Over the past few months, we have had the privilege to invest in 3 fantastic companies, Do Not Pay, Tandem and Squad.
I want to share just a little bit about why we invested in those companies.
DoNotPay:
Imagine being part of the gig economy without actually having to work, now think what the potential user base of that would be. Well, that is DoNotPay’s market opportunity. DoNotPay has the perfect ingredients that all the VC twitter preaches about day in, day out. It solves a pain point, a deep, deep one (legacy companies trying to scam you for money), it is X1000000 times than current solution (you going on the phone and shouting at a startup rep to only transfer you to another agent 20 minutes in and trying to explain the situation all over again) and of course a huge market opportunity. I did not get the chance to meet Joshua first hand as the round had an explosive 7.3 seconds to commit after receiving the deck but our analyst and intern friends @ Greylock vouch for him 107.3%
Squad:
And here I thought social was dead. But it can’t be because inherently all social platforms have reverse network effects. What is reverse network effects you ask, it is a term I came up with (because any VC worth his salt needs to contribute to the VC neology). Reverse network effects are the act of a specific subset of your users misusing and/abandoning your platform when the mean age of your audience change by more than +-10 years. In simpler terms, when your grandma and grandpa start joining the very same social network as you. Reverse network effects can be seen clearly in the Finsta Phenomena and are the main reason why Snapchat is still a thing (they deliberately engineered their way to prevent it from happening). Squad is capitalizing on that phenomena and building a refuge to those Gen Zs affected. Can Instagram stories allow you to swipe on Tinder with your Squad? Or read together with all those 6th-grade secret crush DMs? …..I didn’t think so either.
Your move Zuck
Tandem
Tandem is virtual for remote workers, and if Mayor Calacanis doesn’t assume office soon, we can all firmly acknowledge that the SF housing crisis is not going anywhere. And as all my buddies have said over and over on every single podcast that exists, you can’t replicate the valley, either the network effects get stronger, or everyone will be remote…..there is no next tech hub. We’re betting everyone will go remote, just like our friends @ weekend fund, we trust their instinct when it comes to that kind of stuff.