Anatomy of a Managed Marketplace
The following article was originally published on Techcrunch on May 25, 2017. Managed marketplaces (also known as end-to-end or full-stack marketplaces) have been one of the hottest categories of...
View ArticleMake the Merchant the Star
Last week, while speaking with a founding team building a new marketplace connecting buyers to suppliers, I mentioned offhand that it can actually be quite detrimental to actively advertise one’s...
View ArticleOn Being Early and Being Right
Over the past ten years or so, I have been relatively early to three highly nascent, wild wild west style industries: online poker, daily fantasy sports and bitcoin. In two of them – poker and bitcoin...
View ArticleUnboxing Stitch Fix’s S-1
The following article was initially published by TechCrunch on October 23, 2017 When Zulily went public in 2013, it sparked a resurgence of interest in an otherwise lagging e-commerce market. Quickly...
View ArticleThank You: On Leaving Chicago Ventures
The last six years have been the most exciting, important and fundamental of my life. Over that period, I graduated from business school, was blessed with three beautiful children with my wife Shira,...
View ArticleDouble Clicking Arteen’s Marketplace Calculator
Earlier this week, Arteen Arabshahi at Fika Ventures released his Marketplace Calculator, which is a framework his firm uses to assess two/three sided businesses, with network effects. In general, I...
View ArticleGame On! (Well, Sorta…Maybe?)
Monday, in a mostly expected move, the Supreme Court struck down a federal ban prohibiting sports betting. The move opens the door for states to legalize sports wagering under their own terms, with...
View ArticleDressing Down the FarFetch IPO
Earlier this week, UK based FarFetch filed to go public, with media experts expecting an ultimate public market valuation above $6B. You’d be forgiven if you actually didn’t know much about FarFetch –...
View ArticleKraft Heinz and Why The D2C Revolution May Be Bigger Than You Think
Late last week, Kraft-Heinz, one of the largest global food conglomerates reported disappointing earnings, admitted to an SEC investigation, and wrote down the value of a couple of its iconic brands....
View ArticleEnough With the Award Shows Already
[I originally authored this blog in early 2018 and elected not to post it at that time. Over the past two years, unfortunately, nothing has changed. If anything, hosting organizations have gotten more...
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