Peter
@peter
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something new 😉 prev: MD @m12vc; serial fintech operator @getvgs, @jpmorgan; head of @Visa Ventures; stats nerd; views my own, natch; 🧵 app: pberg
San Francisco
Joined July 2006
If the grass is greener on the other side, try watering your own lawn.
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adulthood is saying “after this week things will slow down a bit” over and over until you die.
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Thinking about this dad's take on Peloton from 2019 and wondering how his investment portfolio is doing, because he certainly called it.
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In every relationship there is one person who loads the dishwasher with the precision of a surgeon, and another who loads it like a squirrel on meth.
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My 2024 is off to a rocky start, as I just learned this is how Taylor Swift holds her pen 😱
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At times like this I'm glad I hold a diversified portfolio of stocks, bonds, cash and crypto, so that I can see my money lose value in all the ways.
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The pitch deck: “we have developed a proprietary machine learning model”. The tech stack: .
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Kind of wild that one of the companies with the most revenue from generative AI is a consultancy: Accenture. Over $600M booked this quarter, on track for up to $2.4B annualized 🤯
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Seeing so many bad/misinformed hot takes about Apple Card, I might as well lend my payments perspective. Trigger warning ahead for Apple True Believers. 😂. a thread. 🍎 💳.
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Is it possible to both believe NFTs are quite likely the start of something new & different, while also not understanding why anyone would buy one? . Because I think that’s where I find myself.
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@rsg Holy shit this is a terrible idea (also almost certainly not going to happen). There may be plenty of room for improvement operationally but the USPS is actually a marvel. Junk mail can be annoying but it’s basically an ad-based revenue model for mail svc. Pays for lots of stuff.
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My childless friends in quarantine: "I've been working out every day, catching up on my reading list, binge watching shows. it's great.". My parent friends in quarantine: "We're just 1 week in and I'm on the brink of insanity. All teachers should be paid $1 million a year.".
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I regret to inform you that this is the way it’s been for most of startup history. We just had a wild run of free money and a lot of people forgot that entrepreneurship is mostly chewing glass and staring into the abyss.
Vibe check is that the typical founder I know is no longer having fun, all they can think about is their runway, lack of product market fit, that the broad market is going south, etc.
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Rarely does sheer laziness explain procrastination. Procrastination usually masks either 1) anxiety over fear of failure, or 2) overwhelm/confusion over how to break down a complex task into its component parts.
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Apple claims NO FEES! None! . Except their own presentation shows foreign transaction fees on a statement. 🤔
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Congratulations, SF. You just screwed yourself even harder. Putting a public defender in the DA seat over 3 moderates who together got 65% of the "first choice" vote is INSANITY. Brace yourself for more lawlessness with no real repercussions.
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What ppl think business development is: closing big deals & counting money. What BD actually is: endless email threads & contract redlines.
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We need a word to summarize “you’re so important to me, and I wanted to draft a thoughtful response to your note, which is why I haven’t replied yet, but now I’ve put if off so long that it’s awkward, but really it’s only because I care so much.”.
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@chrissyfarr You go on a trip while dating. Traveling, especially if it’s low(er) budget or not a first world country, teaches you a lot about people. :-).
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I didn’t realize Nara, Japan had a portal to a parallel universe in which 2020 is blissfully perfect.
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PSA: founders, if a VC wants to invest but tries to attach a side letter requesting to have a say in key hiring decisions, hands-on operating involvement, and/or onerous information rights, just say no 🚩🚩🚩.
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A walk down memory lane on the creation of the “payfac” (ie “payment facilitator”). I was at Visa when the “payfac” category was created. Before payfacs there was only such a thing as “Internet payment service provider,” or IPSP. The first to be an iPSP? PayPal. 1/.
One of my favorite weekly FinTech newsletters made the claim that Stripe invented the PayFac category. The newsletter is a fantastic regular read, but this claim isn't true. Here's some background on the history of PayFac from someone who lived it. 1/.
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TFW your entrepreneurial dreams meet the reality of legacy payments infrastructure.
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💳The Capital One / Discover acquisition is a big deal, and I've been discussing it this week with other fintech nerds, so I thought I'd post my thoughts here publicly. 🧵. 🧠 In a nutshell, I think it’s a stroke of genius on Capital One’s part, but there’s a lot more intrigue.
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@rsg You may be interested to learn that your tax dollars have not historically paid for the USPS, and only recently were some taxpayer funds used for COVID-related deficits and electrification of fleet vehicles. That said, if we think privatizing USPS would lead to less advertising.
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Unless you spend more on Apple products than gas, groceries and restaurants combined, there are many better rewards cards for you. See @NerdWallet and thank me later.
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Forbes 30 under 30 talking about how they bootstrapped their way to the top.
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Apple pushing people to keep cash inside the Apple ecosystem is not to be underestimated! . They are playing a long game here. If successful, this is very bad for the card networks.
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Most reporting I’ve seen on @stripe’s new issuing product has totally missed the biggest potential of the service. Stripe has the early building blocks of its own global closed-loop network; think an early, more modern version of American Express or Synchrony Financial. /1.
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Holy shit. I just got this insane Hex ad in the physical mail. The website is even more alarming. Always a good sign when your header has a big “Scam” link between “How it Works” and the “FAQ”. Totally not problematic. Everything is fine. This should be a layup for the SEC.
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The pace at which LLMs have been adapted to run on edge devices has been insane to watch the last 2 weeks. GPT4all - based off Llama & trained via ChatGPT 3.5 turbo API - now running on a TI-84 calculator. 🤯.
Elite hackers have gotten gpt4all to run on a ti-84 calculator. AP calculus exams will never be the same again.
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Some Very Good news: 🚀.
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Love this story from Max Levchin on how PayPal got its start thanks to Nokia Ventures backing them after ~150 VCs said no.
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I really wish coffee shops had a “I just want black coffee” express lane to avoid a queue of 30 people with custom artwork orders.
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🚨SVB-affected startups: I've compiled a list of resources that might help w bank & liquidity issues: 💰 Short-term loan options.🏦 Expedited bank account opening.⚖️ Legal docs for bridge loans. If you have more resources to add, please DM or email.
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@AdamSinger and if you're going to film it, choose landscape or portrait, not both. catastrophe all around. 😂.
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Welcome to SF under Chesa Boudin & Prop 47.
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Request for startup: ChatGPT + Zendesk. train an LLM on a company's documentation, knowledge base & past support tickets; then turn it loose as a support chatbot. questions it can't answer get triaged by humans and/or forwarded to PMs responsible for given feature/product.
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RIP my DMs 😂. Thank you for all the outreach! I’ll try to get back to everyone; I just ask for a little patience as I work through my avalanche of DMs (a very good problem to have!). And please keep sending interesting companies & entrepreneurs my way. 🙏 ❤️.
If you're a startup building in AI, it's a great time to chat with us at @M12vc (Microsoft's venture fund). my DMs are open! :-).
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Speaking of fees, they claim low interest rates, but fine print shows “13.24% to 24.24% based on creditworthiness”, which is a big range & also standard for credit cards. Plus, you do pay more for missed payments (again, typical industry terms).
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Pushing cash rewards to Apple Cash card w/in Apple wallet is a clever move to spur peer-to-peer payments (think Venmo-killer) & keep $$$ inside Apple ecosystem. Apple’s cost of funds is near zero if Apple Cash gets recycled to iTunes or P2P (vs card fees today).
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I had a blast chatting with @APompliano about AI, venture investing, crypto and what we look for in startups at @M12vc . Pomp asks thoughtful questions, and I hope you enjoy the conversation! As always, my DMs are open for founders in fintech, B2B SaaS and AI 🚀.
Microsoft’s VC arm is one of the best corporate venture capital firms on the planet. I sat down with @peter to talk about artificial intelligence, OpenAI, bitcoin, software, and where he is investing capital now. Listen:
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Some good news to round out 2023 — Moderna’s mRNA skin cancer vaccine reduces recurrence or death by 49% over existing treatments!.
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Big announcement from Facebook on the launch of a new cryptocurrency & blockchain, Libra, with some giant brand-name partners. The payments nerd in me is intrigued, but some big unanswered questions remain. (a thread) 🤔♎️.1/.
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A note on usability: Apple touts no card number on the physical card! No CVV! Security! Privacy! Yay!. Ok. but what happens when I want to pay somewhere w/o Apple Pay or Safari? Do I have to open Apple Wallet and key enter everything? Sounds like a PITA.
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One thing to add: the death of $V and $MA is typically grossly exaggerated, but Apple Card could become a big threat if Apple Cash gains traction & keeps funds w/in ecosystem and/or acts as a bridge to banking directly w/ Goldman, cutting networks out of txns when possible.
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Big winners in the traditional payments world here are Goldman Sachs (new entrant in consumer cards!) and MasterCard. I have no special insight into how MC beat out Visa, but I have a hunch they were willing to do stuff V wouldn’t (new rules or backing up the 💰 truck :-).
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📣 🗣 Some personal news….1/ This is overdue, as the last several months have been quite busy & I’m not much of a self-promoter to begin with, but I was recently called out (ahem, @mengxilu!) for my stealth profile update, so I figured it’s time to share with a wider audience…
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Rewards - 2% cash back is good (not great), and only comes when you use Apple Pay. Clearly designed to drive usage/customer demand for NFC. 3% back on Apple purchases is nice, but it’s far from best in class. Everything else gets you 1% cash back, which is meh.
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In my experience, the people with the most interesting & valuable insights often have little incentive to broadcast them.
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Who says Fintech isn’t exciting? . Maybe that Stripe mafia conspiracy theory was onto something. 🤔
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Turns out the popular sound bite that 40% of Americans can't afford a surprise $400 emergency expense is wrong. It's closer to 15%, not 40%. Still not great, but nowhere near as dire as we've been led to believe.
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Periodic reminder not to confuse startup valuations with actual value delivered.
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Why, in the year 2024, are people still making Venmo payments public by default? What am I missing?.
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Google domains is a fantastic product, so of course Alphabet is killing it off, like they do for nearly every elegant product they own. 🤦♂️ . So much broken user trust over the years 😞.
Google Domains is winding down and Alphabet sold these assets to Squarespace for $180m, company confirms our scoop
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Oh, but wait! It's not all bad news! My savings rate is increasing! Take that, inflation!
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Oh man. Yahoo Pipes was so far ahead of its time.
Yahoo! Pipes would be a $1B no-code startup today. RIP. 🕯.
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@WillManidis It feels like Twitter is devolving into an off-brand TikTok/Instagram engagement bait video site.
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People may forget that SF had a public defender as DA not long ago: Terence Hallinan. He was an unmitigated disaster & eventually had his law license suspended. Thoughts & prayers to all the future victims of crime in SF, because that's about all the help you'll get going fwd.
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Why does almost every New York apartment look like they forgot to build a kitchen and then hastily threw one in the corner at the very end?.
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All in all, Apple Card is a cool development in the payments world, and the impact on Apple Cash will be especially interesting to watch (P2P payments & Apple Pay activation).
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Great read on why SF has fared better than any other big city in the US on COVID-19 deaths. In short, trust in science, lots of mask wearing, good city & health leadership, and world-class hospitals have kept us safe(r).
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Still amazes me that Square bought Tidal to merge creator economy & fintech, yet Square and Twitter share a CEO & co-founder, but apparently no one has thought to merge the two, or at least embed fintech deeper into Twitter? . So much value left on the table (by Twitter).
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Your periodic reminder never to confuse *revenue* with GMV or processed volume in payments/fintech.
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I just recalled a fraudulent $59K international wire transfer that my mom was scammed into initiating. How’s your Thursday going?.
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PSA: when pitching investors, it's in your own best interest to explain, up front, in simple language, what your company does. Flowery marketing copy or gauzy vision statements don't make you sound sophisticated; they mostly frustrate & confuse the uninitiated.
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Working for startups is like angel investing with your time. Choose wisely. :-).
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@matthew_d_green Doing 60K transactions a second, having processing connections to nearly every bank in the world, & offering the same brand experience & consumer protections in Manhattan as in a remote 3rd world village is certainly a non-trivial accomplishment.
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Rare miss by Harry on the Fast / Domm interview. I was hoping for some introspection; instead we got a bunch of softballs & deflection from Domm. Goal #1 is don't run out of money. Domm danced around the Q & implicated the board. No follow-up from Harry. Everyone loses 👎.
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Matt Levine asking the question that we're all wondering. what exactly did $44B buy, if nearly everything ends up on the scrap heap?
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