Partner @stoutstreetvc , views are personal, invest in pre seed and seed stage startups in US and Canada, building the startup community @ @unmetconference
Joined November 2021
- Tweets 270
- Following 1,252
- Followers 1,318
- Likes 529
15 Photos and videos
Pinned Tweet
9 Feb 2023
I'm excited to share a whitepaper discussing a new framework to help startup founders and early stage investors and angels make sense of all the VC industry reports and drive actionable insights.
Read the full white paper here
lnkd.in/gk7RZAtD
4
4
59
4,063
May 6
Institutional LPs are the laziest
May 5
"5 firms captured 73.1% of all LP commitments (vs. 12 firms capturing 75% in 2025). Those same 5 firms are putting 75% of their capital into 5 companies." 👀
1
4
925
Apr 25
Compute access(session and weekly limits) would be greater hurdle for productivity improvements driven by AI! As a hobbyist, I've noticed that within just 20 minutes of starting my session on Claude(on the Max 20x), I'm already down 34%. After six sessions(last 36hrs), I'm at 65% of my weekly limits. Boot-strappers would have tough time building(looks like the compute subsidy era sponsored by the frontier labs is ending fast). Compute being a governed as Utliites (Energy, Water, Roads) could be a conversation we may need to have soon.
1
191
John Francis retweeted
14 Dec 2023
We're back at it again! February 8, 2024, Mark your calendars for VC Day - OKC!
For one day, co-work with VCs in the OKC ecosystem!
Location: Dayclub Modern Workspaces - Downtown OKC
Register below and join us to chat, work, and network!
lu.ma/vcdayokc
1
2
15
861
John Francis retweeted
13 Dec 2023
i love @cartainc but starting to see a lot of startups move off of Carta because they charge $$$$. anyone else seeing this?
94
7
247
144,133
John Francis retweeted
21 Oct 2023
Thank you everyone for making VC Day - Tulsa a huge success!
We appreciate our sponsors @regentbank, @GableGotwals, and @36degreesN for making this happen!
Huge shout-out to @hermitvc, the originator of VC Day. Thanks for allowing me to expand this concept to Oklahoma.
Thank you @AmadeuTolentino for the amazing networking experience with Preneur!
I hope to see you all at VC Day - OKC on January 17th! Save the Date!
4
2
35
1,746
13 Sep 2023
Agree! also in LI people are too politically correct to drive any real insight.
12 Sep 2023
I see a lot of people on my TL complaining about Twitter/X reach lately saying Linkedin has been better.
It doesn't seem like the case for me and I have more "Followers" in LI then I do on X.
Twitter is still the best platform to connect with founders IMO.
1
9
543
John Francis retweeted
16 Aug 2023
Sorry... is this even legal?
You HAVE to book a call to cancel?
I love this company - we just aren't using the service anymore...
But this is crazy... or am I?
750
137
6,385
1,350,808
28 Jul 2023
Everyone wants to be an VC industry expert quoting datasets from angelist, carta and other services driven sources without acknowledging most of these datasets are a subset , incomplete and mostly just BS . Even the best data sources in VC are mostly self reported and lack predictive power unless it is parsed and cleaned by a data professional
4
1
13
1,153
John Francis retweeted
27 Jul 2023
Yeah, to be fair the money in VC has always found comfort in a herd. The redundancy isn’t just with startups ideas/processes/GTM etc.. a vast majority of VC firms and their strategies are indistinguishable from each other.
1
2
10
745
23 Jul 2023
Finally truth! Using venture capital as a weapon to kill competition isn’t news to us in the industry, what adds insult to the injury is that few Large VC funds backed by largely publicly funded inst. LPs are blatantly using predatory pricing strategies to kill competition, while regulators are sleeping at the wheel. By the way both LPs and GPs are just funding their inner circle of friends and not necessarily the ones with the best ideas.
18 Jul 2023
A new paper titled "Venture Predation" argues the classic Silicon Valley model of venture capital is "anticapitalist. It's illegal. And it should be aggressively prosecuted, to promote free and fair competition in the marketplace," reports Adam Rogers.
businessinsider.com/venture-…
2
7
504
John Francis retweeted
16 Apr 2023
Feel it’s just the beginning, the current state of industry is reminiscent of a pre-regulation oil industry & with the current direction the best outcome is cartelized oligopolies controlling which ideas get funded and who wins, not the best ones!
nytimes.com/2023/04/15/busin…
5
3
20
5,259
John Francis retweeted
27 May 2023
The issue stems from "redlining in VC" where institutional LPs impose arbitrary and unscientific barriers, like insisting on a 100M fund size before considering investments. These hurdles hinder access to best performing funds and kills new ideas.
1
2
12
542
26 May 2023
Great success story*
Key questions as an investor though are
1. How repeatable is this for a fund?
2. Isn’t propagating a warm intro culture toxic?
3. Would a BIPOC or women founder with no VC connections pull this off?
*assuming but still a lot to be proven
25 May 2023
On March 7, 2022 I received an email from a founder/angel investor that read "just met these guys. building Honey 2.0. blew my mind". Got an intro. The team says they are open to chatting but only have a tiny bit of a room left for strategics. We met the next day. Committed on the call for a very tiny allocation. Pre-seed round and a huge bet on the team. No product, nothing.
Over the past year @harryjohndixon @law_and_rorder and I have spent countless hours together in NYC, LA, Aspen and SF. I have watched this team do whatever it takes to bring @CheckmateSaves to life from the sidelines.
Launched in Dec 22 and hit #1 in the app store. 400,000 users, 60k monthly active. Viral brand with a loyal following. Changing the way we shop. All of this was accomplished with a 5 person team.
Was lucky enough to double down on my investment at the Series A and to be joining as a Board Observer alongside GV @fffabulous. Truly still the beginning and happy to even know Harry and Rory. If you aren't a customer, get moving!
techcrunch.com/2023/05/25/ce…
5
522
24 Apr 2023
An awesome read for anyone trying to disrupt their industry.
bigthink.com/thinking/bonhoe…
3
2
12
1,457
24 Apr 2023
When hearing over generalized statements or long Twitter/LinkedIn threads that are blatantly false, please understand stupidity is contagious and evil, it’s up to you to challenge it, question the assumptions and showcase contradictions.
1
6
691
23 Apr 2023
Maybe the easy path to succeeding in VC is just following the crowd and agreeing to all the crazy ideas without questioning them.
4
8
1,144
23 Apr 2023
I’m not advocating it, it’s just an observation, maybe being naive and ignorant has its benefits with little down side risk
2
3
220
21 Apr 2023
The main reason the VC industry has a diversity problem is because of the lack of leadership and imagination from the institutional LPs, and opaque decision making processes that are built into every level of this industry, but wait that’s not in this report.
Instead it Feels like Deloitte interns asked chatGPT “please write me a generic recommendation for improving DEI in the VC industry”
deloitte.com/content/dam/Del…
1
4
19
4,450