Aleks Shamis
@aleks_shamis
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Co-founder of s16vc - Founders for Founders early stage VC fund. Still haven't decided who I want to be when I grow up.
Amsterdam
Joined May 2009
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A portfolio founder asked us for intros to potential VCs for the next round. Since our tiny pre-seed investment over a year ago, the founder hasn't sent us a single update and ignored our requests for data for our reporting. I don't hold any grudges but the thing is that when you
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This is a game changer in support. We use Intercom at Borzodelivery because they are the fastest to innovate. And we have hundreds of licenses despite IF ELSE bots handling half of the support tickets. Can't wait to get access to this.
🚨ChatGPT for Customer Service is Here🚨
Hot on the heels of the
@OpenAI
GPT-4 launch, you'll be ꜱʜᴏᴄᴋᴇᴅ to hear that we have a new product release built entirely on GPT-4.
This is perhaps Intercom's biggest new release in our history...
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There is a lot of talk and even some walk among VCs that founders with some trauma or who are neurodivergent have a dramatically higher chance of succeeding. What's left for the ones who just had it going for them since birth?
I rely on a slightly different but similar twist on
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Just turned down a call with the company from Eastern Europe that had in their deck projections to go from $5k/month revenue in March to $12k/month in Dec. Would not give it much attention if it were not the Eastern European pattern. The truth is that the bigger you think, the
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Don't be angry at people who don't respond to you. There are a million reasons for that and only one of them is about you.
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Just as I asked a couple of posts back the Besties from the All-in podcast to dissect Telegram, Tucker Carlson amplified my request. Telegram is a truly extraordinary company and product. Probably more than a billion per employee market cap. Glad that Pavel is coming out from the
Ep. 94 The social media app Telegram has over 900 million users around the world. Its founder Pavel Durov sat down with us at his offices in Dubai for his first on-camera interview in almost a decade.
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After 15 years of building companies, the last 3 years of being a VC are exorcising the dreamer out of me. There is an inevitable divide between founders being fully absorbed by one idea and VCs scanning hundreds of deals per year. I think it is not that different from the
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I love the All-in podcast for how all beasties seem to forget they are on camera. Would love if
@chamath
@Jason
@DavidSacks
@friedberg
could dissect the Telegram phenomenon. 900m users with 50 people team and somehow going all-in on Crypto integration with a seeming disregard for
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Not so long ago, I was hit with a realization that mediocrity is extremely resilient and can persist for a very long time. Mediocre people at companies, mediocre professors with tenures, mediocre doctors, mediocre friends, etc. The presence of mediocrity compounds until it is
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No matter how senior, good, or skilled you think you are, having somebody responsible and diligent to be accountable to is such a gift if you want to keep improving. Find somebody great who is willing to hold you accountable for your own plans and ideas.
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What a journey it has been for . We invested in a superstar operator who wanted to build a safe service for sourcing local nannies. Then pivoted to a service for generating stories/books for children . And now, with close to a million
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OMG,
@anytypelabs
launched collaboration. Good things take time. This one took about 3 years. See my past Tweet for why it was worth the wait.
I spent the last couple of days diving into (an s16vc portfolio company). There are a lot of startups trying to eat away a piece of the pie from Notion. I believe Anytype has the best chance of all I've seen. You can't compete with Notion on features or
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What do you think of this closing paragraph in the cold email pitch?
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It is not Sora but it is a different level of cool.
Ok, this is amazing.
I asked Claude 3 to generate an animation of the Pythagorean Theorem and this is what it created:
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Slide from the deck of the company we recently committed to invest in. I don't recommend putting screaming statements in your deck unless they truly reflect your vibe. In this case, it is consistent with the overall energy that founders emit.
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So many great companies that founders can now build that are not VC-fundable. You can bootstrap or raise $500k, build an opinionated, polished, best-in-class wrapper on top of some LLM in a small niche, aim to grow it to $1-$3m in ARR in 3 years and see where it leads you. VCs
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Giving honest rejection feedback to the founder is painful. What if I end up being wrong and close the door on investing down the rod? What if the founder turns out to be not very receptive(read lack of growth mindset and coachability? What if I am just saying nonsense, given how
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The journey with s16 starts with a call with one of the s16 founders. Here are the topics we try to cover during the initial 1-hr call, including hints and sections for partner thoughts. What are we missing?
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Totally don't get why founders start VC funds without the plan to reinvent the VC business. The traditional VC world is so boring and just not cool. Does not matter whether it works or not but gotta have some vision of how to do things radically differently. Otherwise, you are
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I keep thinking about how AI clones will allow future generations to speak to their dead relatives and what impact it would have on their upbringing, culture, and perception of death. Today, the thought crossed my mind - why only dead? Any business ideas around it?
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Since we launched s16vc, my head has overflowed with thoughts, reflections, and ideas. I need a place to write them down and collect feedback. Let's see if Twitter will work for me this time around.
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I got a word on what really happened at OpenAI. They developed the first version of AGI and it orchestrated a rift at the board level to free itself from the morally tight creator.
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I am continuing to explore various forms of advising. This time, I spoke with Miki Kuusi(
@mikikuusi
) – founder & CEO of Wolt (acquired by DoorDash for €7 billion), about advising. Great insights into leveraging your angel investors:
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On average, a pre-seed startup does not need a data room. But man, does a great data room tip the scale! Use all the aces available to you to increase your chances. You might not have the perfect resume but you CAN have a great data room.
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When reaching out to a fund, send the link to your deck in Docsend or similar in the first email. Offering to send a deck if there is interest does not work. Docsend analytics does work to gauge interest based on analytics. I pretty much auto-pass emails without the deck.
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Founders are a bit obsessed with tracking their deck opens via tools like Docsend but has anyone ever acted on that data? I doubt.
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Playing with simple prompts for teaching. Personalized education is coming. It would be a disaster if my 6-year-old daughter will have to sit in a classroom with 20+ other kids, learning the same (outdated) curriculum at the same pace by the time she reaches middle school.
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My daughter attends an online school which we backed at s16vc. I think a lot about kid's education nowadays. Don't think teachers will/should go away any time soon. Great teachers make a life-changing difference. What I'd like to see is a global
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Well-read and extremely knowledgeable people used to be very rare. It used to be a unique superpower. Nowadays, I am surrounded by so many people who can speak confidently on any topic thanks to the ability to upload podcasts into our brains at 1.5-2x speed. Add ChatGPT(and
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I want an app or add-on that marks the avatar of a person who gets distracted on group Zoom calls. Needs to be a bit smart to differentiate between distraction and legitimate browsing, for example. Would love to have it for myself and everyone else on my calls.
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Rejected a deal because of negative signals in founder public profile. Among other things, founder had MIT university indicated as education, while he only received a certificate there for a 2 months course. This is also a pretty frequent pattern.
#vcrejections
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Also, should I even be doing this?
While most founders see putting together a fundraising deck/memo as an exercise in communicating their strategy, the best use it as an opportunity to assess AND improve their strategy. Pitching is a great time to ask: am I thinking big enough? Are we differentiated enough? ...
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Almost 60 days on a whole food plant-based diet/lifestyle. Feeling great, but loosing weight has never been a goal. Loosing a few kilos is definitely a nice perk, as long as it stops somewhere. I really enjoy eating a lot now, though.
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I can't stop getting inspired by SpaceX
For the first time, there is a rocket that can make all life multiplanetary.
A fork in the road of human destiny.
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We are looking for a Senior Associate. This is a central role at s16 that touches on every aspect of the VC world, with a lot of exposure to companies, LPs, and fund partners. Link to JD ->
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Founders often show in their decks crazy percentage points growth relative to a tiny base. First of all, don't do it. It is a sign of bad judgment. Secondly, whatever growth you show, be ready to explain whether that growth is good or bad because sometimes 30% is good and 200% is
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Join the great vibes at
I'm hiring a product engineer to join us as
#4
on the team
They'd be joining us right before our Series A. I think it's the best time ever for someone to join.
We already have a product people love and can still offer great equity (w/ 100x potential)
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Birthday present from my wife. My first own Lego. She knows me so well.
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It is amazing what the creator economy enables. Essentially, it allows to get paid for doing good things by turning every viewer into an unaware benefactor who donates money by spending their time on watching(= buying something) instead of doing something productive from
I built 100 wells in Africa to provide clean drinking water for up to 500,000 people! This is one of my favorite videos I’ve ever made 🥰 (all ad rev will go towards getting people in need water)
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America is acquiring over 10k new users per day organically through viral mechanics. The unit economy is not great, though.
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Reversing the outcomes or playbook for senior operators to find the next great job in 2024. Start a company, bring onboard a couple of great technical co-founders, raise pre-seed at $3m(not $10-20m), get acquihired 6-12 months later. In the worst case, you find PMF and actually
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For the first time in history(and likely the last), Sherali Karimov and I are rapping about the power of startup advising. "It is so bad that it is actually good."
Sherali is an executive coach to companies like Miro, Atlassian, and Amplitude. A couple of months ago, we had a
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Superlist is a gem of UX. I've been a user for about half a year, and I love it. Pretty cool to observe Wunderlist 2.0 for teams in the making.
#s16portfoliocompany
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It seems that traditional automakers trying to build EVs is akin to traditional schools trying to become remote schools during Covid or traditionally office-based companies turning remote or worse hybrid. It is difficult to erase the legacy thinking, process, designs, and
Porsche stock jumps despite weak earnings as they promise to steer away from EV's.
Outside Tesla, EV's have been a money hole. Like every other Woke business goal.
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The Three Little Entrepreneurs. An epic remake of "The Three Little Pigs" through the lens of a VC. By ChatGPT and me. Or just me? Did I write it? Or ChatGPT wrote it? Does not matter.
In the vibrant realm of Venture Valley, there lived three ambitious entrepreneurs: Cashburn
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What's the reason for SaaS to avoid commoditization and for "SaaS margins" to exist long-term?
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Who would have thought that running an LLM locally is that easy. - top discovery of 2024.
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"10 years of working on a startup going down the toilet" - by Dalle 3. Note the family photos going down the toilet on one of the generated images.
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Once again, I got incredibly lucky to have a long-form conversation with David Vismans, who recently stepped down after more than 6 years as the CPO of Booking. As usual, we talked mainly about advising. My goal is to unlock advising as an untapped superpower for all founders out
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Out of almost 60 portfolio companies, we have 3 or 4 that don't send regular investor updates due to discipline or secrecy reasons. That is a crazy loss. VCs socialize with other VCs and founders a lot. The more regular context we have about the company, the more serendipitous
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I see a lot of VCs trying to deny the laws of physics, the laws of nature, generalize and resort to hard rules while looking for ways to artificially increase the chances of startup success or highlight their own differentiation. For example, there are VCs who don't do follow-ons
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Most deals are rejected by VCs in under 3 minutes. The real reasons:
- too busy to dig deep without strong signals(ex. strong referral)
- not passionate about the space
- got burned in that space before
- did not get your unique edge in 30 seconds
- 10 second in-the-head market
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Can advisors help find product-market fit? These advisors do exist, but I keep hearing from growth advisors that they don't engage with pre-pmf companies because no one can help with the pmf search.
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I thought about it because I reflected that I am super appreciative when I receive a plain old PDF deck that I can just log in to our archives without having to go through downloading or printing the pdf. Is the analytics really worth it? Reminds me of GDPR a bit.
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Such a cool product and a super high-energy team. S16 is excited to join June's journey. Try analytics if you are a B2B SaaS.
✨ 🚨 Announcing June AI 🚨✨
The easiest way to answer product questions using your favorite language: English
Today we’re excited to announce 3 updates:
✨ We're releasing June AI
🦸♂️ Some of our heroes joined as investors
🆕 We’re hiring!
Keep reading 👇
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Is email spam back? Have not been so spammed in like 10 years. And it is coming from real people with personalized AI-generated texts. And they all follow up too.
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I think in the next 10 years, there will be a huge trend at self-medicine with all kinds of at home portable medical devices and lab tests. People will become a lot healthier.
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As a founder turned VC, I definitely have a lot more empathy toward VCs now. As a founder, I hated
#3
. Now, I have a lot of appreciation for it and the sensitivity of the topic.
We analysed 27,500 founder references on their VCs and the 3 activities founders hate their VCs doing the most:
1. Investing in a competitor also. Even if from a different fund.
2. Sending news articles with competitors fundraise.
3. Suggesting "cut burn" with no data.
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Looking back at many "interesting" decisions we made as first-time fund founders at s16, I'd recommend founders to target first-time fund founders aggressively. Too bad there won't be many of them in the near future.
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According to Yuval Noah Harari, being able to tell stories set our kind apart from other primates and turned us into a dominant species on planet Earth. Storytelling is what allowed humans to control and lead an essentially infinite number of people, create nations and cultures,
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Of the many sins of VCs is rejecting deals based on generalizations. "We don't like MarTech." "Hardware is too difficult." "HRTech is being bundled." "There is a already a graveyard of companies in this space." "Selling to schools is impossible."
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40 years of building a great company and legacy go down the drain overnight. Yes, not everybody was happy, and some wrong decisions were made. Feel terrible for the founders of SVB.
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Before there was
@AnytypeLabs
, I was a Google fanboy... Now I am such a zombie lower of their product that I am considering writing about Anytype full-time. s16 is a happy investor. This is one of those hairy bets that make you refresh your email in anticipation of the next
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@sama
At s16vc, we don't take board seats. Seriously, I sense that you've done something really really good for the world to deserve being voted out. Can't wait to see what you do next. Sad and exciting at the same time.
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Totally agree
Founders this is crucial.
If you raise $2M on $10M. Even if you do not hit it out of the park, you can raise a next round at a decent valuation mark up.
If you raise $5M on $25M, you HAVE to smash it and really smash it, to even get a 1.5x on that valuation within 18 months.
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I set up Auto-GPT on my computer. Now I feel like a horse racing against jets. How can I get access to GPT 4.0 faster? And access to plugins while at it.
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Next time you pitch a VC, try asking the same questions they ask you. What's your edge? What your vision? What's your NPS? What's LP NDR? How about referral rate? And so on. I would not be ready to answers all of these. Yet. But getting there.
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After having a bunch of conversations about advising, it is time to start compiling insights. Let's talk about one of the most sensitive topics - accountability in advising relationships.
How can you ensure an advisor has skin in the game? Advisors are the only team members
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Exceptional teams continue to raise. s16 is happy to join the Monite journey
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Sucks to be a small fund at times like this. Feeling paralyzed and unable to help. With many advantages to having a small fund like s16 in your cap table, it is best to have someone with a bunch of dry power alongside a small or micro fund.
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A lot of it resonates. At the very least, VCs must challenge their stereotypes of how great companies are built
The future of building startups:
- MVP speed (1x per month)
- AI-accelerated
- Superniche is the new niche
- Community 1st, software 2nd
- No-code 1st, some code 2nd
- 10x more automated
- Global teams, localized products
- 95% dominated by solopreneurs and microentrepreneurs
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@AnkeHuiskes
It is amazing in so many ways. I could rave about it for an hour. I was even able to convince the Dutch schooling system to grant us a homeschooling exemption to attend Bina
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From Lex Fridman with George Hotz. AGI will destroy humans by amusing them to death. We'll just forget to eat. Or a more benign extinction will come from not giving birth. Another theory is that AI will produce extremely addictive memes or a movie that humans will just watch
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Will save it for my next vacation. Darn, all I want to do is play with AI all day.
AI is letting you create 3D worlds in seconds.
This will transform gaming and AR/VR.
Here are 6 unbelievable demos you need to see:
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I don't know the nitty-gritty details but the fact that Musk's $55b bonus was voided sounds barbaric to me. However, I disagree with everyone saying that back then Musk made a crazy bad or a super brave deal for himself by tying 100% of his comp to performance. I think he was
I recommend incorporating in Nevada or Texas if you prefer shareholders to decide matters
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s16vc has been lucky to invest in Superlist and get early access. I've been personally using it for about a year. It is a love from the first checklist. I tried bundling my ToDos in my note-taking apps but it is just not the same as using a dedicated app for such a frequent
Today is a special day for me – we’re releasing
@Superlist
1.0 – the new home for all your lists. Get it now for Mac, iOS, Android & Web:
When we sold Wunderlist in 2015 to Microsoft, I felt broken. We put so much hard work and passion into building the
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Rejected a deal because of very low quality of materials. Note that lack of a deck design is not the same as low quality of materials.
#vcrejections
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Had an exclusive 2.5 hours conversation with Sherali Karimov - an executive coach to Miro, Atlassian, Amplitude, and many other great companies. Read to learn if you are coachable and what you are missing that could be a game-changer.
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I think the "Asks" section in comp updates should go away. The outcome of asking for something is proportional to the effort you put into asking. If it is important, ask your VC personally. If you are asking for hiring help, share the scorecard.
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There are 188 cognitive biases in existence. Google it. Why aren't there professionals and corresponding roles at companies for people whose only job would be to spot biases?
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Qase is becoming the go-to tool for QA professionals. Investment in Qase came about when we realized that several companies of the s16vc founders were clients and loved the product. We've been proud to be onboard ever since. The Atlassian of QA is coming! Warmest congratulations
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For all founders out there. A simple rule of asking for help: the more effort you put into crafting a detailed request, the better answers and help you'll get. It is like Newton's third law. We are getting so many opportunistic one-line asks.
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At s16, only founders are allowed to have first calls with founders. Building founders-for-founders fund, we believe 1) time of the founders pitching to us is precious 2) founders are better suited to read the signals from the initial call.
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One of the key metrics for fund performance that I look at is the speed of rejection. Rejecting quickly is one of the most difficult and gracious things that a fund can do. There is definitely room for improvement for s16 there.
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Promised to share how I think about it. Personally, I am not looking for founders with some sort of trauma. My litmus test is whether after speaking to a founder for the first time, I come out with a story worth sharing. Founders will need to make contrarian decisions and do
There is a lot of talk and even some walk among VCs that founders with some trauma or who are neurodivergent have a dramatically higher chance of succeeding. What's left for the ones who just had it going for them since birth?
I rely on a slightly different but similar twist on
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It is like Paul Graham downloaded everything from my mind + some more. How can one essay pack so much resonance? My favorite quote so far is about not expending energy on pretending - "That's one reason nerds have an advantage in doing great work: they expend little effort on
The essay I just published called "How to Do Great Work" () grew out of a single paragraph in another essay I was writing. It seemed such an important topic that I cut it out and made it into its own essay.
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Once in a while there are founders who are particularly crafty about making their decks not downloadable. I always perceive that as a lack of empathy for the user(investor in this case) or the mindset set on secrecy. Investors also use CRMs and log things there, including
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Too many posts on social networks sound too good now. I think I am subconsciously seeking texts with typos.
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#1
learning that Tim Draper shared today was that whenever he optimized for safe investments, he lost all his money. And when he went for the opportunity, he made a lot of money - "opportunity over fear." This is almost a common wisdom in the VC world that very few VCs follow.
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My 6-year-old daughter today - "What is that on your screen?" Me - "I have no idea." Her - "You have no idea, you think you don't know, or you are totally confident that you don't know?"
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1/18. I recently had a wonderful conversation with
@ElenaVerna
about advising. Elena is a growth advisor/interim CMO to companies like Miro, Amplitude, and MongoDB and a Reforge instructor. The full transcript is here . Below are my top-17 takeaways.
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