-ups don't use this as much as they should. VCs see a lot of people and can offer another vantage point. They also usually can help sell and close candidates.
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What some angels who later become “professional” VCs find out is that they made more money and potentially were better investors when they were angels.
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