Anti-Discipline, Career Risks, & Venture Studios
Anti-Discipline, Career Risks, & Venture Studios
Happy Sunday. I’m writing to you from a vibing coffee shop in Cincinnati, Ohio. The last couple weeks have continued to move at an insane pace. While it can be stressful, I’m so fortunate to be working on cool things with cool people. That said, I need to carve out time off to recharge the batteries a bit, which I’m planning to do later this month.
Enough about me. Lots of fun stuff to chat about including career risks, greatness, anti-discipline, venture studios, homeschooling startups, book recs, and more. Let’s dive in. 🤿
Internet Reads That Caught My Attention 🔗
How to Be Great? Just Be Good, Repeatably
I recently re-read this fantastic article by Steph Smith. Greatness is often conflated with grandiose moments or achievements. However, so much of success is simply showing up every day and doing the work. Good compounded becomes great. For good to compound, you have to show up consistently. Keep showing up my friends.
Overestimating Risk & Career Mistakes
Words of wisdom from Samir. Are there actions you aren’t taking or decisions you aren’t making because of overestimating risk?
Entrepreneur, athlete, writer, and trainer Alexander J.A. Cortes has written periodically on a concept called anti-discipline. He argues that most people are actually disciplined, just on the wrong things. It takes consistent discipline to become obese, just as it takes consistent discipline to build muscle. Cortes argues that you should instead focus on the “Discipline of Negation.” This discipline is focused on the things that you don’t or won’t do, who you will not become. Cortes has personally implemented this by documenting a set of anti-discipline rules he follows.
This resonated with me because we live in a world of seemingly endless choice and possibility (a fortunate privilege). Articulating what I won’t do and who I refuse to become is clarifying. If you’re anxious in the process of navigating your own path, try writing down your anti-disciplines. You might be surprised how settling this process can be.
Deals, Funding Rounds, & Market Moves 💰
Verifiable secures $17M for its API that manages healthcare provider information
While this healthcare API startup looks interesting, what’s more interesting is who the investors are and how this round came together. Verifiable’s $17 million Series A was lead by the Altman brothers with participation from Craft Ventures, Tiger Global, and a bunch of high profile operator angels/emerging managers including Flexport’s Ryan Peterson, Rippling’s Parker Conrad, Syapse’s Jonathan Hirsch, Todd Goldberg, and Rahul Vohra.
Talk about a party round. There has never been a better time to be an operator investor.
Venture Studios
Let’s talk about Venture Studios. For the unfamiliar, studios found, launch, and build startups. The specific model deployed varies significantly. Some studios focus on spinning startups out of corporate innovation labs or research institutions. Others focus on testing/validating ideas, killing most of them, and doubling-down on a few winners. Studios are heavily involved in putting the initial capital stack and founding team together. Some notable studios currently operating include Pioneer Square Labs, Atomic, and Human Ventures. A few of the biggest startups to come out of this model include Hims & Hers, Dollar Shave Club, and Snowflake.
Recent Interesting Movements in the Studio Space:
Plant-based cereal startup OffLimits pours $2.3M into new products
This cereal startup recently spun out of Science, Inc, the studio that helped spin up Dollar Shave Club.
Early Google exec got Larry Page’s backing to build a start-up factory focused on saving the planet
Serial entrepreneur and co-host of the All-In podcast David Friedberg just publicly announced his Google-backed studio focused on deep tech bets in agritech, sustainability, and life sciences.
Atomic recently co-founded/co-invested in Villa Homes, a new startup, attempting to solve the housing shortage by building homes in backyards.
Studios are still early and relatively nascent, but I’m bullish on the concept. IMO, studios work best when focused on either a specific industry/vertical or repeatable ideation/creation processes. For those interested in going deeper, this white paper is a great introduction to the studio landscape.
Airbnb Alums Raise Early-Stage Venture Capital Fund
A group of Airbnb alumni just raised a $20M fund to back more Airbnb alumni. Investors included Airbnb co-founders Joe Gebbia and Nathan Blecharczyk, hedge fund investor Bill Ackman, and a bunch of VC firms. Networks are huge differentiators in venture, especially networks of proven operators. We’ll continue to see more formal angel groups, syndicates, and funds spin up to invest in the alumni of Unicorn IPOs.
Price discovery in private markets
Carta just raised a $500M Series G at a $6.9B valuation led by Silver Lake, but that’s less interesting than how they did it. The round was conducted on CartaX, Carta’s private stock exchange platform. Carta plans to continue raising capital and providing investors/employees liquidity this way into the foreseeable future. They're positioning this as an alternative to the IPO. I believe this will be a game changer for capital markets. Highly recommend reading the entire article by Carta CEO Henry Ward.
💡Startup Ideas: Homeschool Marketplace Update
Last letter, I shared a startup idea for the homeschool industry. The idea was a marketplace that would aggregate curriculum and service providers on one side with families on the other. Since then, I’ve done more market research, talked to a few homeschooling families, met with industry experts, and attended one of the largest conventions for the homeschooling industry in the country.
My takeaways:
Homeschooling is an incredibly fragmented industry.
The industry is outdated from a technological and operational perspective.
Onboarding into the industry as a first-time homeschool family is definitely painful.
Being a homeschool parent is an actual job. A family’s success is heavily dependent on the capability of the parent(s) ability to plan, organize, and execute their child’s educational experience. Many parents are not adequately prepared for this reality.
Most homeschool families can be divided into 3 buckets:
Ideologues
Primarily homeschooling for religious, political, & idealogical reasons.
Pedagogues
Primarily homeschooling to achieve a specific quality or style of education.
Pragmatics
Primarily homeschooling for rational reasons such as travel flexibility, a mid-school-year move, frustrations with local public/private school options, etc.
Most curriculum providers cater to the idealogues. Very few of the current curriculum providers cater to the pragmatics which are the fastest growing segment in homeschooling.
A marketplace will not solve the industry’s most pressing problems.
Next Steps:
While I don’t yet have a solution, I have learned more about the problem space. My plan is to keep pulling the thread by talking to industry operators and families that recently started home or hybrid schooling.
Also, I want to shoutout Jeremy Young, the Executive Director for the Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE). Jeremy kindly responded to my email and spent a couple hours chatting about this problem space with me. He and CRHE are doing incredibly meaningful work advocating for more responsible checks and balances in home education.
Intellectual Rabbit Holes 🐇
Yeonmi Park (North Korea escapee & survivor) interview on the Joe Rogan Podcast
Fair warning - this one will make your heart ache.
Books I'm Reading 📚
Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success
I’ve long subscribed to values like giving first and being positive-sum. Reading this book by Adam Grant has been validating for that worldview. I believe that giving to others without expectation of reciprocity is a superior way to operate in this world. Give and Take makes the case for this approach while sharing strategies for givers to avoid being taken advantage of. Highly recommend.
Other books I’m reading:
Content from me 👋
Nomadic Adventures ✈️🚗
I traveled back to Columbus for an event this past week. It was great to hang with old friends and meet new ones.
I’m heading back to NYC next. Should be there for at least 2-3 months.
Sending love & good vibes to you all! ❤️
Talk soon,
Andrew