Waiting at SFO

At SFO, after 3.5 weeks, meeting 35 funds and numerous other meetings. Waiting to board.

Then 2 days in London, 2 days in Cambridge, and home.

Some fun and important things first but looking forward to seeing my family soon.

Never stop learning

Everything is a learning experience.

Ragnar Kjartansson: The Visitors

After meeting two funds and hosting a Focal session, I finally had some time this afternoon to be touristy and visit SFMOMA San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Go see Ragnar Kjartansson: The Visitors.

He (in the image below) and eight friends collectively recorded a partially improvised a piece of music in separate rooms of a historic mansion. The installation is videos of each of the recordings placed around a room and has an incredible feel as the audio balance changes as you walk around the room.

Highly recommended.

Tom Charman is a hero

I will have met over thirty VCs by the end of this trip. So many people have helped me that I can't name them all and I haven't asked any of them for permission other than one.

Tom Charman is a hero. He has made me so many introductions. We only met just before my trip. He just tries to help as much as he can.

I am nervous about making introductions people might not want and burning social capital. I need to figure that out. I know others who do the same as Tom. I have something to learn.

Thank you 🎥 Gabriel Isserlis, Tanuvi Ethunandan and Alex Somervell for all suggesting we should meet.

Coffee with Nick Moy of Codeium

A pleasure to have coffee with Nicholas Moy who is automating coding at Codeium.

We got deep into AI, life skills in an era of disruption, education, fast learning, ten things I can't recall, and Dunning Kruger (which everyone else suffers from).

Thank you for expanding my mind and looking forward to the next one, Nick!

Coffee and ice cream with Mayur Upadhyaya

Lovely to see Mayur Upadhyaya who is here for RSA Conference for coffee and ice cream and to hear about everything he and APIContext are up to.

His selfie skills are much better than mine.

Yes, that is the Golden Gate Bridge you can just about see in the distance.

Focal S24 demo day

Join me and hundreds of other investors at Focal's S24 demo day this coming Thursday 16th May.

We've filtered thousands of applicants down to the final twenty-five who will be pitching from 2pm-5pm BST.

At previous demo days you've had the chance to invest alongside incredible VCs like Lightspeed, GV (Google Ventures) and even me at unbundled vc.

I will also be hosting a Q&A session with one of the finalists.

What do you do solely for joy

I was at a great dinner last night in SF where we chatted about always optimising for everything - a typical founder characteristic - and then moved on to what we do just for joy.

What do you do solely for joy? I'll start.

Improv. I'm never going to be great at it. I'm at peace with that. I just take great joy in the madness of not knowing what I or my scene partners are going to say or sing or do and then that becoming real and occasionally good.

Your answers in the comments, please.

For now, relax

Seven meetings today. Lots of follow ups to do this evening.

For now, relax.

Venture, AI, poker and table tennis

Great to meet Tytus Stempniewicz of Techni Ventures and chat venture, AI and poker and play a little table tennis.

He is much better than me - hence no video!

SF Breakfast with Nicolai Thomson

Breakfast this morning with Nicolai Thomson of Jenesys AI. A great guy building a great business which is generating a lot of VC interest.

AI investors - if you haven't met him you should. Sadly, not one of mine.

SF coffee with Francesca Marsden

A pleasure to have coffee in San Francisco today with Francesca Marsden of Sterling Bio Machines.

Despite our matching outfits, we forgot to take a selfie so I set ChatGPT to the task from our profile pictures. Here is the result!

Quantum birthday

In the UK I'm 51, in San Francisco still 50.

I just hiked the Dipsea Trail to celebrate, representing two of my portfolio companies. Can you guess which ones?

Other Teletubby named trails are available.

Birthday candies

Yesterday was the son in my profile picture's tenth birthday. I'm in San Francisco and missed it 😢 .

We did a video call from See's Candies and he chose his selection. Thank you to the kind staff there for putting up with a very slow selection!

My first ever Waymo

My first ever Waymo, courtesy of a fund I met.

I rarely make such a bad impression that they'll pay to get rid of me. Full marks for creativity!

I love tech so much - this is one of the highlights of my San Francisco trip.

AI is disrupting the world

AI will generate an accelerated industrial revolution. I wrote for Channel Islands Business Brief on the subject below.

Thank you Amanda (Mandy) Eulenkamp for the opportunity.

Burritos with Grace

Probably my busiest day in San Francisco so far.

Four funds, coffee with a fellow Brit, an event this evening, and a burrito lunch with the wonderful Grace Gong of Smart Venture Podcast.

Beautiful San Francisco

Six meetings today including three funds, a founder in stealth who just had his YC interview, and lunch at this incredible spot.

San Francisco is beautiful with the sun out.

Now I'm heading to see some standup.

Coffee with Edwin Abl

Six meetings today including coffee with Edwin Abl, go to market expert and all round lovely guy. Hit him up if you need support.

Now I need to remember to eat.

IPO vs Pref stack

One reason the market for acquisitions might be closed if your sale valuation would be lower than your previous valuation is that your choices are:

- Sell privately and the founders get killed by the preference stack, or

- IPO and the pref stack gets wiped out (prefs don't survive IPOs).

Theoretically, you could negotiate somewhere in between but it's hard and some VCs will have told their investors the investment has held its value because of the preference.