Insights
What we’ve learned building companies.
Lessons from the businesses we’ve built with founders, and the ones that taught us the most.
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Does Money Buy Happiness? This Answer Might Surprise YouWe’ve all heard the phrase “money can’t buy happiness” and then thought to ourselves: “I bet it can for me!”. Turns out we might be wrong.Read the post →
How questioning assumptions led to 13,000% ROI13,000% ROI in 2 hours. This experiment shows the power of questioning your assumptions – too good not to share… In 2009, Professor Tina Seelig gave $5 of “seed funding” to 14 teams of Stanford engineering students. They had 5 days to plan. The goal? Make the most money possible in a period ofRead the post →
Update: June 2024Hi everyone – exciting progress at DQ since our last update (brief details below), but the focus of this letter is something else. It’s a topic we’ve mentioned before, and it’s something we can’t stop thinking about: a brand new and fairer approach to early-stage investing. In short, we need your input.Read the post →
The most precocious, prescient, urgent advice for any startup founderAs Nike founder, Phil Knight, says himself, this might be the best advice, maybe the only advice, any of us should ever give… Full quote below… I asked myself: what if there was a way, without being an athlete, to feel what athletes feel? To play all the time instead of working, or else toRead the post →
Is now the time for a new style of startup?As an investor in 2 funds and 70 startups, and from speaking to dozens of investors and founders since Jan, this is what I’m seeing in the market, and what I expect from the next few years. Am I seeing a warped version of reality, or do you see this too? Sales are down. ManyRead the post →
Forget your startup, are you investible as a founder?I love this different way of thinking about entrepreneurship (and whether it’s right for you)… Invariably, when you invest cash, you’re investing in management (i.e. people). 👇 So… what are 𝘺𝘰𝘶 really investing in? Stocks? It’s management’s ability to build a thriving business. Hedge funds? It’s management’s ability to manage risk. VC funds?Read the post →
Can first-principles thinking help you overcome the obstacles you’re facing?What is “first principles thinking” and how can it help you? I talked about the power of first principles in my last post. Check out these examples: >> In 2002, Elon Musk began planning how to send people to Mars.Read the post →
Darius Safavi joins DQventures as Director of Venture DevelopmentWe are excited to welcome Darius Safavi as the new Director of Venture Development at DQventures. Darius joins us from London, where he has cultivated an extensive career bridging fintech, venture capital, and startup ecosystems.Read the post →
The real secret to raising a pre-seed roundThis is every founder pursuing a lead investor for their startup. Founders, you may think… …it’s because you’re too late. …it’s because you’re too early. …it’s because you’re not creating A. I. …it’s because you’re building hardware. …it’s because you’re a minority founder. …it’s because you went to the wrong school.Read the post →
The truth about angel investing from 70 deals and $400K investedMost people think angel investing is “high risk, high reward”, but that’s not true. More often than not, it’s actually high risk… low reward. After nearly 15 years of early-stage investing, here’s my approach. One of my 77 direct investments 𝘢𝘭𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 paid out recently.Read the post →
Should you build a personal brand as an entrepreneur?What’s the main reason for building a (personal) brand online? It’s probably not what you think. I just shared my takeaways from 18 months of posting with the founders of our portfolio companies. Nobody guessed the right answer. 👇 To learn? No. To network? No. To open doors? No. To generate leads? No.Read the post →
How one founder “bootstrapped” his way to a $250,000 lossJust because you sold a business doesn’t mean you have the Midas touch. Here’s one of many painful examples… Oliver, one of my DQ partners, is advising a friend who’s raising money. The friend launched a consumer app in the fitness/outdoors space and onboarded about 3,000 users. Not a bad start!Read the post →