Abie Cohen
@abejcohen
Abie Cohen
- Effective fundraisers have mastered the art of risk framing, demonstrating the ability to clearly articulate the risks associated with each milestone. And then, reassure the investors on how they will meet each one of them. In return, investors have developed standardized expectations for each round of fundraising.
In that context, the onion theory ... See moreFund II
Risk framing for hardware investing
Onion theory
- The Impending VR Moment
The iPhone didn’t happen in a vacuum. Apple needed to learn to make low-power devices with the iPod; flash memory needed to become viable at an accessible price point; Samsung needed to make a good enough processor; 3G networking needed to be rolled out; the iTunes Music Store needed to provide the foundation for the App Stor... See morefrom Sora, Groq, and Virtual Reality (Stratechery Article 2-20-2024)
The impending VR Moment re iphone moment.
- So, as a builder, you must learn to gain confidence from doubt. And you must remember, nothing extraordinary is ever achieved through ordinary means.
- Social as a model works when people have about as much to offer as they want to receive along a given axis. But no trait is distributed uniformly; there are are outliers in the nice-to-look-at, nice-to-listen-to, nice-to-read, nice-to-get-stock-tips from axes, there's a population that can offer a respectable performance with these traits, and ther... See more
from Is "Social" an Enduring Category or Just a Phase?
On the death of social media
- As a founder, the goal then becomes to metaphorically peel each layer of the onion — Each fundraising milestone turning into a set of risks being evaluated and sidelined. The earliest investors become the partners to help figure out what to focus on. Good pre-seed angels and investors are often described as “having taste” for good startups — In tru... See more
Fund II
Onion theory extrapolated out to milestone driven approach towards pre-seed investing
- Scrolling through Twitter led to more scrolling and then a feeling of emptiness and guilt for wasting time when I finally managed to leave the app — scrolling through Sublime more often than not led me to putting away my phone, getting a breath of fresh air, and getting to work on that passion project I’d put aside years ago.
Better for you internet
- What would Instagram look like if it started with “AI filters”? What if we could interact with AI chatbots in our messengers? We are already beginning to see this happen. This type of evolution is inevitable, and the obvious incrementalism will quickly make its way into incumbent applications. It is not enough to reinvent the consumer social landsc... See more
from Weird | Union Square Ventures by Jared Hecht
The obvious incrementalism will quickly make its way into incumbent applications. It is not enough to reinvent the consumer social landscape…
- Last week, Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley discussed how Tech has grown from 5% to 15% of global GDP over the last 15 years, largely owing to faster growth rates.
As software companies get fitter and stack new S-curves of growth, later stage companies become highly effective capital allocators - which is why we’ve seen Tech outstrip the rest of the ec... See morefrom Software Production Functions and Recombining Ideas
Fund II
- “The greatest trick the devil ever played was making you believe that the pessimists are the good guys.” – Packy McCormick