Tremendous

An angel investor's take on life and business

  • Chaos Monkeys

    Antonio Garcia Martinez sold his startup for $10 million to Twitter just a year after founding. Then at Facebook, he was part of the rise of the most successful startup in the last 20 years.

    This week, I dug into Chaos Monkeys, his inside story of how startupland really works.

    The Biggest Problems Are People Problems

    The closeness of AdGrok was incredible. Martinez even began to recognize the odors of his co-founders, cooped up as they were in a tiny apartment.

    That familiarity can breed contempt. Martinez dealt with one co-founder becoming increasingly disengaged and the other testy.

    It turns out the human element is the hardest part:

    “People go into startups thinking that the technical problems are the challenges. In practice, the technical stuff is easy, unless you’re incompetent or really at the hairy edge of human knowledge — for example, putting a man on Mars. No, every real problem in startups is a people problem, and as such they’re the hardest to solve, as they often don’t have a real solution, much less a ready software fix. Startups are experiments in group psychology. As CEO, you’re both the therapist leader, and the patient most in need of therapy.”

    A wonderful company I invested in some time ago is succumbing to people problems now. They had everything in their favor: a great product, incredible growth, and backing from a top VC.

    But the co-founders couldn’t get along, and one was pushed out. Today, the company is languishing and may not survive.

    What a shame! If you can get the human part right, you’re well on your way to success.

    Facebook vs. Google

    In 2011, Google launched Google Plus to kneecap Facebook and take social media for themselves. For me, this was the most striking story in Chaos Monkeys.

    On a Sunday morning shortly after Google Plus launched, Martinez decided to see what was going on at Google HQ. He drove the short distance from Facebook to the Googleplex in nearby Mountain View.

    Pulling into the parking lot, he noticed something strange:

    “It was empty, completely empty.
    Interesting.
    I got back on the 101 North and drove to Facebook.
    At the California Avenue building, I had to hunt for a parking spot. The lot was full.
    It was clear which company was fighting to the death.”

    Beating the Big Guys

    Facebook was successful in 2011, but Google was far larger. Nonetheless, Facebook prevailed. Google Plus never became popular and folded quietly a few years later.

    This is how smaller companies can beat the giants.

    For Google, Google Plus was but one in a wide variety of products. For Facebook, social media was all they had.

    Facebook had the will to fight to the death. Google didn’t.

    If you’re running a startup and you are worried about a big competitor, keep in mind that you have something they don’t: single-minded purpose. You care deeply, and it’s this or nothing.

    Your competition is a Product Manager in a giant organization with numerous priorities. You can beat them, if you try.

    Wrap-Up

    In the end, Martinez was fired from Facebook when the company shelved the product he was working on. He never saw much of the millions he hoped for. But his book was a hit, reaching the best seller list.

    Chaos Monkeys paints a vivid picture of life inside a startup. For Martinez, it was intense, emotional, and by turns rewarding and dispiriting.

    As someone who invests in startups but never started one, I learned a lot from Chaos Monkeys about the stress founders are under. That will help me relate to them better in the future.

    Have you read Chaos Monkeys? Do you plan to?

    Leave a comment and let us know!

    If you enjoyed this post, subscribe for more like this!

    More on business:

    Poor Charlie’s Almanack

    Meet My Latest Investment: Zest

    Talking Follow-On Strategy with JCal

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Fundrise

    This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

    More on Fundrise in this post.

    If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

    Misfits Market

    I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

    I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

    Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $15 on your first order. 

  • Poor Charlie’s Almanack

    At age 29, Charlie Munger’s marriage was falling apart and his son was dying of leukemia. “A friend remembers that Charlie would visit his dying son in the hospital and then walk the streets of Pasadena crying.”

    I cannot imagine anything worse. And yet, Munger came back from it.

    He went on to have a total of 7 children and lived to age 99. Along the way, he accumulated a net worth of over $2 billion doing what he loved — investing.

    That’s a life well lived, as far as I’m concerned. So I dug into his book, Poor Charlie’s Almanack, with gusto.

    Resilience

    One of the biggest lessons I learned from Charlie is resilience.

    Few people have encountered harder circumstances. His son Teddy died young. Later, Charlie suffered complications from cataract surgery so severe he had to have his left eye removed.

    Charlie also had reversals in business. The investing partnership he ran prior to Berkshire took two losses of over 30% in the 70’s, despite having an excellent overall record.

    Every time, Charlie kept going. In one of the talks in the Almanack, he gives advice on how to be miserable:

    “My third prescription to you for misery is to go down and stay down when you get your first, second, or third severe reverse in the battle of life.”

    We’re all going to suffer setbacks and tough things in our lives. But the next time I run across one, I’ll be thinking of Charlie.

    A Multidisciplinary Approach

    One of the most fascinating parts of the book for me was Charlie’s portrait of his partner, Warren Buffett:

    “If you watched him with a time clock, you’d find that about half of his waking time is spent reading. Then a big chunk of the rest of his time is spent talking one-on-one, either on the telephone or personally, with highly gifted people whom he trusts and who trust him. Viewed up close, Warren looks quite academic as he achieves worldly success.”

    So what exactly is Warren reading? If he’s anything like Charlie, it just might be a history book.

    Charlie advocates a multidisciplinary approach to business. He focuses on absorbing the key principles from a huge variety of disciplines: psychology, biology, history and more.

    Most investors are watching CNBC or reading TechCrunch. They’re not reading books on psychology or physics.

    Most investors aren’t performing that well either. To beat everyone else, you need a different approach.

    I just ordered Clinical Psychology: A Very Short Introduction. After that, I’m planning to read similar books on a variety of fields.

    Then, like Munger, I want to apply the key insights of those disciplines to business.

    Understanding Our Minds

    Munger wraps up this wonderful book by giving us a list of common reasons why we behave irrationally.

    For example, what Munger calls the “social proof tendency” gets us doing whatever everyone else is doing. This effect is disastrous in financial markets — think about all those $100 million crypto seed rounds in 2021.

    The deprival-superreaction tendency is one I’m especially prone to. We humans view a $10,000 loss as an awful thing, but experience way less pleasure from a $10,000 gain.

    If we can recognize these biases in ourselves and others, we’ll be better at whatever we do.

    Wrap-Up

    Above all, Charlie attributes his success to his rationality. I would add another key trait: resilience.

    Faced with Charlie’s situation as a young man, many people would’ve collapsed into alcoholism or some other dysfunction.

    Charlie did not. He kept going, as hard as that must’ve been.

    As Charlie built Berkshire from the ground up, he tried to make decisions as rationally as possible. For us flawed humans, that’s easier said than done.

    I want to be like Charlie: rational and resilient. If I master that, I can do whatever I want.

    Have you read Charlie’s book? Do you plan to? Leave a comment and let us know!

    If you enjoyed this post, subscribe for more like this!

    More on business:

    How Charlie Munger Taught Warren Buffett About the Power Law

    Meet My Latest Investment: Zest

    Talking Follow-On Strategy with JCal

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Fundrise

    This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

    More on Fundrise in this post.

    If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

    Misfits Market

    I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

    I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

    Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $15 on your first order. 

  • Why I Never Use AI on This Blog

    I recently spoke with a reader of this blog. He noticed something strange about a lot of the other articles in his inbox.

    “Most of the newsletters I get seem to be written by AI,” he explained.

    He’s probably right! But I never, ever use AI to write this blog. Here’s why…

    Respecting Your Time

    You don’t need me to type prompts into ChatGPT for you. And if a blog is written by AI, that’s what they’re doing.

    My goal is to give you an inside view of technology and business from someone who’s in the market every day.

    An AI cannot do that. That requires human experience.

    Writing Helps Me Figure Out What I Think

    As I write, I work out a perspective. And my viewpoint has to be clear, so it makes sense when you read it!

    Here’s an example: in February, I wrote about how consumer subscriptions can make great investments.

    I’ve tended to focus on SaaS and marketplaces in the past. But seeing Duolingo grow into a $10 billion monster, I had to admit consumer subscriptions could produce giant outcomes.

    The research and thinking I did for that post really informed my recent investment in Zest, which is basically Duolingo for cooking. When I read that deal memo, I knew that consumer subscriptions could become big winners.

    Why I Started This Blog in the First Place

    I started this blog in November 2020. It looked like we were going into a second COVID lockdown here in North Jersey. I needed a new, lockdown proof hobby.

    As it happened, we never did have that 2nd lockdown. But the habit of writing stuck — this is the 929th post!

    If I have AI do the writing for me, there goes my hobby!

    As AI becomes increasingly powerful, we must be careful not to let it replace the things we enjoy.

    Perhaps you enjoy playing the guitar. Some day, AI may make better songs than you can.

    But that’s okay! There’s joy in the handmade and imperfect.

    Where AI Fits In

    While I never use AI to do the writing for me, AI can be very helpful in research.

    When I wrote about Astribot recently, I was struck by how different companies are converging on the same design. It reminded me of how Leibniz and Newton both invented calculus independently around the same time.

    I wanted to refresh my memory on the Newton/Leibniz story so I could relate the details accurately. So, I had Perplexity get me up to speed.

    Using AI as a research assistant is helpful and makes the blog better. It’s like Google on steroids.

    Wrap-Up

    AI is an incredible new technology. But too often, we’re letting it drain the authenticity and humanity out of our interactions with others.

    I get laudatory comments on my LinkedIn posts that were clearly written by a computer. Your inbox is probably flooded with machine written content.

    That’s something I’m never going to do here. Dumping machine-written writing on you doesn’t serve your purposes, nor does it serve mine.

    Looking forward to telling you about more interesting happenings in tech and business!

    What do you think of AI writing? Leave a comment and let us know!

    If you enjoyed this post, subscribe for more like this!

    More on tech:

    Meet My Latest Investment: Zest

    How to Get Started Angel Investing

    Talking Follow-On Strategy with JCal

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Fundrise

    This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

    More on Fundrise in this post.

    If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

    Misfits Market

    I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

    I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

    Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $15 on your first order. 

  • Meet My Latest Investment: Zest

    When I first moved to New Jersey in 2014, I weighed 40 pounds more than I do today. I also had a lot less money than I do now. One of the key ways I got from there to here was learning how to cook.

    Gradually, I picked up the basics from the blog Budget Bytes, among others. I made a lot of things, some good, some barely edible.

    Bit by bit, I learned how to cook. But what if I could’ve used an app that would guide me every step of the way, teaching important concepts even as I make yummy food?

    That didn’t exist back then. But it does now.

    My latest investment, Zest, is basically Duolingo for cooking. It teaches you the basics of chopping, seasoning and cooking in a fun way — your teacher is a giant leek!

    Loma the Leek makes me smile, but the recipes are serious. They have a former chef from Alinea developing them. If you don’t know it, Alinea has been called the best restaurant in the world.

    What’s great about Zest is that the recipes are doable. A top chef developed them, but they’re written with an eye toward the average person.

    Going out to eat for every meal costs a fortune. What’s more, restaurants have no incentive to keep you healthy — only to keep you coming back.

    Cooking for yourself puts money in your pocket and keeps you slim. And Zest is a great way to learn how.

    Check out Zest and make something delicious!

    If you enjoyed this post, subscribe for more like this!
    Have a great weekend, everybody!


    More on tech:

    Why I Passed on a High Growth Startup

    How to Get Started Angel Investing

    Talking Follow-On Strategy with JCal

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Fundrise

    This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

    More on Fundrise in this post.

    If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

    Misfits Market

    I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

    I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

    Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $15 on your first order. 

  • Why I Passed on a High Growth Startup

    iWashie was raising $600,000 at a very attractive valuation. It was growing like crazy. But I passed.

    This company is a composite and I changed the name and some identifying details. But it illustrates a key point: the size of the market matters.

    An Amazing Startup

    iWashie is a SaaS product for car washes. It gives them a great website, accounting tools, and an online store where you can book washes and detailing.

    The car washes who were using iWashie loved it.

    The fast website led to a lot more customers. Churn was practically zero.

    When I met with the founders, they seemed very smart and dedicated.

    The Numbers

    iWashie was growing like crazy.

    For the last 6 months, it had grown over 35% month over month, an outstanding record. Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) was closing in on $500,000.

    iWashie was also raising at a very reasonable valuation: just $5 million. This may be because the founders were in the middle of the country, not the big markets of SF or NYC.

    But There’s One Problem

    At this point, you’re probably thinking “Francis, why the heck did you not invest in this?”

    Well, for all the awesome things about iWashie, there was one big problem: the market.

    There are only about 17,000 car washes in America. iWashie was charging them $500/month for its product.

    If they grabbed every single car wash in America as a customer, they’d still only make about $100 million a year in revenue.

    For a company to become a unicorn, they need to get to at least $100 million a year in revenue. To IPO, it can be even more.

    Although they have a great product, they’ll never get every car wash as a customer. And being so customized, the product didn’t easily slot into other businesses outside car washes.

    Wrap-Up

    As much as I loved these founders, I found myself wishing they were in a different business.

    Angel investors have to go after giant opportunities. It’s the only way we’ll get those billion dollar outcomes that pay for all the failed startups!

    So, as much as I loved the iWashie guys, I had to pass. This can be a great business, but it’s not a great venture capital investment.

    Would you have invested in iWashie? Why or why not?

    Leave a comment and let us know!

    If you enjoyed this post, subscribe for more like this!

    More on tech:

    How to Get Started Angel Investing

    Talking Follow-On Strategy with JCal

    They Passed on Airbnb. Here’s Why.

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Fundrise

    This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

    More on Fundrise in this post.

    If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

    Misfits Market

    I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

    I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

    Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $15 on your first order. 

  • How to Get Started Angel Investing

    I recently met a great young lady named Jill*. She works at a major tech company and wanted to get into angel investing. But she didn’t know where to start.

    Three years ago, I was where Jill is. Today, I have 28 investments and counting.

    Here’s the best way to get started:

    1) Read the book Angel by Jason Calacanis. It’s less than 300 pages and it’s not boring.

    Jason tells you step by step exactly how to invest in tech startups. He explains what to look for, how to meet great founders, and how venture deals work.

    This book was what got me into angel investing. I’ve read a lot of other books about venture since, but Jason’s is still the best.

    And if you don’t know Jason, here’s why you should listen to him: he was an early investor in Uber, Robinhood, Calm, Superhuman, and more.

    2) Join some syndicates. Syndicates are groups of angel investors who invest in deals together.

    The syndicate lead picks a startup he likes and sends it to the syndicate. Each member decides on his own if he wants to invest.

    You never have to invest in anything. On every deal, you have a choice.

    Jason’s syndicate is a great place to start. It’s the first one I joined.

    Although I’ve joined almost 100 more since then, Jason’s is still the best.

    I also like Mana Ventures and Tom Williams’ syndicate.

    I suggest you do your first 10 deals with a syndicate. They can point you to some great startups you probably won’t meet on your own, at least at first.

    3) Keep your bets small.

    For at least the first 10, I suggest investing whatever the minimum is. With a syndicate, that could be $1-5k.

    You need to make around 30-50 investments to have a chance at hitting a unicorn. Make sure you have enough cash to do that.

    What you don’t want to do is spend your entire angel investing bankroll on a few companies. You won’t have enough shots on goal to hit something big.

    Even 3 years in, I usually invest $5k as my first bet. This way, I can make lots of bets.

    Then, I double down on the best ones. I might invest $25k in those.

    4) Join OpenVC and Mercury Raise. These are great ways to meet strong founders, and they’re free.

    Even if you’re still on your 10 syndicate investments, you can steer the best founders you meet to the syndicate leads. They’ll be grateful for the introduction!

    And when you’re ready to do deals directly, these platforms can give you solid deal flow.

    My first investment this year, a great company called Mobly, came from OpenVC. And I just met with another Mercury Raise founder this morning!

    Wrap-Up

    We start with getting some essential knowledge from Jason’s book. Then, we begin to do small deals already vetted by top investors.

    In time, we’ll be ready to do deals directly.

    This is a crawl, walk, run plan. If you follow it and make 30, 50, or even 100 investments as I plan to, you have a great shot at success!

    What questions do you have about angel investing? Leave a comment and let us know!

    If you enjoyed this post, subscribe for more like this!

    More on tech:

    Talking Follow-On Strategy with JCal

    They Passed on Airbnb. Here’s Why.

    The Coinbase Deck

    *Name has been changed to protect privacy

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Fundrise

    This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

    More on Fundrise in this post.

    If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

    Misfits Market

    I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

    I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

    Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $15 on your first order. 

  • They Passed on Airbnb. Here’s Why.

    In 2008, Brian Chesky was trying to raise $150,000. For this sum, you could’ve owned 10% of Airbnb. His friend Michael Seibel introduced him to 7 top investors, but Brian didn’t get a single check.

    Today, that 10% stake would be worth about $5 billion.*

    Let’s look at the reasons these investors passed and figure out where they went wrong. You can read the entirety of the rejections here, but I’ll just quote some key parts.

    #1 “Not in our area of focus.” Having too narrow a focus can be a real problem.

    Every year, there are thousands of new startups created. Only a few will ever matter.

    If you’re looking in a narrow area, it’s very hard to find an outlier.

    For example, I worked in medical software for many years. What if today, I only invested in healthcare tech companies?

    How many important ones are created every year…is there even one? What are the odds I meet them and decide to invest?

    My aperture would be just too narrow. I need the flexibility to invest in the next Brian Chesky if I meet him.

    #2: “Potential market opportunity did not seem large enough.”

    Airbnb created a new market. That’s what this investor missed.

    The market for staying in someone’s house was pretty close to 0 when Brian was pitching in 2008.

    That was the point of Airbnb! He was going to take those empty rooms and put guests in them.

    Maybe staying in someone’s house was a small market, but hotels certainly weren’t. If this investor had looked at an adjacent market, they could’ve seen how big this opportunity really was.

    #3: “Not in one of our prime 5 target markets.” Again, having too narrow an aperture is a real problem. That’s why I consider anything software to be fair game.

    I’ve tilted more toward SaaS because that’s where my background is. But I also have some great marketplaces, consumer subscriptions, and more.

    #4 “I was unavailable to get on a call.” Michael introduced Brian to prominent people in Silicon Valley. Many probably had a team of people working with them.

    Delegate the call to someone else if you’re too busy!

    #5 “We’ve not been able to get excited about travel-related businesses.”

    I don’t even know what this means. Do you want to make great investments or not?

    I can only imagine being the founder getting messages like this one. Weird, non-specific, and totally unhelpful.

    When I pass on a company, I like to give the founder a reason that makes some sense. “I’d like to see higher growth” or “I’d like to see you find a CTO.”

    At least then, the founder knows where she stands.

    The Ghosts

    Remember, Michael introduced Brian to 7 people. We’ve only covered five.

    The other two never even replied!

    Of all the mistakes investors made here, this one is the most egregious. How do you not reply to a warm intro?

    I can’t always reply to every cold message. But if someone I know introduces me to a founder, I’m going to at least respond to the email!

    Some investors just aren’t working hard enough. I don’t do 90 hour weeks or anything crazy like that, but I at least manage to reply to warm intros.

    There’s no excuse for this sort of stuff. Try harder!

    Wrap-Up

    In the end, hindsight is 20/20. We cannot meet with every founder, and we can only invest in a small group.

    Some day, I’ll be looking at an e-mail in my inbox from the founder of a now-unicorn. And I’ll be crying in my cinnamon apple herbal tea, “I never even met them!”

    That’s the way the business is. You’ll have many mistakes, but hopefully you’ll make them up with one or two big successes.

    What do you think of Brian’s story? Leave a comment and let us know!

    If you enjoyed this post, subscribe for more like this!

    More on tech:

    The Airbnb Deck

    Talking Follow-On Strategy with JCal

    Astribot: Your Future Butler

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Fundrise

    This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

    More on Fundrise in this post.

    If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

    Misfits Market

    I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

    I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

    Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $15 on your first order. 

    *10% of the company would be worth about $10 billion, but an early investor would have been diluted by future fundraising. That dilution is usually around 50%, hence the $5 billion figure.

  • Astribot: Your Future Butler

    He pulls a tablecloth from beneath a pyramid of wine glasses. They scarcely move an inch.

    This is Astribot, a new robot from Chinese startup Stardust Intelligence. In an incredible new demo, Astribot cooks, decants wine, and even irons a shirt.

    And should you need a little Chinese calligraphy done, Astribot can do that too!

    Stardust Intelligence claims that the video was shot at 1x speed and the robot is not teleoperated (another term for remote control).

    Like bots from Tesla, Figure and others, it’s not yet publicly available. So, we can’t try it out for ourselves and verify that it works.

    But for a first demo, Astribot is incredibly impressive.

    Stardust Intelligence plans to release the robot later this year. Meeting this goal would be an incredible feat.

    If Astribot fails, we know what happens: things stay as they are. But what if it works?

    On the latest All In Podcast, angel investor Jason Calacanis sketches an intriguing robot future.

    What if a manufacturer could get the bill of materials for such a robot down to about $10,000? At that price, the company could rent them out for about $300 a month.

    Who’s not going to do that?

    Ten years from now, I might be renting an Astribot. I pay $300, and it does all my housework for me.

    When I’m asleep, I could have my Astribot work in a factory. The wages it earns could pay for the rental and then some.

    Free housework, and a profit to boot!

    Even if Astribot never makes it to market, there are countless competitors. Tesla, Boston Dynamics, Figure and others are all working on androids.

    Are they all going to fail? I don’t think so.

    This moment in robotics reminds me of the invention of calculus. Both Leibniz and Newton invented these new techniques independently around the same time, building on prior discoveries.

    Today, numerous companies are all converging on a humanoid robot. These robots are powered by AI, sucking in videos of humans doing things and replicating these actions.

    People have imagined robot servants for generations. Today, we may be close to making those dreams real.

    Would you get an Astribot? Leave a comment and let us know!

    If you enjoyed this post, subscribe for more like this!

    More on tech:

    The Most Amazing Video I’ve Ever Seen

    Can Meta AI Beat GPT4? I Tested Them to Find Out.

    Talking Follow-On Strategy with JCal

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Fundrise

    This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

    More on Fundrise in this post.

    If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

    Misfits Market

    I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

  • Can Meta AI Beat GPT4? I Tested Them to Find Out.

    Facebook (yes, I’m still calling it that) just released a ChatGPT competitor: Meta.ai. This morning, I put the two head to head on 3 challenges to see which bot is better.

    Let the games begin!

    Challenge #1: Teach Me About SEO

    I was chatting with the founder of an interesting new SEO startup. That made me wonder, what’s new in the field of SEO lately?

    Let’s ask Meta AI…

    Meta pulled some interesting information. But I found a lot of unfamiliar acronyms, like EEAT and SERP.

    I would’ve preferred a response in plainer English.

    Also, Meta only used one source, which is not ideal. I want to see it look at multiple sources and collate the info.

    All in all, this wasn’t much better than a traditional Google search.

    Let’s try GPT-4…

    GPT-4 did a way better job. It explained the terms it’s using and looked at multiple sources.

    This is a far more useful response.

    Challenge #2: My Veggies

    “And now for something…completely different” as Monty Python used to say.

    I ordered a bunch of veggies this morning. What should I eat first?

    Here’s what Meta AI said…

    Meta’s response here was great! It not only told me how long each would last, it told me the best way to store them.

    It only drew on one source here, but I got the info I needed. Great work!

    Now for GPT-4…

    GPT-4 crushed it. It told me how long each veggie would last and how to store it. But it also gave me another great reminder.

    At the end. GPT-4 reminds me to not just follow a time guideline. I should also look for wilting, discoloration, or any odors.

    This is a very helpful reminder. So all in all, GPT-4 won this challenge too.

    Challenge #3: Gettin’ Chilly With It

    As I write this, I’m putting off going in the cold plunge. It’s hard!

    So to motivate me, I thought I’d ask my new AI friends about the benefits of cold plunges. A reminder of how good they are for my health might get me off my butt and into the tub!

    Don’t fail me now, Meta:

    Meta cited some awesome benefits, including some I forgot about! I just did strength training yesterday, and I’m a little sore. Perhaps the cold waters can help!

    However, it didn’t cite any sources. These benefits look familiar and accurate, but it’s hard to know for sure without citations.

    Let’s try GPT-4…

    GPT-4 gave us an excellent response with killer citations. It even cited info from the Cleveland Clinic, one of the world’s finest hospitals.

    Verdict

    GPT-4 won every time. Meta AI works pretty well and is quite user friendly, but the quality of output is not as good as OpenAI.

    Nonetheless, Meta AI is a pretty darn good model. And because it’s based on Llama, it’s open source.

    Llama 3 may not be perfect. But it’s more than good enough for most uses, whether you’re asking a question or integrating AI into your product.

    The fact that Llama is open source could propel it past GPT-4 in time. After all, would you want to base your entire business on a closed source technology over which you have no control?

    Now, time for that cold plunge…

    What do you think of Meta AI? Leave a comment and let us know!

    Have a wonderful weekend everyone, and thanks for reading!

    If you enjoyed this post, subscribe for more like this!

    More on tech:

    Talking Follow-On Strategy with JCal

    Reserves Lead to Eye-Popping Returns, New Data Shows

    The Founder Crunchbase Hack

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Fundrise

    This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

    More on Fundrise in this post.

    If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

    Misfits Market

    I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

    I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

    Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $15 on your first order. 

  • Talking Follow-On Strategy with JCal

    How do you know if one of your investments is a winner? And when you find one, what’s the best way to double down?

    I dug into some real venture capital inside baseball with top angel Jason Calacanis on the latest This Week in Startups.

    One of the best ways to increase your returns in venture is by using reserves. Reserves let you double down on your best companies, goosing your returns.

    JCal invests in a ton of startups, often beginning at pre-seed.

    He’s planning about 200 for his current fund. Of those 200, he’ll double down on somewhere between 10 and 30 (5 to 15%).

    So which ones does he pick?

    That’s where the “likely winner” vs. “definitive winner” framework comes in. This framework helps identify the best companies coming out of the seed stage.

    Likely vs. Definitive Winners

    1) Definitive winner. Jason had 4 unicorns in his first fund: Robinhood, Calm, Density and Superhuman.

    When it came time for them to raise money again after Seed, it happened the same way for all 4:

    • Series A Priced Round.
    • Known VC firm leading. This firm will usually buy 10% or more of the company in the round.
    • Known VC joining the board. Since VC’s can only take a few board seats each, a top VC deciding to give this company one of his precious board slots means a lot.

    Jason likes to go super pro rata on his definitive winners. That might mean a $1 million investment when the initial investment was $100k or $250k.

    2) Likely winners. These companies aren’t quite as strong as the definitive winners, but they’re still doing great.

    When these companies do their next round after seed, here’s what it tends to look like:

    • SAFE, founder generates terms.
    • No lead.
    • No board.
    • Passing the hat.
    • New investor involved.

    These are still great companies, and Jason likes to re-invest in them. But for these, he’ll do his pro rata or a little less, in most cases.

    The Rest

    So, what about everybody else?

    The weaker companies tend to raise bridge rounds. These are usually SAFEs and they don’t include any new investors. Some may do equity crowdfunding as another avenue to raise capital.

    Jason doesn’t re-invest in these companies.

    What Not to Focus On

    I thought that growth would distinguish the definitive and likely winners. But Jason explained that growth is not a reliable indicator:

    ‘“…let’s put aside growth because in the likely and the definitive winners, there’s always some amount of growth. It could be 2x. It could be 5x.”

    Getting hung up on exact growth rates won’t help us find the best companies at this stage. Round dynamics are a better clue to who the winners are.

    How I’m Applying Jason’s Lessons

    I don’t do as many investments as Jason.

    I don’t have the staff or the capital to pull that off. I also tend to invest a bit later: typically seed.

    So, I’ll probably re-invest in a slightly higher percentage of my companies than he does. For me, it might be 10-25%.

    After all, my investments are already a bit more proven out than most of his. On the other hand, my upside is not as high as JCal’s.

    But I do keep 50% reserves, just like he does. And when it comes time to dispense them, I’ll be following the likely vs. definitive winner framework to the letter.

    Wrap-Up

    Our business changes every day. But year after year, the best companies tend to look the same. They raise a Series A from a good VC firm and one of the partners joins the board.

    When one of my companies pulls off that difficult feat, I’ll be thinking of Jason’s advice:

    “You gotta back up the truck.”

    JCal

    What do you think makes a winning startup? Leave a comment and let us know!

    If you enjoyed this post, subscribe for more like this!

    More on tech:

    I Was On This Week In Startups!

    Reserves Lead to Eye-Popping Returns, New Data Shows

    The Founder Crunchbase Hack

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Fundrise

    This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

    More on Fundrise in this post.

    If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

    Misfits Market

    I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

    I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

    Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $15 on your first order.