YCombinator started in 2005, and has been used to launch over 3000 startups, which were collectively valued at over $300 billion as of Jan’21. Some well-known ones include Stripe, Airbnb, Coinbase, Instacart, Doordash, Dropbox and Reddit. How does YC make money? How much capital do they deploy annually? I was…

At Stonks, we’re focused on building the absolute best demo day experience in the world. We host nearly 200 demo days a year with partners like 500 Global, Techstars, Tachyon & others. …

At Stonks, we believe everyone should be able to invest in startups. Current SEC regulations state that only Accredited Investors may invest in Startups under Regulation D. Most founders and startup employees hear this and think — oh no, I’m not rich. I must not be accredited. …

Startup investing is limited to those who are accredited investors, per SEC rules. Deals cannot be discussed or shared publicly, unless the startup or a qualifying platform is verifying accreditation. This has historically been a significant burden for both startups and platforms. In 2021, the regulations were revised to make…

Much of blockchain/crypto is a solution looking for a problem. But some things are clearly working — DeFi yield farming, Inflation hedges, stablecoin ramps, cross-border payments, DAOs, and NFT speculation. In startup investing, we often hear of Angellist —that just raised a Series B from Tiger at a $4bn valuation. …

We’re a small team of 16 at Stonks. When I first heard about OKRs — the system famously used by Intel, Google and others to align teams and set goals — my reaction was “Oh, here’s yet another Biz-school management system that big companies use. We’re a small team. …

Index investing in the public markets has yielded superior returns for most investors than active stock-picking. The data shows that fewer than 20% of active money managers outperform an index (such as SPY) over 10 years. …

One of the oft-cited learnings for founders in their early days is to do things that don’t scale. The Airbnb founders famously in their early days rented out their own apartment for early inventory, and sent professional photographers to hosts’ homes to make houses look great. …

Part 1 is here, where we talked about different startup funding platforms, and how we started using a tier-based approach to dealing with adverse selection. TLDR — Angel list started as a funding marketplace, listing deals directly. Didn’t scale due to adverse selection. They rolled out Syndicates, building tools for…