Tag: obvious ventures

• Coastal dilettantes and venture capital

  Chamath Palihapitiya – founder and CEO of a VC firm called Social Capital – recently penned an op-ed in The Information called: “The Sunk Cost Fallacy and the Future of Silicon Valley.”

  Chamath is one of the most outspoken voices in Silicon Valley and is openly critical about the way the industry generally functions today. Here are two excerpts from his op-ed piece:

  “Chronic diseases like obesity, diabetes and heart disease are ravaging much of the U.S. and the world. Automation is eliminating the jobs of millions of well-meaning, law-abiding men and women. Weather patterns are increasingly unpredictable, disrupting water and food supplies and displacing millions of people. But despite this trail of breadcrumbs of big problems and big markets, we still find it difficult to fund potentially big solutions. Instead, we keep doubling down on the easy things.”  
  

  “Easy short-term growth is now so highly valued in Silicon Valley that we often overlook technical innovation, sustainable long-term growth and meaningful progress in markets that matter. Every week adds to the corpus of press releases from companies with quick, fleeting growth overcapitalized beyond rationalization. And after too many years of this, Silicon Valley is now typecast as a monoculture of coastal dilettantes who float from one meaningless endeavor to another, tone deaf to real problems.”

  Social Capital was founded in response to these criticisms. Their mission is to improve society by using technology to solve big problems – problems like the ones mentioned above.

  Another firm with a similar mission is Obvious Ventures. They call what they do #worldpositive investing. Their goal is to only fund companies that deliver social and environmental benefits along with every dollar earned.

  It’s interesting to think about how capital gets allocated and whether or not it will result in meaningful benefits to the world. Because this is not just about venture capital. You could substitute venture capital for many other asset classes and ask similar questions.

  2016.12.15

• “Great ideas are Obvious in retrospect.”

  

  San Francisco Sunset by Nathan Camarillo on 500px

  The title of this post is a line from a Medium post that Biz Stone wrote back in August 2012. For those of you who might not know, Biz Stone is one of the cofounders of Twitter, as well as the cofounder of something called The Obvious Corporation.

  Obvious is a “company” that I’ve been following on and off for a number of years – I’m fascinated by the model and how it has evolved. It was founded back in 2006 by Biz Stone and Ev Williams (another Twitter cofounder) as a kind of “product lab” for new ideas. But since then it has gone through a number of iterations.

  Though I suspect that most people haven’t heard of Obvious, it was actually the parent company of Twitter before Twitter took off and became independent.

  But even more interesting is the fact that Twitter was actually a side project for a company called Odeo (a failed podcasting startup) that in turn was owned by Obvious. So specifically, Twitter started as a side project of one of the companies within a larger “product lab.” Nobody said innovation was straightforward.

  When Twitter eventually took off, their focus naturally shifted away from Obvious to it. They had a rocket ship of a company to build and run. 

  But in 2011, Ev and Biz, along with Jason Goldman (of Twitter), decided to “reboot Obvious.” The most notable outcome of this reboot has been the creation of writing platform Medium, which I believe still technically sits within Obvious. (Click here if you don’t know what Medium is.)

  Then in December of last year (2014), Ev Williams announced the third chapter of Obvious – now called Obvious Ventures – with this post called: It’s Obvious. Again. In short, they’re a venture capital firm with an approach that they call #worldpositive:

  We’re entrepreneurs. We’ve helped a lot of companies launch, grow, and generate great financial returns. A few of these companies also deliver positive social and environmental benefits with every dollar of revenue they earn. We want to fund and build more of those. That’s what we call #worldpositive venture capital.

  Already they’ve publicly announced investments in 10 companies, one of which I’ve written about before on Architect This City (Flux.io).

  I decided to tell this story today for 3 reasons.

  It shows you how non-linear innovation and careers can be. I love the idea of #worldpositive investing. And finally, because some of the startups that Obvious Ventures has invested in – such as Flux.io and Loup – are directly related to the future of cities.

  2015.02.19