Investing

Since leaving Slack I've begun to do some seed investing in early stage startups. This is obviously a privilege of having had an exit in a successful company, and an opportunity to pay it forward to the next set of founders building something new. For me it’s also a way to stay tuned in to who and what's interesting as I think about what’s next.

I’m interested in investing in companies where these three things are true:

1. I have high context on the founders.
2. The product exists in a usable form and has traction with some early users.
3. I can imagine myself using or working on the product.

I didn’t write these down to start, but after hearing a few dozen pitches I've realized that I’m not willing to invest if these things aren’t true. Of course, there’s far more that goes into any investment decision than those things – market potential, enthusiasm for the idea, knowledge of the product area, valuation/terms, etc – but they seem to be hard requirements for me.

Founder context boils down to either having a relationship with the founders, or having context on them from their previous work and public profile. This essentially means trusting them and having conviction that they're the right people to succeed at what they're trying to do (thanks to their curiosity, creativity, and work ethic). It also means they're not assholes. I don't invest in assholes.

Product traction means that the team has built something interesting and done enough leg work and iteration to get it to a point where at least some people are using it regularly. I don't invest in prospective ideas, and I'm not interested in tech demos looking for a use case.

Finally, if I can imagine myself using what the team is building, or being excited to work on it myself, then it's a good sign that it resonates. In the best case, as with Arc from The Browser Company, I'm a convert to the product and a daily user. In other cases I can imagine from my own work or life experiences the utility and value of the product and its potential.

Based on this framework, I’ve made investments in four companies so far:

• The Browser Company, building the wonderful Arc browser and imagining the next generation of personal operating systems. Founded by Josh Miller and Hursh Agrawal (Branch).
• Unblocked, building powerful tools for software teams to accelerate their development workflow. Founded by Dennis Pilarinos (Buddybuild).
• Kndrd, building meaningful offline connections and communities. Founded by Isabella Epstein and Milo Watanabe (Slack) – Invite only in NYC.
• Useful, building communications technology for all our multitudes. Founded by Adam Lisagor (Sandwich) and Beamer Wilkins – In private beta.

These companies are in highly varied spaces. What unites them, besides all having amazing founders, is that they’re focused on building tools for humans with people at the core of their design ethos.

Foundational to each is the belief that software should enable and empower people to do great things together. I know each of the products will continue to grow and change, but I have confidence that ethos will remain. I can’t wait to see what comes next.

If you’re working on something amazing, I’d love to hear about it.