War of Ideas By editor on February 19, 2018 — 1 min read We are in a war of ideas, the arbiter of which, in part, will be the capital that one brings to affecting those ideas and bringing them into being. So when you put all of these things together, if you believe, again, as I do, that we are better off in a more equitable fairly... More
Strategy By editor on February 19, 2018 — 1 min read We are not in the business of confusing strategy and tactics. Those are all tactics. What is the strategy? The strategy is that great entrepreneurs are changing the world. They exist all over the world, and they also exist in every single stage of development. Early stage; growth; public. And our business is in the... More
High and Low Touch By editor on February 19, 2018 — 4 mins read The heartbeat of our business is our traditional venture investing. We have done a really good job of partnering with entrepreneurs at the earliest stages to build vibrant companies, in some really interesting areas. Companies that you guys know where we led the formal Series A’s like Slack, and companies that are getting baked like... More
Levelling the Starting Line By editor on January 28, 2018 — 4 mins read The big thing that I wanted to figure out was — right at the time, it was the Arab spring. A year and a half before that, there were riots in Paris. There were terrorist attacks in London. What I realized along the way was that I didn’t want to be some sort of bitter... More
Ecosystem By editor on January 28, 2018 — 1 min read You need to have a complete view of the ecosystem, and in order to do that you need to understand and spend time with these big public companies: what are their roadmaps, what are they planning? That allows you to build things that you know can be complementary. But also, when you see things that... More
A More Flexible Definition By editor on January 28, 2018 — 2 mins read The issue for us: It seems very byzantine on the outside looking in. There’s no really clear way to engage a company with that. Who do you talk to, how do you start those conversations? I think it has to be the opposite. Yesterday we had a massive insurance company and they have an enormous... More
Hard Things By editor on January 28, 2018 — 2 mins read We now need to spend time in hard things. And hard things are dominated by established legacy durable businesses. That’s why they’re hard. They were able to stand the test of time, and they solved things. But they are now going to face an existential crisis. When people see your results in your portfolio, investors... More
Confidence By editor on January 28, 2018 — 1 min read We’ve made a bunch of decisions that I deeply regret because they were entirely monetary in nature. What I said to the team was, I’m fine with us making purely monetary decisions, but we didn’t even do those well. It’s not as if we had a predictable rate of return that said, “We’re going to... More
Insights vs. Money By editor on January 28, 2018 — 2 mins read It’s a knowledge base. And it’s a knowledge base that grows independent of, and outlives, any current set of partners that may work at Social Capital. That’s the key. I don’t view my role as instrumental. I view my role as part of a process of creating that artifact. 15 or 20 years from now,... More
Knowledge Base for Better Entrepreneurship By editor on January 28, 2018 — 2 mins read It’s a knowledge base. And it’s a knowledge base that grows independent of, and outlives, any current set of partners that may work at Social Capital. That’s the key. I don’t view my role as instrumental. I view my role as part of a process of creating that artifact. 15 or 20 years from now,... More
