I’m pleased to share that we launched Village Global III, our latest $250M seed fund, and that Reid Hoffman is joining as Chairman.

Bloomberg News covered the announcement here.

Our formal blog post over is over at the Village Global site.

It’s been a very busy past couple years for me — working intensively on Village Global, reading a ton, and traveling to some far flung places. I hope to return to do more writing on this blog soon-ish about — among other things — Village, reading, and traveling!

I was delighted to chat with Samir Kaji on his podcast Venture Unlocked about the history and strategy of Village Global, and a range of other inside baseball VC topics like portfolio construction. We launched the firm a few years ago; it’s been an amazing journey. Here’s the Spotify link or in Apple Podcasts. And embedded below.

By the way, if you’re starting a company this summer, apply to our Accelerator for a personalized, white glove experience alongside our investment. And also: A few months ago, we announced a $125 million Fund II.

Disclaimer: This presentation does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any security. No representation is being made that any investor or portfolio will, or is likely to, achieve profits or losses similar to those discussed. Targets discussed have been established based on several assumptions that may vary depending on the type of investment.  There is no guarantee that the conditions on which such assumptions are based will materialize as anticipated and will be applicable to Village Global’s portfolio investments.

I recently interviewed two interesting people on the Village Global podcast (you can find it in any podcast player).

Michael Balaoing, founder of Candlelion, is an A+ public speaking and oral communications coach who’s helped me a great deal. Few people have been as instrumental to my ability to deliver speeches or presentations at a high level. In the conversation we discuss:

– The importance of the acronym WTF (what’s the feeling?) when you’re giving a presentation.
– The four roles that you take on as a speaker: captain, pilot, guide, and game show host.
– The five questions to ask when seeking feedback on a presentation.
– How to keep the audience engaged throughout a talk, not just during the Q&A at the end.
– How to bake stories into your presentations and remix your talks for different audiences.
– The keys to virtual communication in the COVID era.

I also led a conversation with Elliot Shmukler, a legendary product management exec in Silicon Valley who’s helped build LinkedIn, Instacart, and Wealthfront. When I was working at LinkedIn, I recall noticing that Elliot was frequently the smartest person in the room (or so it seemed to me). We’re thrilled to be investors in his new company, Anomalo, and in the conversation we discuss:

– How growth marketing has evolved over the last decade or so since he was an early pioneer of the field at LinkedIn in 2008.
– What people misunderstand about A/B testing, and the right way to go about it.
– Why he doesn’t like the term “growth hacking.”
– Why people should both be more humble and more ambitious with their growth marketing program.
– Lessons from his time at LinkedIn, eBay, Wealthfront, and Instacart.
– Finding a co-founder before finding the idea that became Anomalo.
– The perils of bad data and how Anomalo is helping to fix that problem.

I recently did an interview on The Full Ratchet podcast and described the story of Village Global and got into a bunch of detail on our strategy and thesis.

We’re honored to have Mark Pincus back us at Village Global. He’s one of the most creative and energetic founders in the Valley. I’ve known Mark for a long time. I really enjoyed the opportunity to chat with him in this fireside chat (embedded below) where he covers his entrepreneurial career to date and lessons learned, the founding of Zynga, his philosophies on product management, and more.