Tom White

International opportunities remain vast for those brave few willing to expand beyond local borders and limited markets. Put simply, it’s what the “Smart Money” is doing. Data shows that larger market participants such as QED have shifted their focus more on markets outside the US in recent years.Given this international opportunity, deal flow and... See more

I mention the above because via writing online (how else?!) I met writer, podcaster, and cryptophile extraordinaire Jason Levin who kindly invited me to discuss the interesting times in which we find ourselves.Amongst other things, we explore:Friendship before, during, and after collegeThe origins of White NoiseForthcoming White Noise pieces"Ode to... See more

Due to the seemingly inevitable march of globalization, our world is more interconnected today than it ever was before. Ironically, despite this growing overlap, inter-regional correlation rarely follows. That is, startup and venture capital conditions in one market seldom (if ever) correlate directly to the conditions in another. A wide variety of... See more

Like most things, though simple, it is not easy. After all, the map is seldom the territory.To hammer this home, below are two things Venture Capital is decidedly not:If you are funding a company to “pour gas on the fire” and replicate/scale already-validated results, that is not venture capital. If you are funding a company to “run the same,... See more

A great deal has been written about what constitutes Venture Capital and what does not (including by this very author) in these seventy years. Though many different things to many different people, Justice Potter Stewart’s famous dictum in Jacobellis v. Ohio works for our purposes:I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I... See more

History shows some of the best opportunities come in bad times, not good ones.Though we’re not in the business of prediction here at Stonks, in the words of Lord Byron: “The best prophet of the future is the past.”Put simply, if public/crypto market turmoil persists, early-stage valuations may well drop ~30% or lower (i.e.below levels seen merely a... See more

Every company has to become a media company -- because every company needs to master the technologies of publishing to their customers, staff, neighbors, and to raise their media profile against their competitors.I realized that every company is now a media company. It doesn't matter if it makes network gear or diapers, every company needs to... See more