Joey DeBruin

The downside of lead generation businesses is that they can be a race to the bottom if they're in a crowded and competitive market. The barriers to entry are essentially aggregating supply (i.e. buyers of leads or businesses willing to pay for new customers) so there is little in the way of defensibility. The other downside is that they are very tr... See more

When I was younger, I was never this lucky. It is partly because I was less skilled. But it is also partly because I would interrupt the nonconscious processing back then. Unintentionally, I would tell my brain to focus on something else—a conflict in a TV series I was watching, for instance. I would watch an episode before bed, and the cliffhanger... See more

One of our theories is to seek out opportunities where there’s a major change. Major dislocation in the way things are. Wherever there’s turmoil, there's indecision. And wherever there’s indecision, there’s opportunity. So we look for the confusion when the big companies are confused. When the other venture groups are confused. That’s the time to s... See more

Knowledge grows like species evolve. Ideas are combined to form new knowledge in a process we can call  bisociation , such that new knowledge is really just a combination of existing ideas.

Vertical integration is typically the dominant strategy when industries are in their early stages or undergoing significant transformation, when market structures are unclear, supply chains are underdeveloped, and new technologies are emerging. Companies that can control more of the value chain can introduce new products that the market needs faste... See more

My point in sharing all of this is that sometimes I feel like we get too caught up in the words, and forget to disregard them. Especially (in the context of this essay) as builders of new technology products.“How will I describe this to an investor, or at a dinner party with friends?”"What’s the one-liner that describes why this will be better?”“Wh... See more

The future is self-employed New businesses formed in the US 🚀 2019: 3.5 million 2020: 4.4 million 2021: 5.4 million 2022: 5.1 million Only about 1/3rd of the applications filed in 2021 are for businesses deemed likely to hire employees Majority are self employed Source:… Show more

I’m personally much more interested in machine intelligence as human augmentation rather than the oft-hyped AI assistant as a separate embodiment.