Anne Lee Skates @anneleeskates Twitter profile

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Anne Lee Skates

1 year

How a company gets its first 1,000 users often isn’t what will get them its next 10k or 100k users. Founders need to realize early GTM channels are often not scaleable, and that’s OK. So, how should consumer companies think about GTM in the 0 to 1, pre-PMF stage? Read on👇

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 years

@zebulgar On the contrary!!! YouTube creators, bloggers and artists are the next gen teachers, experts and creators of the world!

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

2 years

Over the past decade, $20B has been invested into US edtech, yet only 3 companies have gone public: @Coursera , @Duolingo , @Udemy . Many have written off the space. 🔥take: we are entering the decade of the “Learning Economy,” which spans way beyond traditional education. More🔽

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 years

8 founder meetings today and 50% are female founders😍 What a great day!

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 years

Inspired by conversations with friends new to venture capital...over the years I’ve received excellent advice on how to hone my skills as an investor without a long operating career. Here's what I learned so far 👇

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 years

Why is creator economy exploding now? Here's the story of one of the brightest examples in the space - @APompliano , and why there will be more solo-preneurs in the next decade, read on 👇

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

4 years

1/ There are now 1000+ micro VC firms, >4x more than 10 years ago, most of these seed funds. Despite this trend, it can still be hard to raise a seed round. Why? Few firms lead rounds, and many wait for a lead investor to commit before investing.

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 years

Thread: How do you make 💸💰 as a social startup? Many hesitate to launch social companies because of monetization or because they think ads are the only way to go…founders, this post is for you 👇

Six Ways New Social Companies Will Monetize | Andreessen Horowitz

Social Strikes Back is a series exploring the next generation of social networks and how they’re shaping the future of consumer tech. See more at a16z.com/social-strikes-back. For social platforms,...

a16z.com

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 years

@martin_dinov @zebulgar I’m not saying everyone should aspire to be a digital creator. I’m just arguing this isn’t a depressing future for those not blessed with medical or athletic skills to create impact online 😊

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

1 year

61% That’s the number of young adults who feel seriously lonely (via a @Harvard study). A GIANT segment of the population is yearning for connection, it’s not just genZs. That’s where 3rd spaces come in. What are 3rd spaces, and how can you build for this untapped opp?👇

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 years

👀Consumer founders! Too many startups rely on paid ads. @tiktok_us 's growing popularity + current undersaturation of ads = room to shine organically. 6 examples on how to acquire gen-Z users for free, examples from social, creator, commerce, learning, food startups and more 👇

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 months

Most venture firms have 0–2 consumer investors. Yet, the consumer software market is large: in the US, the 2023 estimate for consumer software spend is $151 billion versus enterprise software spend of $139 billion. I spent a decade in consumer tech, including 4 years as a…

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

2 years

4 moats for subscription businesses 👇. @netflix announced it lost 200k subscribers as the market for streaming is heating up...what are characteristics of subscriptions people don’t cancel? 🧵

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

4 years

1/ Less than 3% global education spend is digital. A silver lining of COVID: the “consumerization” of ed-tech is coming. See what @conniechan and I think👇

Edtech’s Answer to Remote Learning Burnout | Andreessen Horowitz

The back-to-school season has been a challenging process for teachers, parents, and students across the country. While some have embraced the freedom of learning at their own pace (in their own...

a16z.com

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

4 years

1/ New year, new job! I joined a16z as an investment partner on the consumer team. Beyond excited to work with the amazing team @conniechan @andrewchen @jeff_jordan @pmarca @Tocelot @DCoolican @ljin18 @btcarroccio and partner with the next generation of entrepreneurs.

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 years

How it started (~100 seed VC rejections) vs ~10 years later (public company): Lesson: hard work, focus and patience pays off! So thrilled and proud for the entire @Amplitude_HQ team on this milestone. The journey is just beginning! cc @spenserskates @paladin314159 @curtisbliu

Spenser Skates

@spenserskates

3 years

Today is @Amplitude_HQ ’s first official day as a public company, $AMPL!! I wanted to share some of my reflections on this milestone (and we're finally out of our quiet period!):

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 years

Founders do all the hard work of building businesses - investors are just along the ride. The most important thing VCs can do is to not waste founders’ time, because every minute is incredibly important.

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 years

Etsy 2x'ed GMS from $5B to $10B+ YoY (most of it not masks!). One major product improvement was adding video as a feature. This allows sellers to tell their stories and create emotional connections with buyers. An early sign of the impact of video & livestreaming for commerce!

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 years

Who is building a platform for digital "museums"? Aka a place for anyone with a digital goods collection (fashion, art, cards, game badges, other collectibles) to store, host and showcase all their cool stuff?

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 years

Next-gen social apps lower the barrier to create for specific content forms: @tiktok_us lowered the video creation barrier from @YouTube @Snapchat for conversations, @joinclubhouse for audio, compared to podcasts and other heavily edited + produced audio content What else?

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 years

Everyone is a creator now. The rise of new creator platforms ( @tiktok_us @joinClubhouse ) has significantly lowered the barrier to create. There's an abundance of great content. We only have so much time to consume...how do we curate? Who's building for the curator creator?

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

1 year

Congrats to the @Whatnot team! cc @GrantLaFontaine @loganhead13

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 years

If young people these days are neither working nor schooling...what are they doing all day 🤔?

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

2 years

For as long as I’ve worked with @andrewchen he’s been working on this “baby” - I used think only startups and babies take blood sweat and tears - seeing Andrew’s journey up close I have tremendous appreciation for writers and what it takes.

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

2 years

11/ We can’t wait to see the next decade of learning and education. If you are building a company focused on any part of learning - early childhood through adult, I’d love to chat! Read on for the Learning Economy opportunities we’re most excited about:

The New Learning Economy: It’s Time To Build in Education | Andreessen Horowitz

As we enter the third school year of the Covid era, a disturbing new normal is settling over the country. Students continue to be chronically absent; nearly 50,000 Los Angeles public school students...

a16z.com

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

1 year

Learning + education is one of AI’s first consumer use cases. How we obtain knowledge, consume content and learn, and what skills and knowledge are valuable will change dramatically in the age of AI.

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

2 years

Dinner tonight courtesy of @spenserskates @a16z 🤣😋

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

4 years

2/ Two charts from @robgo at @NextViewVC in 2018 that illustrate this (original article: ):

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 years

Most digital creators are now on 5+ platforms - each with its own medium, content and visual style. They are often on-the-go, not working in front of desktops. Yet they need one place to share announcements, news and beyond with their fans. Enter @beaconsai :

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 years

100 true fans in the creator economy today = patronage in the Renaissance...For example, Leonardo Da Vinci had only a few patrons that funded all his art and science: Medici, Ludovico Sforza and Cesare Borgia, and King Francis I of France

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

2 years

1/ First, #edtech is much broader than we think. It's not just about academic tools and student/teacher tech. The Learning Economy, as we think of it, encompasses all the diff ways we develop as human beings, be it learning to be a better boss, parent, or friend, or a new hobby.

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

4 years

Who's building a live-streaming platform for virtual concerts with backstage sneak peaks, musician / producer / concert interactions (could be monetized as a vip experience), fan to fan breakout chat rooms, etc?

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 years

Less than a year ago @ljin18 was still on our team working next to me in a jam-packed room in Menlo Park. What she's done in the past year is beyond incredible. Excited to see her new fund officially launch and see her onwards to even bigger and better things 💸🚀🥂

Li Jin

@ljin18

3 years

New year, new VC firm ✨ Meet @AtelierVentures , a new VC fund that is dedicated to advancing the passion economy!

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

1 year

The average US work week used to be 54% longer in 1870 (62 hours) vs today (40.25 hours). 🤯

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

1 year

Can’t wait for LA tech week 2.0!

Katia Ameri

@KatiaAmeri

1 year

La tech week 2.0 coming sooooon

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

4 years

3/ If you want to raise an institutional seed round, don’t be discouraged if it takes longer than expected. Do stay focused, have conviction, iterate your pitch as you progress and think carefully on whether VC is the best source of funding for your company.

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

4 years

2/ Founders, I have so much respect for what you’re doing - building ambitious products and businesses from scratch takes significant sacrifice and courage. Can’t wait to meet you and hear your story! Please say hi at askates @a16z .com

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

1 year

My favorite founder relationships are also ones that become close friendships. I’m lucky to call @LubaYudasina a friend. Today, I’m excited to finally share the story of @a16z @sriramk and my investment and what Zarta is building, it's been 3 years in the making 👇

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

2 years

🧵Remote work has changed how we live and work. One of the unexpected consumer behaviors is the normalization of working from a different city for a temporary period of time whether it’s to visit friends, experience a new environment or go on vacation. 👇

Opendoor alums raise $7.75M for Kindred, a home-swapping network it says makes travel 'dramatically...

With more people working from home than ever, the desire to take advantage of that newfound flexibility to travel has been greater than ever. But just

techcrunch.com

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

4 years

1/ COVID-19 will WIDEN the gap in educational inequality: at home, kids are more dependent on parental resources. I’m interested in products that democratize access and affordability to high-quality education.

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 years

Starting a new @joinClubhouse weekly series with @sabrinahahn @LubaYudasina ! We will be unpacking what’s behind the latest tech trends and products. Join us tomorrow (Sat 2/20) at 1pm PT/4pm ET for *WTF are NFTs* with guests @3LAU @SarahMeyohas @AlexMasmej @liamihorne and more

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

2 years

We thought covid dramatically increased eCommerce penetration but maybe it didn’t…👀(h/t @WSJ @WSJTech ) Why are people going back to shop in person? 🧵👇

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

4 years

@pmarca This pic shows how important hand washing is!

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 years

1/ Develop a personal strategy based on what you do better than anyone else. For example, @turnernovak is the best meme-maker, communicating where he sees consumer trends going. @mercebent is a pro at finding markets/ themes others are not looking and she has unique expertise in.

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

2 years

Lots of talk + data on poor US STEM edu, and covid has exacerbated this. Luckily, there’s $190B in gov $ and co's like @PrismsOfReality to help. Prisms is a VR learning co, starting in K-12 math. Thrilled @a16z is leading Prisms’ seed & partner with Anurupa on this impt mission👇

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 months

2/ Consumer winners tend to be unknown at early stages. They create categories. Consumer winners: 🌱tend to be started by unknown and unproven founders. 🆕big winners create new categories 👩‍💻with bespoke business models tailored to their native user behavior and incentives.…

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 years

5/ Manage your time. Distinguish b/n vanity tasks vs real work. It's easy to do activities (happy hours, “networking”...) that fill up your 🗓️ and *seem* helpful only to find out months later there's nothing to show for. Your time should reflect your strategy (see #1 ).

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

4 years

Note: This excludes the dozen plus or so primarily series A or later firms that also lead seed rounds. More on the trade-offs between seed-only and all-stages firms later, from my time at Floodgate and now a16z. If you’re a seed stage founder, feel free to reach out to me!

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

1 year

A math literacy solution for all that’s as fun as playing a game. Why did we @a16z invest in @PrismsOfReality what does this mean? cc @jeff_jordan @JackSoslow

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 years

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

2 years

8/ Several macro trends are at play across all generations of learners: - Lifelong learning is now the norm - The gap between what schools/universities teach and what employers want continues to widen. - Parents have a newfound awareness of what kids learn (and don’t) in school

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 years

1/ $4.5B is a big number and exciting for our @a16z team. But what I'm even more excited about is how $4.5B of new capital will fuel the startup ecosystem. More capital in the ecosystem = more investment dollars to more companies and founders.

andrew chen

@andrewchen

3 years

👇 big news from a16z. we've raised $4.5B in new funds across an early stage and growth fund. Boom! investing it in seed/A/B/C/D/.... all the stages! But for me, the earlier the better the firm's 185 people now, supporting all of our startups

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

1 year

@itsurboyevan Box

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

2 years

Did you know that one of THE most valued hires at the fastest growing marketplace company came from a small local hotel property management company? Meet Michael Naumoff at @Whatnot . Hiring raw, undiscovered talent is one of @GrantLaFontaine ’s superpowers. 👇🏼

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

2 years

Been thinking about shameless-ness as a virtue in startups and beyond. When you ask for feedback from your customers early and often. You learn from it and iterate faster. This compounds and makes a big difference in long term growth. This extends to many things in life too.

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

2 years

1/ New year, new marketplace 100 from @a16z . Personally, I’m excited to see so many companies empowering education, commerce and small & individual business owners:

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

2 years

4/ Funding: There’s ~$190 BILLION in government funding for schools to spend on tech in the next 2 years! TAM and funding for education startups has dramatically increased with gov funding through ESSER. Note, ESSER = Elementary & Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund.

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 years

2/ Find and build a small, close tribe of fellow investors (these could be same stage, earlier, or later than you - ideally you have a spectrum). As an example, @shawnxu , @delian and @kevinleeme (back when he was a VC) are all masters community builders. 👯

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

2 years

Beautiful event with even better discussion and people! Thanks @pejmannozad @pearvc @VivHo @stanleytang for hosting at #latechweek Two key lessons from @DoorDash ’s beginning days for early stage startups 👇🏼

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

1 year

What a historical moment! Thank you to Michelle Yeoh for showing the world that you can do amazing things regardless of age, race, and background.

The New York Times

@nytimes

1 year

Michelle Yeoh won the best actress for her role in “Everything, Everywhere All at Once.” The victory makes her the first Asian star to win best actress in the 95-year history of the Academy Awards.

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 years

1/ Do you collect anything for fun? Join @RealWhatnot ! @Conniechan and I are thrilled to announce @a16z ’s partnership with Whatnot, and its founders Grant and Logan, both passionate collectors themselves of trading cards, sports cards, and other pop culture items.

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

4 years

RIP to Kobe Bryant, Leila Janah and Clay Christensen - giants who inspired and impacted countless people with their work, and left us too early...A reminder for the rest of us to live every moment to its fullest.

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

8 months

Saturday musings courtesy @nbt @spenserskates 😂

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 years

6/ Thank you to all my mentors and friends in the industry who have generously shared their wisdom and learnings over the years. To all the VCs on twitter...any other tips and insights to help new investors?

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 months

8/ I can’t wait to see new consumer use cases AI creates, or how AI makes an existing premium product 100x cheaper and accessible to everyone as in the case of 1:1 tutoring. Follow me for more on consumer x AI. DMs always open for builders here!

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

4 years

Incredibly proud of my better (🤔😉) half @spenserskates , his co-founders, and the whole team at @Amplitude_HQ on this milestone. It's been an honor to watch your journey. Excited for the next decades of digital products for all industries! 🚀💻🔥

Amplitude

@Amplitude_HQ

4 years

In 2014, we launched Amplitude to help companies build better products. After 6 years and supporting 40,000 digital products around the world, we’ve officially surpassed a $1 billion valuation. Thank you to all our customers, partners, and of course, our fellow datamonsters. 🦄

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 years

@martin_dinov @zebulgar Fair, how about you create some online content to teach kids about medicine and science 😉?

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 years

Anyone building superhuman for messaging (across imessages, whatsapp, etc)?

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

1 year

To do this, it first comes down to an experimental mindset. Finding traction and PMF is the hardest early stage startup problem. A healthy mindset early stage thinks about where ideal users are, how to reach them, and what to message/market to convince them to try a crappy MVP.

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

2 years

2/ People have hypothesized all sorts of reasons why venture outcomes are difficult: limited TAM, lack of consumer willingness to pay, difficult b2b sales, growth trajectories different from traditional consumer internet companies… But these dynamics have changed since Covid.

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 years

Founders building anything to enable solo-preneurship and creators (doesn't have to be digital, could be any type of sole-proprietor work), I'd love to hear from you!

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

2 years

If you’re thinking about starting a company, @kirbyman01 and I are excited to chat with you. We’re excited to announce the new @a16z START program, check it out and apply here:

Bryan Kim

@kirbyman01

2 years

I am stoked to announce the @a16z START program that will help founders at the earliest stages of company-building with funding up to $1M. Apply here: Several reasons why this is not your average EIR program 👇

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

2 years

5/ GTM motions and biz models are now better understood, thanks to @Duolingo spearheading freemium subscriptions, @paperlearning and @PrismsVR innovating in K12 sales, @Coursera and @Reforge in b2b, and @Outschool successfully leveraging PTAs as distribution.

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 years

Covid and large social networks have made us crave authentic, deep connections more than ever before... We ( @a16z 's consumer team) wrote about some of our ideas here from KPIs, to new formats and monetization

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 years

🚀🚀🚀so excited for @RealWhatnot @GrantLaFontaine @loganhead13 on their tremendous growth as a company and as leaders. Whatnot is THE fastest growing marketplace I've seen 👀. Come join the team!

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 years

3/ Shadow others with lots of experience to hone your style and judgment and decide what elements you want to adopt (based on your personal strategy). Special thanks to @conniechan @andrewchen @annimaniac @m2jr @acvox and others for patiently teaching me.

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 years

Having lunch with my husband who’s a founder: “it’s kind of annoying that...” And I thought he was going to say something about company building or VCs, but instead “...all these pasta places...” 🤦🏻‍♀️

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

4 years

1/ For those of us in tech who want to help in the midst of covid-19: @conniechan , @avesegal and I translated coronavirus-relevant parts of apps created by tech companies, startups and governments worldwide so we can learn from what others have done.

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

2 years

1/ Daily habit or core part of life - faith ( @glorify_app ), music ( @Spotify ), productivity (iCloud, @NotionHQ ), shopping discounts that “pay for itself” (Costco, @amazon Prime, @scottsflights ). Existing habits make it so retention + engagement come naturally for good products.

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

1 year

We love marketplaces, check out the @a16z Marketplace 100 for this year! Congrats to all the companies and teams on the list, and a special shout out to @Whatnot for making the list every year since the company started 🚀 Our DMs are open 😃

Olivia Moore

@omooretweets

1 year

🚨 The @a16z Marketplace 100 is here! We evaluated more than 12,000 companies (using @ConsumerEdge credit card data) to find the top 100 fastest-growing private marketplaces by GMV. This year saw some major moves - here's what @zachcohen25 and I found ⬇️

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

1 year

Third, early stage founders often resort to paid advertising. However, this is the wrong approach before PMF. Paid advertising supercharges once a product has initial traction and its ideal user persona and messaging nailed down. Avoid these pitfalls finding your 0-1k users.

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 years

Covid will fundamentally change consumer behaviors and our society. New habits and paradigms will form once we get vaccinated and come out of this time. Thread:

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

2 years

6/ Learning products are typically a combination of content, software, teachers/coaches/experts and curriculum. Playbooks developed by @masterclass @guildeducation @reforge make this much faster and cheaper.

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

1 year

We @a16z consumer are extremely excited about how AI will transform and positively impact the lives of everyday consumers and consumer experiences. If this sounds like your company/product, DM away!

Justine Moore

@venturetwins

1 year

We're now living in the the age of AI. Adoption of AI tools has outpaced every consumer tech trend of the past decade - and this is just the beginning. Announcing "Everyday AI" from me & @ConnieChan :

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 years

4/ Understand what is an “insert your firm name” (in my case @a16z ) investment. Different firms have diff investing styles and types of preferred risks. For example, some teams are OK with a pre-launch product in a domain area the founders and the firm know well, others are not.

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

1 year

At @a16z , I’ve seen many promising ideas given up too early or getting fixated on a single acq channel. There are lots of creative ways to find users. Instead of jumping on TikTok the new hot channel, startups should tailor their channels to their users and product.

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

2 years

3/ Breaking down the ingredients of a successful startup, we see exciting opportunities for Learning Economy companies along funding, GTM, product, and founding teams 👇

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 years

Focus is so important for startups…it took 9 years for @Amplitude_HQ to reach its second act beyond product analytics to become the Digital Optimization System. Congratulations to the team on this incredible milestone! And very proud of @spenserskates - I'm your biggest fan 😍

Spenser Skates

@spenserskates

3 years

We're going beyond Product Analytics for the first time today in Amplitude's 9 year history. I'll start off by introducing a new Amplitude: The Digital Optimization System: (Does that look fancy or what!)

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 years

Founders are like artists: they want people to see and love something they know deeply, that they're convinced is amazing, yet is undiscovered by the broader market. The companies they start are born out of this creator's urge to share their "earned secrets" with the world.

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 years

1/ Covid hit parents with young children hard. A staggering ~5-20% of them had to leave their jobs to take care of kids at diff points during the pandemic! When we @a16z met @thehelenmayer last yr and led her seed round, it was clear she’s the perfect founder to tackle this:

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

1 year

9/ If you’re building a company that falls under the 3rd spaces concept—whether it be dating, community, social, productivity, commerce, mental health or live-streaming, whether it uses gen AI or not - email me at askates @a16z .com I’m excited to hear what you have in mind.

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

1 year

💯Assessments in school and essays for college admissions are now forced to adapt and change due to ChatGPT… What are the most innovative teachers and classrooms doing to rethink learning and assessments in the AI age?

Dr. John Spencer

@spencerideas

1 year

I’m seeing some discouraging things around ChatGPT: 1.Schools blocking it 2. New apps promising to determine “cheating using ChatGPT Can we move past surveillance and rethink what school means in an age of AI?

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

1 year

Follow me to hear about how these companies transitioned from their early days to finding their first scaleable growth channel next!

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 months

5/ I’m excited for a renaissance in consumer tech. Last year was the year of infrastructure tech. This will be the year for consumer and applications. Tech history has shown builder activities move in waves, infrastructure companies enable the next generation of applications…

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

1 year

As you can see from these examples, getting the first 0-1000s is about mindset and velocity of trying things and throwing them against wall. This stage has a lot of art, not science, and subjectivity and randomness at this phase should be embraced.

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

1 year

Simple (but hard to execute!) tip for early stage founders: do you spend your time ruthlessly prioritizing the right things at the right time?

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

1 year

Social 👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 @BeReal_App : 1st hundreds of users through brute force, asking friends and listing the app on diff online sites, then once it reached critical mass scaled via campus ambassadors @discord : gaming sub-Reddit (Final Fantasy 14) and WOM, then targeted promos with guilds

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

3 years

We focus too much quantifiable metrics and valuations when evaluating startups. @Whatnot did just raise $150M but what I'm most excited about is how @GrantLaFontaine & @loganhead13 continues to blow us away with their unique combo of ambition, execution, speed and humility.

David George

@DavidGeorge83

3 years

We at @a16z are excited to be partnering (again) with @Whatnot , @GrantLaFontaine and @loganhead13 ! Liveshopping is the future of commerce, and Whatnot is the future of liveshopping 💪

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

1 year

If you’re a consumer social founder this is a must read by my partner @kirbyman01 !

Bryan Kim

@kirbyman01

1 year

How do you know if a social app will be a "hit?" Predicting what goes mainstream - and what stalls out - might seem random. But after years of leading growth @Snap & investing in consumer social at @a16z , I've found early signs of huge products 👇

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Anne Lee Skates

@anneleeskates

4 months

From breaking boundaries at a16z to making incredible investments, to coaching the newer investors @conniechan did it all. Congrats on the exceptional ride and I can’t wait for what you do next! On a personal note, incredibly grateful for your mentorship over the years. I…

Connie Chan 🍒

@conniechan

4 months

12 yrs ago, this brought me to a16z, transforming my life. Along the way: ▫️ I introduced new tech ideas from East to West ▫️ Was promoted to GP, breaking the firm’s rule of no GP promos ▫️ Invested in bold founders It’s been a great ride, yet it’s time for a new beginning…

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