Nico Wittenborn
@ncsh
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I felt honored to speak with Patrick on
@InvestLikeBest
, following giants in the investing world to talk about the
@adjacent
, consumer subs and early-stage VC!
Today’s conversation is with
@ncsh
While consumer investing has been less popular in the last few years, Nico has found a way to do it with great success
His method is to explore “the adjacent possible” and he’s become a deep expert on consumer subscriptions
I learned a ton
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What a legend:
1- Invests in Apple early and starts one of the first VC firms in 1969 ($2.5m)
2- Founds the PE firm Apax Partners in 1977, now one of the largest globally
3- Starts Greycroft in 2006 at age 72 and now at 85(!) a new firm focused on the aging sector
Inspiring!
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The most beautiful thing can happen at the strangest of times:
We welcomed our 1st daughter Alma to this world a few days ago. She’s now at home with us, all healthy and just the sweetest thing!
Hope she can lighten your 2020 a tiny bit too :)
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look
@pointninecap
has been on 🔥 the past year:
1
@deliveryherocom
grew to €25bn market cap
2
@zendesk
at $15bn market cap
3
@RevolutApp
raised at $5.5bn
4
@Mambu_com
raised at $2bn
5
@chainalysis
raised at $1bn
all of these Seed investments, glad I still have some carry :)
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Last week I went back on
@twentyminutevc
after 8 years to talk about
@adjacent
publicly for the 1st time
Check out the teaser below and have a listen on Spotify if you’re so inclined:
Thanks for having me back and the kind intro
@HarryStebbings
x
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👏 Not a bad week for
@PointNineCap
:
⛓
@Chainalysis
(NY) raises 30m from
@Accel
🏦
@Mambu_com
(Berlin) raises 30m from
@BessemerVP
🎥
@useloom
(SF) raises 11m from
@kleinerperkins
#RemoteVC
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never did a fund announcement for
@adjacent
as i believe the focus should be on the companies and not me/the$
so to celebrate the upcoming 1st anniversary of the 1st close on Nov 1st, an overview of the portfolio so far
super proud to be working with such amazing teams!!
1/11
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VCs often having more impressive anti-portfolios (passes) than actual track record speaks to the fact that this craft is more about decision making than seeing all deals
yet most firms obsess about the latter and neglect optimizing the former
perhaps smaller N improves outcome
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In 2015
@pawell
&
@chrija
sent me to NYC to put down the
@PointNineCap
flag and find a deal
That deal was the Seed for
@chainalysis
, which
@gronager
@jony_levin
& I agreed on while walking the High Line
5 years later they raise $100M at $1B... LET'S GO!
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every EU LP:
'Seed is local, VCs *have to be* based in a single office!'
the best performing EU Seed fund:
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PhotoRoom is now a Top 10 US Photo App!
Youngest company, lowest $ funding, 3rd highest rating and only EU HQ of the 10:
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2019 LPs passing on
@adjacent
:
‘consumer subs don’t scale’
2020 VCs passing on our Series As:
‘There’s no $10b+ consumer sub biz’
2021
@Grammarly
raises at a $13B
‘…’
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the common denominator for most of my successful investments across the 3 VC funds I worked for was that they violated the fund model at the time
(eg high price, low %, wrong stage or off focus)
for some, the fund model might just be a litmus test for the conviction to break it
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I just published
The Mobile-First Prosumer Playbook
with learnings from
@Speechify_audio
,
@photoroom_app
and
@Polycam3D
!
Check it out and follow
@adjacent
for more:
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investors dismissing 'niche' categories on mobile don't yet seem to grasp the scale of 1 billion+ active iPhones combined with the power of annual consumer subs
**a 1% niche at $100/year is a $1B TAM**
this is without Android, web, other adjacent rev streams
come play w me :)
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Today I had my 1st ever IPO as an investor after 10 years in VC…
with a life science company!
Lucky to have met
@C_Angermayer
the year
@atai_life
was started & even more excited about the potential today
Atai Life Sciences Shares Soar After Upsized IPO
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🦄<<<🍎, and yet VCs still don't believe that there will be multi-billion $ outcomes build on top of the AppStore
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loom investor updates are becoming my favorite
really help to reduce information asymmetry across all shareholders and convey priorities better vs text only
quick email + KPI overview + video walk through = <3
considering it for my quarterly LP updates...
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1/2
When I started in VC as an intern 9 years ago, I always preferred to build relationships with the young, smart and scrappy hustlers vs the partner who is too senior to write emails. Many in the former group have now become Partners or even GPs of their own funds.
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Order of priorities for (most) mobile-first sub cos:
1. Retention ♻️
2. Unit economics ⚖️
3. Scaling paid spend 🚀
The upside down approach usually leads to false positives + tears 😭
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This is a watershed moment for mobile-first consumer subs,
@Duolingo
IPOs at $5-6bn with:
– a freemium subs business model
– no clear network effects
– primarily app-based
And there are a handful of still private cos that could push this to $10b+ ...
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Excited that Ajay Arora, Director of Innovation | Growth at Netflix has joined
@adjacent
as an advisor.
Previously VP Product at Imgur & Audible, he also teaches a Consumer Subscription course at Stanford. Can't think of a better fit and the gang seems to agree!
#PathTo100mSubs
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if youre a mobile founder you'll want to check out this collection of mobile paywalls by
@SuperwallHQ
:
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Hot off the p̵r̵e̵s̵s̵ GoogleDocs 📲 app:
🚀𝘾𝙤𝙣𝙨𝙪𝙢𝙚𝙧 𝙎𝙪𝙗𝙨 𝘽𝙚𝙣𝙘𝙝𝙢𝙖𝙧𝙠𝙨 🚀
[h/t
@ericstromberg
for the format]
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much to be thankful for, especially these two beautiful souls… and pizza
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**TLDR: Growing fast**
@BeReal_App
is on an absolute tear and will replace FB/Insta for millions (as it has for me)...
They currently have 26 open positions you should seriously consider if you want to be on board the next mobile consumer rocketship 🚀
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gradually then suddenly
the joy of a thesis starting to play out
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‘You are no longer emerging when you’ve returned more capital than you raised.
It took
@firstround
11 years’ —
@joshk
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there are many moments of self-doubt as a solo GP...
BUT THIS WEEK WAS AWESOME =)
1 past investment became a unicorn
@OwnBackup
🦄
2 Seed announcements
@withopal
&
@CutbackCoach
😻
3 new
@adjacent
cos that I worked on for many months 🚀
Def worth it for moments like this! 🎢
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+1 the
@adjacent
consumer thesis:
i. willingness to pay for subscriptions has increased drastically
ii. AI improves product (retention), decreases cost (content + code)
iii. 5B+ active smartphones now accessible through app stores
I think consumer is coming back
Active thesis: lots of things with marginal long term cohort retention (<20% d90) could possibly become viable 40%+ long term retention (asymptotic) with LLMs doing heavy lifting making consumer scenarios much more compelling
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reminder to invest in tomorrows market, not today's:
3 years ago we led the Series A for a SaaS co with a very small TAM: $120m based on our bottoms-up calculation
the CEO just told me they are now north of $40m ARR – and far from 33% penetration...
plus, almost no competition
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I am blogging again! Inspired by
@chrija
's classic SaaS KPI dashboard, here is a simple mobile subs metrics dashboard for early stage consumer software subscription companies:
Mobile Subs Dashboard v1
Pls check it out, share and leave comments for v2 :)
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I remember negotiating the Seed deal for
@PointNineCap
with
@gronager
and
@jony_levin
while walking along the High Line some 3 years ago... Amazing to see their growth and a great EU-to-US success story! 😊
@Chainalysis
raises $30 million from
@Accel
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it’s rare, but the shared joy of a seed company breaking out after years of iteration/pain makes the founder/investor relationship special at the early stage vs post product/market fit
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Introducing:
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗥𝘂𝗹𝗲 𝗼𝗳 💯 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘂𝗺𝗲𝗿 𝗦𝘂𝗯𝘀
Y2 Renewals + Gross Margin > 100 !
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My younger brother (almost 14) didn't want to go see Skywalker Rising with me today as he thinks Star Wars is boring and I came home to him watching a YouTuber play a Flixbus bus driver simulation driving from from Saarbrücken to Paris in real time
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Slides from my presentation 'SaaS 101: Metrics & Best Practices' at
#SCB15
last week
http://t.co/9dUsjUljAn
#SaaS
@ec_berlin
@PointNineCap
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I deleted Facebook this year and Instagram is next:
1 A friends post
2 Sponsored
3 Cartoon I follow
4 - ♾ Suggested 🤮
We need a subscription based social network that is not incentivized to drive engagement !
If you are building this, would love to support
@adjacent
🤗
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2/2
It always stroke me as odd that the very people who's job it is to spot the long term potential in companies pay so little attention to the long term paths of the best junior people in their industry.
Naturally, exceptions apply to this rule and I am trying to be one too.
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Congrats on the Series B raise & your own foundational model
@matthieurouif
@EliotAndres
@photoroom_app
!
PhotoRoom, An App That Generates AI Images In One Second, Is Now Worth $500 Million via
@Forbes
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that’s a first for me:
@adjacent
co
@rapchatapp
copied by
@Facebook
’s NPE Team... we’re ready though! 😎
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I was guest
#57
on
@twentyminutevc
and when
@HarryStebbings
asked me for advice afterwards I recommended to stay in school… really glad he didn’t follow my advice 😹🙌🚀
Podcaster-turned-VC Harry Stebbings raises two funds totalling $140m via
@siftedeu
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hi
@TurnerNovak
where to apply for an internship
@BananaCap_
to learn how to tweet funny memes plz
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tldr what i look for in early-stage cos:
1– Small N, high E: Small cohorts of enthusiastic users with high engagement
2– Obsession: Founder/s intrinsically driven by their mission
3–
@Adjacent
: Emerging category w mainstream potential
some good examples in my bio :)
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Such a striking data set showing 'time spent != value' on mobile:
[1] Meditation and 'solo' apps score much higher than
[2] Social apps and gaming time sucks
+1 for subs being more aligned with consumers' interest than ad-driven apps which optimize for time spent/stolen...
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As a visitor to London, using the
@RevolutApp
contactless card to ride the Underground is an awesome experience. 10x better than having to get an Oyster card 🚊💳👌
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Weekend read about founding
@adjacent
, partnering w
@ostrom_de
@backbone
@mybirdbuddy
and the rise of Solo GPs in Manager Magazin:
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Three of my posts on consumer subs as screenshot essays:
1- SaaS vs Consumer Subs [2016]
2- Consumer Subs ABC [2018]
3- Ceilings in Consumer Subs [2020]
h/t to
@ericstromberg
for the format !
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