David Stark
@starkupnation
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General Partner at @GroundUpVC investing in pre-seed and seed | Cleveland sports fan | Supporter of underdogs
Joined February 2013
European founder hustle porn:.I worked in August. US founder hustle porn: .I worked all weekend. Israeli founder hustle porn:.They tried to kill us last night but I am back in the office this morning grinding.
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Excited to announce that we signed our first term sheet cake today. We’re active and looking for more great founders to partner with between now and the end of the year. So if you’re raising a pre-seed or seed round (and if you like cake) DM me!
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@BTnewsroom @KeiPritsker The poster has no nationality. It wasn't an Israeli poster. It was a poster hung by a fellow student stating a desire for an innocent person that they care about to be returned home after being kidnapped. NYU shouldn't tolerate having a student with that much hate in their heart.
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Time for @usnews to add an antisemitism on campus score to their college rankings. Would be one of my first filters as a parent. My wife and I both went to @Penn and loved our experiences there, but would not support any of our kids wanting to go there. @UF and @Caltech are.
The presidents of @Harvard, @MIT, and @Penn were all asked the following question under oath at today’s congressional hearing on antisemitism:. Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate [your university’s] code of conduct or rules regarding bullying or harassment?. The
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@ysabellahazan @Concordia I guarantee if one student calls another student the n-word they are getting expelled. Same should apply here 100%. This student has violated the racial harassment policy and needs to be kicked out.
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@SenWarren US war in Iraq lasted 8 years. Afghanistan lasted 20 years. And you don't want to give Israel even one year to get the job done of defeating an enemy that is far worse and far more threatening than either of the two that the US faced?. A permanent peace with who? . If you don't.
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The vc / startup energy in Tel Aviv right now is electric. New ambitious companies being founded, big rounds getting done, top investors from around the world visiting. Resilience on full display.
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@MarioNawfal @CommunityNotes these are not airstrikes they are tunnel detonations from inside the tunnels.
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@gdibner @paddycosgrave Gil - many investors and entrepreneurs I know no longer feel that Web Summit is a safe space for them. Thank you for speaking up. I hope @SlackHQ @bookingcom @google @awscloud @Microsoft know that they are sponsoring a conference that is no longer a place that Israelis or Jews.
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VC: I’m in. Ready to wire. Founder: Sorry, there’s no room left. VC:
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@DavidSacks This is a longstanding practice and is meant for nothing more than to boost morale. There is nothing grotesque about wanting to defeat an enemy and see evil removed from this world. Here are pictures of British artillery shells from WWI.
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@DavidSacks Right on cue. I was sitting in my bomb shelter a couple hours ago thinking to myself - I can’t wait to hear what terrible take Sacks has.
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@paulg Or perhaps there are confounding sociographic variables Paul: . There are 49 majority Muslim countries in the world. There are at least 22 countries with larger Muslim populations than the total number of Jews in the world. The only country with a significant Jewish population.
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You would not believe how many founders in my DMs love cake.
Excited to announce that we signed our first term sheet cake today. We’re active and looking for more great founders to partner with between now and the end of the year. So if you’re raising a pre-seed or seed round (and if you like cake) DM me!
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@washingtonpost Israel doesn’t have a spyware scandal. An independent, private company that is based in Israel has a spyware “scandal”. And yes, the fact that this was written (and promoted on Twitter) drips with Antisemitism.
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@Jason @paddycosgrave Thank you Jason. Excited to move my conference attendance budget from WebSummit to All-In Summit.
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I really just struggled through bedtime just now. After a day of sirens and explosions and hearing the adults whisper about today’s atrocities, my kids are scared. They want to sleep in our bed tonight. All day I tried to keep it together in front of them to keep them calm.
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@blakeflayton Don’t tell an LGBTQ person how to celebrate their pride. If it was a powerful liberation moment for that soldier let him have it. As important as your work is on the digital battlefield, he is on the actual battlefield. Bad take Blake.
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I think @HarryStebbings list of people he really wanted to interview that he wrote down when he first started doing the show is the longest list of 3 people ever.
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@BenzionSanders I also used to think there was no apartheid. Then I served in the IDF in the West Bank and confirmed that in fact there was no apartheid.
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That feeling when after planning a joke for 7.5 years you finally get to deliver it. 👏🏻 👏🏻 . #SiyumHashas
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We're invested in two Lubavitch (Chabad) entrepreneurs and after seeing them in action I am now convinced that there is no better training for confidently approaching cold prospects at a conference than asking strangers on the street if they want to put tefillin on.
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Totally agree with @hunterwalk here and this is the same advice I give soon-to-be grads: go join a midstage startup.
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@Noahpinion Can you imagine on 9/12/01 a foreign politician telling the US to de-escalate and agree to an immediate ceasefire??.
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@shaunmmaguire @DouglasKMurray One fact about Britain that people overlook is that 900 Britons (+ families) went to Iraq and Syria to fight for ISIS. That conflict had zero to do with Israel and everything to do with wanting to establish a caliphate. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that these people support.
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I can't believe this website is free. Thankful to @Twitter for bringing us together with @harryhurst and the amazing team at @pipe early last year for their seed extension. Excited to continue backing them in this impressive round. what's crazy is that this is only the beginning
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If you’re a founder who sends out email updates to a broader group of people than just your investors, it is a good idea to start with one sentence reminding everyone what your company does.
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@ariehkovler @NateSilver538 That isn’t a statistically sound argument Arieh. It ignores the population distribution of vaccinated versus unvaccinated. Could be very rare and still be 55% of cases given that vast majority of population is vaccinated.
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@leekern13 @KittyLaing @UnitedAgents @nickmohammed huge fan of yours. Please part ways with Kitty. On the surface she may seem nice, but deep down she is a hateful disgusting person who believes it is legitimate to rape women and murder babies.
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@davidmdraiman It's ok they also tried boycotting @dunemovie and it's crushing at the box office.
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@michelletandler Michelle thank you for expressing so articulately a sentiment that we are all feeling right now. I arrived in the states a couple days ago from Israel and was legitimately worried to walk around wearing my kippah in NYC - the first time I have felt this way anywhere in the US. I.
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I hope a lot of VCs boycott the investors on this list. More opportunity for me to co-invest with them.
I’ve got good company on this list . And sorry… you can’t silence me.
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@fdestin I have become increasingly convinced that pre-seed/seed really requires a different skill set and is a different asset class than Series A and later.
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@paulg Wrong. It was because on the day that over 1,000 innocent Israeli civilians including women, children and the elderly were brutally murdered, he tweeted an amazingly insensitive thing to place those murders in the broader context of the conflict. Then the next day he liked a
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@paddycosgrave Sorry, this you? On the day of the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust? On a day when a brutal terror attack targeting civilians resulted in over 1,000 dead and 150 kidnapped? . No condemnation. No devastation. Just a sick attempt at moral equivocation. You have the
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@YonahLieberman @RepBowman It is a lie and I will bet you $1,000. Loser sends $1k to the non-profit the winner chooses. Name any street and I will send you a picture of me there with a non-Jew within the next week.
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@WillManidis They say Pablo was insufferable when it came to trying to get his team to adopt these tools
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@UN_SPExperts The IDF came to peacefully retrieve hostages that were being hidden in a civilian area. Hamas opened fire on the hostages and soldiers. What would you have preferred Israel to do? . (1) not act on the intelligence they had that confirmed the whereabouts of innocent hostages who.
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@AOC This is perhaps your most despicable Tweet yet (hard to believe I know). You use the thin veil of denouncing hate to share this video, which will in turn increase the hate. If you really cared about the message here, it would have been sent without promoting that video which is.
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It is surreal for me that 8 years ago I started my career working 70+ hr weeks for someone else’s fund in the building on the right and today I am hosting my very own LP meeting in the building on the left (still 70+ hr weeks though).
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Yesterday, after explaining to a founder why I thought his company wasn't a good investment for us, he had the best response:. Founder: You know how in early stage vc you assume X% of your companies will fail?. Me: Yes. Founder: So can't you just let me be one of those companies?.
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I spent considerable time with a friend today who has been on the frontlines fighting Hamas over the last 4 days. He told me firsthand accounts of the horrible things he saw and we talked through the psychological impact of that on him and others in his unit. I couldn’t help but.
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@HamidDabashi Hey @Columbia, harboring professors like this is why I rejected your offer of admission to your class of 2009 and will encourage my children and their peers to do the same when the time comes. Very glad @Penn will be getting my alumni donations instead.
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My great uncle Leonard died yesterday at 98. My only relative with a number tatooed on his arm, he was an unbelievable example of the American Dream. Arrived with nothing after losing most of his family in the Holocaust and built a great life for him, his family & his community.
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This is my friend Yitzy. Do you think there is someone in Hamas who has the equivalent job?.
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Happy one year Ground Up anniversary @jordanodinsky! . You have contributed so much this past year to everything we do and we know you are just getting started!. Here is to many more years of friendship and collaboration! 🥂 🎉
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@RashidaTlaib @POTUS I will give anyone 100:1 odds on a $10 bet that Rashida won’t apologize for this mistaken, incendiary tweet. Why? Because she embraces falsehood and rejects truth. First one to reply “In” gets the other side of the bet.
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@WinstonLaw Thank you. Crazy that in 2023 firms need to add to their list of interview questions: “Do you support homocidal maniacs?”.
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Finally made it back home to Israel. Was so excited to reunite with my 1.5 year old after 9 days away. This special moment was caught on camera by none other than @LioraPS
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My first blog post in my new role as Co-Founder and General Partner @GroundUpVC: My Next Chapter
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We are about to announce our first investment in India and stats like this are why.
India: 84% of consumers increased use of tech to shop since 2014 – 86% use mobile/65% use social media. (report: "Retail Without Limits").
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When @CoryMoelis and I started Ground Up we always dreamed of our firm being featured one day in @themishpacha 😂. Check out the interview with our very own @jordanodinsky in the special "2.0" edition of Mishpacha this week
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Wife just sent this to me. Does this mean that she thinks I am a failure or that she thinks that I think I’m a failure? 😂
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Now is when you will see every person in the world fall into one of four camps: . (1) those who trust evidence - me and you. (2) those who are so blinded by hate that they can’t allow themselves to trust the evidence they see - @Ilhan, @RashidaTlaib, @nytimes, etc. (3) people who.
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Twitter: keep challenging yourself .Me: how’s flying with 3 kids under 4 on an 11 hour flight in the middle of a pandemic??. Wish me luck!!🤞🏻
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If you want to see why Jews and their allies -- and anyone who believes in freedom and liberal democracy -- will defend Israel's right to exist no matter what, here is why. We will not go like sheep to slaughter. Never again.
If you want to see how pogroms look, here is how. A crowd in Mahachkala, Dagestan, Russia has breached into local airport & is searching for “Jews”.A violent mob chants “Allah Akbar” & breaks into rooms, police is scattered & airport officials are & scared
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The unsung heroes of this lockdown are parents of children w/ disabilities, who normally rely heavily on out-of-home programs and support services for a much-needed break at home for them and the other children. This has been a ROUGH stretch for them. Reach out and offer help.
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@lolitataub Stage: Pre-seed / seed.Thesis: Generalist (do a lot of proptech & fintech).Criteria: nothing is too early; US & Israel.Check-size: $500k.Contact: Twitter DM.
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@Noahpinion A lot to address here but I will focus on two comments: . 1) This phrase “collective punishment” needs to go. It is the left’s politicized version of collateral damage, which is an established term in military ethics. When does war not constitute collective punishment? If your.
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To think how much equity founders could save if they could pull forward their revenues instead of constantly raising money to fuel growth. One of the many ways in which Pipe will have a profound impact on the world of SaaS.
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To all my Jewish friends: wishing you a sweet, happy healthy New Year! Shana Tova!. On an optimistic note: 190 years ago the Chatam Sofer wrote that the year תש״פ (which ends today) would be a frightful year and that the year תשפ״א (which begins tmrw) will be phenomenal!. 🍎🍯🎉
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No better place to set up shop between meetings than Gordon beach. Showing our summer intern @jonahgoldberg_ how we do things in the @GroundUpVC Israel office.
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Me: I want to give you $.Founder: I am not ready to start fundraising .Me: I will make a potential customer intro for you every day until you let me put money in. Just hit send on the 8th intro in 8 days. Putting this here as a case study to see how this goes.
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I've been working hard (but not nearly as hard as @jordanodinsky) on our second annual State of Seed in Israel report. We just published it! It is pretty great and definitely worth checking out!
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War sucks. Israel didn’t want this war. This morning was the fourth time that I have had to call my parents to let them know that a child of a close friend of theirs has been killed or injured in the war. I’m used to speaking to my parents on the phone often. Now my mom is.
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Doing my part to fuel innovation in the streets of Tel Aviv. Pitches included a platform to help Indy musicians, a microfarming solution and a robot for restaurants. Videos drop next week.
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@DavidSacks David, this is your conscience speaking. Checking in on you to make sure you’re still okay. I know you sometimes spew shit you don’t believe, but it is important for me to know that deep down you know the following:. 1) This didn’t start April 1. Iran admitted to helping.
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@MarioNawfal Mario - do you still not understand this point or is this trolling for clicks? There isn’t a single person that denies that the British Mandate for Palestine existed as a temporary colonial regime. There has never been a self-governing nation of Palestine.
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That time @NettaBarzilai motioned for me to come dance with her at the @insightpartners party to celebrate the launch of their Tel Aviv office. 🤩
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This picture should demoralize Hamas. In perhaps the greatest act of defiance imaginable, today, in the middle of a war with no clear end in sight, less than two weeks after the bloodiest terror attack in the country's history, with sirens wailing nearby sending hundreds of
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Just took my kids with me to vote in the Israel national elections. 3.5 year old: are you voting for pizza or ice cream?.me: I wish our choices were that good.
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Rockets be damned. Packed house at the Vintage VC conference in Tel Aviv despite worries of rocket bombardment. #resilience
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Team @GroundUpVC getting ready to start the Tel Aviv 10k night run! Wish us luck. We are available for running pitches for the next ~57 minutes.
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Just like on October 7th, orthodox Jews in America don't even know what is happening yet because it is still Shabbat. May their Shabbat prayers be elevated and answered.
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@fdestin But yet most emerging managers are forced into pre-seed/seed as a function of how much they can practically raise, even if their skills are better suited for a later stage. Something I would pay attention to as a prospective LP.
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Every few years a craze like Wordle emerges, proving that people love:. Simultaneous, shared experiences.Competition.Signaling their participation in a craze .Signaling their intelligence .Achievable challenges. Remember these 5 when designing or building for consumers.
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One thing that I hope comes out of coronavirus: legislation that makes it illegal for travel bookings to be non-transferable. There 100% should be a secondary market for airline tickets and now is the time for it to happen (security concerns can be easily solved for).
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High schoolers are sliding into my LinkedIn DMs pitching me for seed capital. Is this a Bay Area thing? In Cleveland I was only interested in sports and girls in high school.
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Every @lemonade marketing strategy is so fucking on point. And to think people used to say you couldn’t build a b2c unicorn out of Israel.
This! @lemonade_inc on the @nytimes this am. Whatever #insurance you choose (yes, even from our competitors), just choose to have it. Because if 2020 taught us anything, it’s that literally #anything can happen. Here’s to a safer 2021!. @Allstate @StateFarm @progressive
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Our new associate @jordanodinsky has added a lot of value to our fund since joining in October, but yesterday marked an important milestone for him — we signed a term sheet with a company that he sourced for the first time. Keep up the great work Jordan!.
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@generalcatalyst This is amazing. You are the type of high character investors that anyone would be lucky to have on their cap table.
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A founder just sent me this screen shot from our Hangout last night. My first time bringing my daughter to work 🥰. won’t be the last. You better believe our Fund II deck will have “David now has a daughter” in it because the data shows VCs with daughters perform better!
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All you had to do was look at Genesis 12:3 to see this one from a mile away. Alex Karp and @PalantirTech have been an amazing friend to Israel since October 7th. וַאֲבָֽרְכָה֙ מְבָ֣רְכֶ֔יךָ וּמְקַלֶּלְךָ֖ אָאֹ֑ר וְנִבְרְכ֣וּ בְךָ֔ כֹּ֖ל מִשְׁפְּחֹ֥ת הָאֲדָמָֽה׃. "I will bless
Thank you @PalantirTech for this amazing initiative. I have been a fan for a long time but for some reason or another never a shareholder. Until now. Very bullish. #longpltr
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The value of a founder peer group cannot be overstated. From the beginning include founders at the same stage and at later stages. (Later, only once successful, pay it back and spend time with founders at earlier stages.).
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Check out this response I got from a founder after passing on investing in his company. I’ve NEVER gotten a response like this. Totally loved it. (ps check out Project Vesta!)
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VC Twitter is really a blessing and a curse for an emerging manager. Great place to build a network, source dealflow and learn from the greats, BUT contributes immensely to FOMO, herd mentality and Imposter Syndrome.
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Based on my observations the Seed market in Israel is hotter than NYC and SV right now.
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I used to be biased but I’m not anymore and I can honestly say that #OCSummit19 is the best tech conference of the year. In the world. Wow, just wow.
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Reading my son a book of life tips for a young man. Here is one that is just as relevant for a startup.
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Huge congrats to BrightHire on their $12.5M Series A led by @IndexVentures and future of work thought leaders like @jeffweiner, @LaszloBock, and @talentalchemist! They’re building the future of hiring that every scaling team should be using.
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