abuteau

Yes, great albums!

Also really like the Milestones of a Jazz Legend - Jim Hall on Guitar Vol. 2 on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/album/5bwrg1BJvmtGEVxXmBvM2r?si=szA...

Mine is Some Other Time: The Lost Session From The Black Forest

I can listen to that album without ever getting tired.

Japan has amazing jazz artists!

One of my favorite jazz playlist on Spotify is The Rhythm of Japan https://open.spotify.com/user/rowanaboat96/playlist/7ciqeUtO...

Also worth exploring the World Jazz playlist: https://open.spotify.com/user/1231409117/playlist/5lgPIUHnf1...

Congrats on the launch!

Do you have any plans to release a NodeJs Driver?

On the employer side: Pretty tight, hard to find talent. On the employee side: It's good. Salary are OK considering the decent cost of living. The AI boom is helping bringing more options for smart and qualified people.

Feel free to email me if you have more questions, know some companies that are looking ;)

Hey justin, good stuff, two questions for you.

A- How is your approach different than Axiom Law [1]

B- Why did you decide to target lawyers vs. directly to startups like Clerky [2]

[1] https://www.axiomlaw.com/

[2] https://www.clerky.com/

They did the same with Uber https://www.uber.com/en-CA/drive/montreal/get-started/tax-re...

Good research, thanks for sharing. Kauffman has interesting content.

Can I drop you a mail, I would be interested to explore where its incorrect.

Also please remember that the survey simplifies the reality by putting everything in the same model of deal selection.

From a practical standpoint I have some VCs friends that use a model similar to this and others dont.

I'd say anticipated exit, comparable companies, competitive pressure and desired ownership play the role of social proof. For revenue, most likely related to the business model.

The interesting distinction in the report was between deal flow and deal selection. VCs care more about deal selection. For deal flow most of it is in their own network or through syndicates.

For the 90% fail 10% success you can look at exit multiples coupled with type of exit (M&A, IPO, failure).

My hypothesis is that most of them dont really have a proprietary deal flow and are unable to make great deal selection apart from the top VCs..

The way the data was structured is they were asked what is the MOST important factor (you can only chose one) whereas other parts of the survey were what are the important factorS.. Might create the confusion.

Agreed, I look at about 10 business paper a week and quality of statistical analysis is frequently missing. What I liked about this one is that they are pretty transparent on the methodology so you can see the surveyed VCs biases. They also cross check the sources with other data..

yes most likely confirmation bias which is in sync with their reported ability to outperform but they dont usually.. this was the shadiest part of the survey for me.. failure data looks similar to

Mostly ;)

Marc Andreessen wrote a good article on the layers of risks that VCs are looking into [1]. Most of them want to maximize the upside while minimizing the downside..

[1] http://pmarchive.com/guide_to_startups_part2.html

Hey op here, good feedback,

Yes factors do interact. However it was not really part of the survey.

One thing they had was the difference between most important factors and important factors

In the summary, I reported only the most important factors. If you look at the important factors here are the results, which show a bit the factors interacting:

Team 96% for early, 93% for late

Business model 84% for early, 86% for late

Product 81% for early, 60% for late

Market 74% for early, 69% for late

Industry 30% for early, 37% for late

Valuation 47% for early, 74% for late

Ability to add value 44% for early, 54% for late

Fit with the fund 48% for early, 54% for late

There are also other factors that will impact the companies valuation such as anticipated exit, comparable companies, competitive pressure and desired ownership.

For more a deeper analysis I think it would be interesting to see the survey applied to a scenario planning model like the team at the OS Fund did [1].

[1] http://osfund.co/the-osf-playbook/ [EDIT]: Formatting

Other people that used that quote is Emanuel Derman. He's an interesting character (PHD in theoretical physics, Ex-Goldman Sachs Partner). He is the author of Models.Behaving.Badly: Why Confusing Illusion with Reality Can Lead to Disaster, on Wall Street and in Life [1] and wrote a great paper on Metaphors, Models & Theories. I did a review of his paper [2], but some highlights:

Theories: Tell us what something is. According to Derman, theories “deal with the world on its own terms, absolutely.”

Models: Tell us what something is partially like. According to Derman, models are “reductions in dimensionality that always simplify and sweep dirt under the rug.”

Metaphors: Models can be compared to Metaphors. Metaphors are relative descriptions that compare it to something similar, but better understood through theories or real life applications.

"A model is a metaphor, not the thing itself. Good metaphors compare something we don’t understand, to something we think we do. Based on this, a model is simple and of limited applicability when compared to the real thing as it focuses on some parts rather than the whole. It is a caricature which overemphasizes some features at the expense of others."

[1] http://bit.ly/dermanmodels [2] https://medium.com/pnr-paper/metaphors-models-theories-fb406...

Thanks, yes it's definitely sterile and at a high level. I've been on the fence whether I add examples of companies/use cases or keep it dry.

I like to make articles max 5min, so I'll take your feedback and check if I can make it easier to read.

Hey! Thanks for reading and/or upvoting. This article is part of a series I started where I summarize an interesting research paper in the fields of business, management and strategy.

This is inspired by by the morning paper [1] which is produced each weekday by Adrian Colyer, a venture partner with Accel Partners, and covers the field of computer science.

I try to do it every week, I don't know Adrian does, but it's challenging/time consuming.

If you have any feedback or want to see a paper featured, feel free to reach out at antoine@thepnr.com

[1] https://blog.acolyer.org/

[Edit] Fixed links.

Hey i'm Antoine the author. Let me know if you have questions/comments. Happy to hear your thought since the format is a work in progress. Here's two good papers to follow up: 1- From MIT, Ricardo J. Caballero which covers the process of creative destruction in depth: https://economics.mit.edu/files/1785 2- From Yale, William D. Nordhaus: Schumpeterian Profits and the Alchemist Fallacy which states that most "profit" of new innovations go to consumer surplus: http://economics.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Working-...

Agreed on your comment (ex software dev, now management consultant)..

In MC, the delivery of the case is extremely important (how you structure the solution, how you speak, how you present yourself, etc.). Your point on people optimizing is spot on. Some students spend 10-20 hours a week practising before a McKinsey, Bain, BCG interview..

When I'm building cases and interviewing people, I try to structure it around a real life problem we have (e.g. a wood/fiber B2B company wanting to go B2C) which makes it less awkward than solving random algorithms.

However, I'm still not satisfied with the process, so wondering if people have ideas ?

I thought about giving a case to solve at home, but we're missing the part of how an applicant will react with a lot of pressure and in front of clients :/

I had the opportunity to be on the advisory board of my local bank at a very young age (19-21). I'm in Canada, so we have less competition and we were the leading bank in my region (size ~$2billion). You come to see at their problems with a new eye, but you do learn a lot and you change your mind quickly. I thought it would be easy to change banking. Boy I was wrong. People underestimate the complexity of banking. I think one of the area where people overestimate their chances is on the consumer side. Banks have a very good distribution network, good salespeople and they act as a platform with a network effect where the more you own products from a bank the less likely you are to switch. Sure their products is shitty, but people don't really care about their money. Money is not sexy. If a bank is not going to make money with a good chunk of their customers, how will you make money ? Sure they have high infrastructure cost, but you still need to acquire that customer.

I'm still excited by some startups like Plaid, but on the consumer side i'm still somewhat skeptic of a lot of things I see.

We have it in Canada too through Registered Education Savings Plans (RESPs). I live in Quebec and basically every dollar invested in an RESP could be increased by 30% to 60% b/c of government grants. We can receive up to $7,200 from the Canada Education Savings Grant (CESG), up to $3,600 from the Quebec Education Savings Incentive (QESI), and up to $2,000 from the Canada Learning Bond (CLB). Altogether, it's about a $12,800 increase, which is quite nice.

I tasted a toast from a smart toaster a few weeks ago and it was the best toast I have ever tasted. Looking forward to taste more products from smart cooking tools.

How do you see value investing vs MPT then ?

I often refers to a good paperon What has worked in investing [1]

I think Taleb criticism is right though and he demonstrates it through Mandelbrot fractal.

[1] http://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/sites/valueinvesting/files/file...

There's ton of criticism on MPT. Would like to hear you on that ! Are they valid ? Should we use PMPT ?

It shouldn't be the way. We met Brad Feld last year in Las Vegas (Up Summit) and he talked about his depression[1]. I suggest everyone to read the depression archives on Brad Feld blog [2]. Pretty insightful posts. I tend to be obsessive and I lost someone I really care about because of focus on money and too much work. At the end of the day, you have to focus on your priorities, your wife/family is one and should deserve a decent amount of attention. Brad said that when Amy call him whenever he's in a meeting he will still answer, because she's a priority. Outworking yourself is not likely the way you will succeed in the long run. Work hard != work smart

George Bernard Shaw said: "I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it."

1. http://www.inc.com/magazine/201307/brad-feld/many-entreprene...

2. http://www.feld.com/archives/tag/depression

I've visited the Downtown Project this summer part of the 2014 UP Summit. It's really a great place to be, the vibe is really good and there's ton of awesome projects. I think the project is well balanced. You have small business incubator, startups incubator, a lot of community space and education project. But it was hard to see who really had the leadership. I thought it was Hsieh but he dismissed it. Maybe they also had too much project. Lack of focus, lack of leadership and maybe going to fast. I hope the project turn around and that someone step-up to take the leadership, because it's really a great place although I hate Vegas. Hmm maybe in this sense this project represent well Vegas... an orgy of fake.

Been following Quandl for a while and really love where they are going with Premium dataset. I've been looking for a while for good fundamental stocks data via an API. There's xignite but they are overly complicated and expensive. Much better solution then scrapping all morningstar website for 10years fundamentals.

Sidenote: http://teleport.org/ Try to do something like that, but not crowdsourced. It's from Sten Tamkivi a16z entrepreneur in residence.

Thanks guys, appreciate !