#48 Ask Me Anything
Playing With Unicorns
I had not done an Ask Me Anything session in over a year which led to many questions on a wide variety of topics: macro, marketplaces, AI, fundraising, wealth management, education, island shopping, India, how to lose your accent, adventure travel, climate tech, the state of VC, and much more. Here are the key questions we covered: 00:01:17 How will all the geopolitical changes, tariffs, and Trump policies influence the world? 00:06:14 What are the key tips for finding and persuading investors? 00:08:44 What do you think is the future of fashion marketplaces? How has it been impacted by...
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#47 Marketplace Trends
Playing With Unicorns
Episode 47: Marketplace Trends Given that I have been building and investing in marketplaces for 26 years you might think that everything that needed to be built has already been built, but nothing could be further from the truth. In many ways, we are still at the beginning of the marketplace revolution with lots of exciting new trends. In this episode, I cover: Cross border commerce. Live commerce. New goods verticals supported by service layers. High take rate business models based on convenience. Climate tech. AI enabled marketplaces. B2B marketplaces: Marketplace for inputs. SMB...
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#46 FJ Labs’ AI Thesis
Playing With Unicorns
While AI investing continues to reach new highs, we have been contrarian. Given how non-consensus we are, I wanted to share our thoughts and perspective. In this episode, I cover: The general state of venture. The explosion in AI investing. The varying fortunes of AI startups. FJ Labs’ perspective on AI. FJ Labs’ AI investments. The episode was highly interactive with dozens of audience questions. Here are some of the questions that I answered: How is AI impacting sports, especially tennis from an entertainment and industry standpoint? How are you utilizing AI in your...
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#45 Ask Me Anything
Playing With Unicorns
I had not done an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session in over a year which led to many questions on a wide variety of topics: AI, augmented reality, crypto, macro and much more. Here are the key questions we covered: • 00:01:44 Artificial Intelligence: Where are we now? Where are we heading? What is the timeline? Why is FJ Labs a way contrarian on the AI trend? • 00:09:42 What's your perspective on augmented reality? Is the Apple Vision Pro a revolution? And what is the timing for that to filter into our day-to-day life? • 00:15:28 What was the fundamental inspiration for me to start OLX? •...
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#44 Unlocking Productivity: Streamlining Your Days for Passion and Purpose
Playing With Unicorns
People often ask me how I manage to accomplish so much while leading such a rich, passionate life as illustrated by . In this episode I share all my secrets. I will cover everything from general productivity tips to how and what you can outsource in your professional and personal life.
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#43 Julio Vasconcellos and the state of Latin American tech
Playing With Unicorns
I had the pleasure of receiving Julio Vasconcellos on the show. Julio is the Founder and Managing Partner of , a leading early-stage venture fund in Latin America. It was Julio's role as the inaugural Facebook employee for Latin America that initiated his path in the startup world in the region after starting his career in Silicon Valley. He later co-founded Peixe Urbano, scaling it to over 1,200 employees and $100M+ in revenue. After a startup rollercoaster ride with multiple near-death experiences, Julio sold the company to Baidu, and went on to join Benchmark Capital as an...
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#42 Kevin Ryan, Unicorn Builder
Playing With Unicorns
I had the pleasure of being joined by my good friend Kevin Ryan. He’s often been called the “Godfather of NYC tech.” Kevin is one of the leading internet entrepreneurs and investors in New York. He is a co-founder of MongoDB, Business Insider, Gilt Groupe, Zola, and Nomad Health, and founds new companies with AlleyCorp every year. Earlier in his career, Kevin helped to grow DoubleClick first as President and then as CEO, leading their growth from a 20-person startup to a publicly traded global leader with over 1,500 employees, through IPO in 1998 and acquisition by Google in 2007. Kevin...
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Episode 41: Ask Me Anything
Playing With Unicorns
It had been over a year since we did the last Ask Me Anything (AMA) so the time had come. As requested by the audience, my son François joined us for the first part of the show. He was his usual epic self: calm, poised, and playing along cutely. His presence clearly played a part in the success of the episode which was one of the most watched ever across all the platforms and was by far the most interactive episode ever with 137 live comments in addition to dozens of questions submitted ahead of time! The audience’s questions fell into 5 categories: Antarctica, Marketplaces, Startups,...
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#40 Oskar Hartmann: Unicorn Accumulator
Playing With Unicorns
This week, I had the pleasure of chatting with my good friend Oskar Hartmann. He’s had the most incredible unicorn experience: He was part of 10% of all German unicorns Made a $300M mistake on Ozon Managed to make money on Fab.com despite it going from $1.5B in value to $0 in 6 months Why selling at the point of maximum secondary liquidity is probably a bad time to sell Much more!
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#39: Simpl and the Indian Fintech Ecosystem
Playing With Unicorns
On this week’s episode I had the pleasure of welcoming Nitya Sharma, co-founder and CEO of , to conclude our mini-series on the Indian tech scene. We had a fascinating conversation on the state of Indian Fintech, which in many ways is more advanced than the US. I am beyond impressed by the free C2C / B2B / B2C instantaneous real time payments allowed by UPI and the business models that emerge when you can do free microtransactions. I wish the West had the equivalent of India’s UPI (or Brazil’s Pix). I am also beyond impressed by what Nitya has built with Simpl, which I hope will be a...
info_outline9 out of 10 startups fail. This is a gloomy number. However, it has never stopped entrepreneurs from hedging their bets to create successful companies.
And I want to help entrepreneurs, whether they’re first, second, or third-time founders, increase their odds of success.
So this week, I talked to Tom Eisenmann about his new book, Tom is the Howard H. Stevenson Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and holds the Peter O. Crisp Faculty Chair at Harvard Innovation Labs.