null Today we’re releasing the B-Side of our conversation with Vitalik Buterin, highlighting what may look strangely different in the coming decades. Here’s what great Founders know that others do not: What seems weird today may actually be signal of an outsized opportunity ahead. Last week, Vitalik and I took a synchronous-but-separate walk together for 3 hours. I was in San Francisco at 4 pm and Vitalik was in Singapore at 8 am the next day, living in the future in more ways than one. Read the...
Feb 18, 2021•22 min•Ep. 83
null Today we’re releasing the “A-Side” of a conversation with Vitalik Buterin, known as the creator of Ethereum and is a force behind much of the crypto movement. Vitalik shares his unique points of view on politics, crypto, Americanism, GameStop, and Wall Street Bets, Tesla, China, privacy, The Revolt of the Public, the decentralization of finance and so much more. But Vitalik is much more than just crypto. He is a close friend with a rare ability to see the present and future in a way few oth...
Feb 16, 2021•49 min•Ep. 82
null This is The Founders' List - audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community. Ashley Mayer is the Senior Director of Communications at the beauty company, Glossier. She is also an active startup investor (angel and scout). Ashley previously ran all things Marketing at Social Capital from 2015-2018, where she worked with founders spanning healthcare, aerospace, climate, fintech, enterprise and education. In this audio essay, Ashley demysti...
Feb 11, 2021•12 min•Ep. 81
null "Doubt what you know, be curious about what you don't, and update your views based on new data." NFX partner Pete Flint recently got together with organizational psychologist and bestselling author Adam Grant to discuss his new book, Think Again, about the counterintuitive and competitive advantages of rethinking. Adam and Pete share the frameworks for: - Rethinking vs. Contrarian Thinking - Techniques from the World’s Best Superforecasters - Jeff Bezos’s 2×2 Decision Framework - The Top Ki...
Feb 04, 2021•40 min•Ep. 80
null Today we're announcing NFX Bio, a new fund initiative led by some of biotech's most successful Founder/CEOs. Our mission is to back seed-stage companies building bio-platforms that solve the biggest challenges facing humanity. NFX Bio is led by Omri Amirav Drory, Ph.D., Founder/CEO of Genome Compiler (acquired by Twist Bioscience). Joining him on the Investment Committee is Emily LeProust, Ph.D., Co-Founder & CEO of Twist Bioscience (TWST - NASDAQ), as well as NFX GP's James Currier and...
Feb 02, 2021•25 min•Ep. 79
null This is The Founders' List - audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community. This essay was written and published by James Currier, General Partner at NFX. Read the full article here: https://www.nfx.com/post/psychology-startup-growth/
Jan 28, 2021•10 min•Ep. 78
null This is The Founders' List - audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community. Alongside our latest NFX Essay "The Hidden World of Pricing: Uber, Trulia, Etsy, Superhuman & More with Madhavan Ramanujam", we decided to release multiple supplemental pricing articles on The Founders' List. David Skok joined Matrix Partners as a General Partner in May 2001. He has a wealth of experience running companies. David started his first company in...
Jan 26, 2021•10 min•Ep. 75
null This is The Founders' List - audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community. Alongside our latest NFX Essay "The Hidden World of Pricing: Uber, Trulia, Etsy, Superhuman & More with Madhavan Ramanujam", we decided to release multiple supplemental pricing articles on The Founders' List. This is a two-part episode including two essays from Tomasz Tunguz (Venture Capitalist at Redpoint). He is also a board member of Looker, ERPLY, Electr...
Jan 26, 2021•8 min•Ep. 74
null This is The Founders' List - audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community. Alongside our latest NFX Essay "The Hidden World of Pricing: Uber, Trulia, Etsy, Superhuman & More with Madhavan Ramanujam", we decided to release supplemental pricing articles on The Founders' List. Ash Maurya is the author of Running Lean and the creator of the one-page business modelling tool Lean Canvas. His posts and advice have been featured in Inc., F...
Jan 26, 2021•10 min•Ep. 76
null This is The Founders' List - audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community. Alongside our latest NFX Essay "The Hidden World of Pricing: Uber, Trulia, Etsy, Superhuman & More with Madhavan Ramanujam", we decided to release supplemental pricing articles on The Founders' List. Sean Ellis is an entrepreneur, angel investor, and startup advisor. He is the CEO of GrowthHackers and was previously founder and CEO of Qualaroo, an automated ...
Jan 26, 2021•7 min•Ep. 77
null Madhavan Ramanujam is a legendary “pricing whisperer” among tech unicorns including Trulia, Etsy, Uber, Amazon, Evernote, and more. He is the author of 'Monetizing Innovation' and a partner at Simon-Kucher. Today, Madhavan and Pete (General Partner at NFX) are sharing the frameworks, tactics, and hidden truths Founders need to know about pricing - and how, when done correctly, it can dramatically lever-up growth. Madhavan and Pete discuss topics in the pricing world like how: - Pricing is a...
Jan 25, 2021•42 min•Ep. 73
null This is The Founders' List - audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community. Originally written under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin’s original white paper titled 'Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System' was released over 12 years ago. Considered the most seminal piece of work in the cryptocurrency movement, the Bitcoin White Paper outlines blockchain technology and the entire decentralized revolution. The content of thi...
Jan 21, 2021•14 min•Ep. 72
null This is The Founders’ List – audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community. In 1960, David Packard gave an informal speech to the managers at HP that wasn’t intended for the public to hear. The speech resurfaced during the merger talks between Hewlett-Packard and Compaq. Packard addressed the overarching question of 'why HP exists' and shares insights on how to manage effectively, financial responsibility, and much more for someone to a...
Jan 14, 2021•15 min•Ep. 71
null Jeff Lawson, software developer turned CEO of Twilio, creates a new playbook for unleashing the full potential of software developers in any organization, showing how to help management utilize this coveted and valuable workforce to enable growth, solve a wide range of business problems, and drive digital transformation. General Partner at NFX Pete Flint talks with Jeff about his new book, his Twilio Founder Journey, running a public company through a recession, decision frameworks, and muc...
Jan 12, 2021•48 min•Ep. 70
null Few people can see what Jed sees about the relationship between real estate and labor markets and the downstream effects of their recent untethering. And, ultimately, what this means for startup life after the pandemic. Now, and in the years to come, Founders will need to design their startup teams in all-new ways. Today is the beginning of building a new playbook for startup life. NFX General Partner Pete Flint talks with Jed to uncover this unbundling, covering key shifts like: - Unemploy...
Jan 11, 2021•36 min•Ep. 69
null This is The Founders' List - audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community. The following is a reenactment of an email conversation between Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom about Facebook's acquisition of Instagram between the dates of March 20th and April 9th of 2012. They discuss concerns, how their pathways cross, and how the potential acquisition will benefit both companies in the long-run. Mark Zuckerber...
Jan 08, 2021•16 min•Ep. 67
null Founded in January 2013, Lightricks is a company that develops video and image editing mobile apps, known particularly for its selfie-editing app, Facetune. Headquartered in Jerusalem, the firm has over 250 employees. As of 2019, its apps have been downloaded over 180 million times and have over 3 million paying subscribers. Zeev Farbman co-founded Lightricks along with Nir Pochter, Yaron Inger, Amit Goldstein and Itai Tsiddon. In July of 2019, Lightricks announced that it has raised $135 m...
Jan 04, 2021•1 hr•Ep. 68
null Erik Torenberg is an entrepreneur, investor, and most importantly a community builder. NFX General Partner James Currier connects with Erik on the intricacies of building online & offline communities, behavioral psychology of users, and useful tactics/frameworks for early-stage Founders to consider when building their company. Erik is originally from New Jersey and studied economics at the University of Michigan. investments His portfolio includes Rappi, Scale, Nurx, Lattice, Omni, Long...
Dec 21, 2020•42 min•Ep. 66
null Founders rarely get to hear the inside story of building a massive marketplace business from idea to IPO. Today we analyze the core startup decisions you need to make in the early days about your market, product, pricing and customers — and how those early decisions define your roadmap for the next 10 years or more. Today NFX General Partner Gigi Levy-Weiss sits down and has a conversation with Micha Kaufman, the Founder and CEO of Fiverr (FVRR). Fiverr’s stock price has soared since their ...
Dec 17, 2020•50 min•Ep. 65
null This is The Founders' List - audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community. From the outside, it's hard to understand what's going on at Tesla. Here are 10 quick examples of advice centered around the Model 3 production bottleneck pulled from real internal emails sent by Tesla CEO, Elon Musk. Topics include: - Always Start With The Good - Challenge, Demand, But Always Offer Help - Production only Moves as Fast as the Least Lucky - Don’t...
Dec 16, 2020•6 min•Ep. 64
null In this candid conversation with iconic tech thinker Kevin Kelly (founding Editor of Wired), we discuss inspirational and transformative advice for early-stage Founders reflecting on the work they’re doing, why they’re doing it, and how it all adds up in the long term. Kevin and NFX General Partner James Currier talk about: “You want to work on something that nobody has a name for.” You don’t just want to be the best -- you want to be the only. This applies to the companies you start, the p...
Dec 15, 2020•41 min•Ep. 63
null This is The Founders' List - audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community. "Becoming indistractable requires an understanding of why you lose focus and learning the skills to do as you say. This guide is for people who want to harness the power of focus, but don’t have a lot of time. The more we respond to external triggers, the more we train our brain in a neverending stimulus-response loop." This is the audio version of Nir Eyal's fo...
Dec 10, 2020•11 min•Ep. 62
null This is The Founders' List - audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community. 'Thoughts on Flash' is an open letter published by Steve Jobs, Co-Founder and then-CEO of Apple Inc. on April 29, 2010. The letter criticized Adobe Systems' Flash platform and outlined reasons why the technology would not be allowed on the company's iOS hardware products, specifically iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. Now it's available to listen to on The Founders'...
Dec 03, 2020•10 min•Ep. 61
null We all think we know how our users behave. It turns out, we don’t. Founders over-index on rational assumptions, but users most often behave irrationally. Behavioral economics, by contrast, is the practice of truly seeing your users' emotions, beliefs, and habits. This kind of vision is critically missing from product design at most startups. In this episode, NFX General Partner Gigi talks with Dan Ariely -- the world’s top expert in behavioral economics and a renowned professor at Duke -- a...
Nov 30, 2020•56 min•Ep. 60
null Can your company be a Billion-dollar business? When we look inside the early days of companies like Stripe, Airbnb, Coinbase, Instacart & Square, what are the patterns that may shed light on how great Founders beat incredible odds? In this episode of the NFX podcast, Elad Gil — one of the world's top angel investors in an astonishing number of Billion-dollar companies (Airbnb, Airtable, Anduril, Brex, Checkr, Coinbase, Flexport, Gitlab, Gusto, Instacart, Opendoor, PagerDuty, Pinterest, ...
Nov 23, 2020•36 min•Ep. 59
null This is The Founders' List - audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community. Longtime Googler Steve Yegge posted an insightful rant on his Google+ page about how Google is failing to make platforms for its products. He also shares some interesting little tidbits about his six-year stint at Amazon working for the 'Dread Pirate Bezos'. The rant was intended to be shared only with his Google coworkers, but was accidentally made public. Read...
Nov 20, 2020•23 min•Ep. 58
In order to drive growth, you need to be data-driven and relentlessly creative. The difficult part of implementing growth in your company is finding someone who is good at both. Growth expert and thought leader Sean Ellis (Dropbox, Eventbrite, GrowthHackers, LogMeIn) sits down with NFX General Partner James Currier to share his thoughts and insights around: - The current stage of growth hacking - The digital growth evolution - The balance of data and creativity - Understanding the physics of gro...
Nov 16, 2020•25 min•Ep. 57
null This is The Founders' List - audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community. "Design is all of the conversations between designers and PMs about what to build. Building for this entire process doesn’t take away the importance of designers—it gives them a seat at the table for the core decisions a company makes. Companies that are successful in the long term are the ones that can repeatedly find the next loop." This is the audio version o...
Nov 12, 2020•32 min•Ep. 56
null Status can be a volatile, powerful driver of engagement. Status and one of its underlying mechanisms, scarcity must be considered by product designers in every category, as early on as possible. But it can also be a double-edged sword, as managing a network and the status dynamics within it is constantly recirculating, always shifting. For this reason, status that is more entertainment-based than utility-based can over time become precarious, as well as too restrictive for continued user gr...
Nov 10, 2020•49 min•Ep. 55
null "What's happening in general on the internet is an evolution to visual storytelling. The image is more powerful than ever, but it's also much harder to be seen than ever due to saturation. What's happening is the exchange is in social capital - the exchange is in being seen." NFX partner James Currier sits down and chats with Mikael Cho (CEO & Co-founder) and Luke Chesser (Head of Product & Co-founder) about their Founder journey to creating Unsplash, solving the chicken and egg pro...
Nov 09, 2020•41 min•Ep. 54
