I mentioned in a previous post that portfolio support is an underrated part of VC. It's easy to say that you support your portfolio companies without actually doing anything. But for firms (and individual investors) that want to get in the trenches with their companies, effective support can generate sustained long-term value. Start wi...

Finding a good personal CRM always seems to be a perpetual problem. I've tried my fair share - AirTable, Streak, HubSpot, Affinity, and a simple notebook. They all work great in the beginning, until they become too much work to maintain. A few weeks ago, I started using Evernote to keep track of knowledge related to work. It's one of t...

One way VC firms measure performance is based on a metric called internal rate of return. IRR measures the financial returns of the assets in the fund. The key to understanding IRR is to know whether it's referring to net or gross IRR. Gross IRR is the simpler of the two. It's the deal IRR. In other words, what the return on the invest...

As an associate at a small VC firm, it's easy to lose track of what really matters: deals. That's why I started following the 20% rule. Each week, no matter what else is happening, I target 20% of my time on sourcing and investigating potential deals. The point of venture capital, after all, is to make money by investing in great compa...

Lately I've been thinking about how we share sensitive information online. Most of the time it's through email, which offers limited security, but not enough to feel comfortable sharing personal information that someone can piece together to exploit. And then there's tax season, where every year it seems like there's never a reliable, ...