Both of our fund families focus on consumer products. Social Starts takes the angle of commerce and focuses on Digitally Native Brands based purely on their market characteristics. Joyance focuses on consumer goods derived from deep science with high emotional content. For us, Digitally Native Brands must deliver a generational opportunity to invest in a […]
Where We Are Investing Now: Food and Drink
As funds that focus on health and happiness (Social Starts) and delightful moments (Joyance Partners), we see food and drink as fundamental. After all, health starts with food, not only in terms of survival and nutrition but increasingly as an active mediator of biological or microbiome processes that underpin proper body operation. And, food and […]
New Math Reveals the Roots of Innovation
How do new things occur? New ideas? New words? New choices? Scientists have been studying this question for years. And now, through the work of a team of mathematicians in Rome, they may have found equations for innovation that describe the emergence of the new in the real world for the first time. For a […]
Startup Lessons from the NBA Playoffs
I’ve been watching the games and realized that they hold valuable lessons for startups. This isn’t surprising, because championship sports, like entrepreneurship, is an activity at the human edge. It requires excellence, training, practice, drive, spirit, and so much more.
Where We Are Investing Now: Vertical SaaS
The primary focus for all of our funds has moved forcefully toward health and happiness. But we will always invest where we see strong opportunity. One of the areas where that is definitely true this year is Vertical SaaS. Vertical SaaS platforms are uniquely focused enterprise software systems that provide solutions tailored for a specific […]
Where We Are Investing Now: Life Sciences, Part 2
My last blog post discussed part of our approach this year to investment in the bioscience and neuroscience aspects of health and happiness. To recognize how broad and extensible this focus is, we call it “Life Sciences.” Last week, I talked about our focus in neuro, bio, VR, and AI as each relates to helping […]
Where We Are Investing Now: Life Sciences, Part 1
Our funds center around the emerging science of health and happiness. No areas of science are more central to that theme than bioscience and neuroscience. With the initiation of Joyance Partners, our fund focused on delightful moments, we have added deep domain expertise in these areas and evaluated literally thousands of brand new startups developing […]
Where We Are Investing Now: Consumer Goods
The one area of investment focus that fully spans both our funds is consumer goods. We think these are the categories of products with the greatest emotional power in 2019.
Wellness Revolution on Main Street: The Biotanica
Within a few years, we will see the emergence of an entirely new kind of Main Street facility. I call it “the Biotanica”: the combination of biology and science with the spiritual, herbal and community aspects of traditional Hispanic botanicas.
What Will Happen to Main Street? Wellness!
Walk down the main streets of any major city and retail dysfunction radiates from the blank and butcher-papered windows of empty storefronts. In Manhattan, fully one-third of retail locations are vacant. In San Francisco, iconic retailers like the quixotic Gump’s have vanished into memory.
How To Compensate Your Sales Team
Now that you have great salespeople to work for your company, how should you compensate them?