Jeff Bezos doesn’t spend much time schmoozing with investors. He takes just a handful of meetings with the fund managers who own Amazon’s shares each year. And when he comes to the U.K., there’s just one investor he regularly meets with: Baillie Gifford ~> How an old-school money manager became one of the world’s most important tech investors

London-based accelerator Entrepreneur First has a mission: to build fast-growth startups from scratch ~> Entrepreneur First turns strangers into startup founders Alex Crompton who runs EF’s programme in Singapore digs even deeper into their thesis: “Uncovering the secret to finding, creating, and supporting them, means owning the supply of a scarce resource” ~> EF is alchemy for the 21st century

By comparing rates of investment before and after AWS was introduced in 2006, Nanda and his colleagues could see how VCs changed their strategies with startups such as cloud-based software and service companies, which could take advantage of AWS to decrease costs, versus others like biotechs that were less impacted by the new technologies" ~> Amazon Web Services Changed the Way VCs Fund Startups

Founders Factory talk through the process they use in their incubator program to create new businesses ~> How we helped a hundred young entrepreneurs create seven investible businesses in under two hours

When you have a $100 billion fund, you can lead $502 million Series B funding rounds ~> Improbable, a London-based maker of virtual worlds and real-world simulations, has raised $502 million in a funding round led by SoftBank And here’s a fascinating look at what Improbable are up to ~> If we’re living in a simulation, this UK startup probably built it

“By comparing rates of investment before and after AWS was introduced in 2006, Nanda and his colleagues could see how VCs changed their strategies with startups such as cloud-based software and service companies, which could take advantage of AWS to decrease costs, versus others like biotechs that were less impacted by the new technologies.

Dell wants to publicise its investments. The venture arm – which kept a very low profile when it was part of EMC – is coming out of “stealth,” including disclosing portfolio companies as part of a new push to highlight young businesses. The company is spending about $100 million annually on the funding of startups ~> Dell Takes Venture Arm Out of Stealth, Aims to Spend $100 Million Annually

Monaco Investment Corp. will draw funding from Monaco’s monarchy, its residents and other well-heeled families in Asia and the Middle East ~> The Private-Equity World Has a New Rival: Monaco

Two of the biggest personalities in European VC are joining forces and raising a new early-stage fund ~> After leaving Accel, Fred Destin is raising seed fund with Twenty Minute VC host Harry Stebbings

The venture arm of Weiss Peck & Greer LLC renamed itself Lightspeed Venture Partners and announced the closing of a new $1 billion fund focusing on communications and Internet-infrastructure software ~> Weiss Peck & Greer Becomes Lightspeed

Benchmark has added a new general partner, Sarah Tavel. Benchmark has received some blowback in recent years for not diversifying its ranks ~> Benchmark just hired Sarah Tavel, the first female general partner in the firm’s history

Notation is actively making investments in teams that are building products and services on top of blockchain technology, including directly into specific cryptocurrencies and tokens ~> 14 Thoughts (and Questions) on navigating the blockchain landscape in 2017

Gil Dibner takes a look at Systems of Intelligence, barriers to entry, and enterprise VC investing in the post-SaaS world: “In assessing the value of a “Systems of Intelligence” company, we’ve got to focus on the barriers to entry created by the specific system that company is creating. The value will not come from the “intelligence” alone. The value is in the system itself” ~> Systems of Intelligence: Is this the VC meta-thesis we’ve been looking for?

On the Seedcamp podcast, Carlos Espinal explained why healthcare was the most actively invested in industry for AI last year ~> Assessing the AI-Readiness of an industry

Andreessen Horowitz partner Frank Chen is here to tell you that anyone can utilise the technology, not just members of the “priesthood" ~> Here’s The Unofficial Silicon Valley Explainer On Artificial Intelligence

Biology has emerged as one of the most important technology platforms of the 21st century. With the arrival of the gene-editing technology Crispr, biology will soon converge with everyday medicine, big agriculture, and artificial intelligence to influence the future of all life on our planet ~> Crispr Makes It Clear: The US Needs a Biology Strategy, and Fast

Research shows “Cultural bias might be driving the perception of lower entrepreneurial skills”, and that investors claimed emerging market entrepreneurs lacked experience, despite evidence to the contrary ~> Why do investors continue to shortchange entrepreneurs in emerging markets?

Struggling to seal deals in the United States as regulatory scrutiny tightens, Chinese companies looking to invest in promising technology are finding a warmer welcome for their cash in Israel ~> China’s tech money heads for Israel as U.S. welcome wanes

Dipping into brick-and-mortar campuses could help American tech giants win major battles against foreign regulators ~> Silicon Valley’s Big Bet on Europe’s Hip New Start-Up Scene

Conventional wisdom has it that Amazon, Apple, Google, or Facebook are unassailable in their core market. Conventional wisdom is wrong. ~> Hunting the Four Horsemen of Tech

 Truly great long term opportunities don’t come along often, and when they do, you have to have the cash to capitalise on them ~> The Future of Family Office Investing: Investing in Tech & Private Credit

An explanation of how Deep Space Ventures developed their multiple investment theses ~> The Birth of a Venture Capital Investment Thesis

An essential skill of entrepreneurs and early stage VCs is to “be able to see through the fog of an emerging market and pick out the winning idea.” Fred Wilson’s explains how you might go about this ~> Seeing Through The Fog

Purely from a mathematically perspective, small funds certainly appear have a less daunting path to returning a multiple of investor capital. A notion that resonates strongly when considering the paucity of large exits over the last decade. However, the actual analysis is significantly more complex ~> Micro-VC — Smaller is better, but the math is still really hard

Whether it’s reaching Mars or boring tunnels through the earth, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX loves to talk about basic math ~> Simple math is why Elon Musk’s companies keep doing what others don’t even consider possible

Out of the more than 200 unique technologies that have ever appeared on a Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Technology, just a handful of technologies have been identified early and traveled even somewhat predictably through a Hype Cycle from start to finish ~> 8 Lessons from 20 Years of Hype Cycles

A sincere thank you to everyone for their kind words regarding Series F so far.

 In truth, the main reason for me doing this is to keep myself accountable and ensuring I keep myself up to date with what’s happening. Knowing I have nearly 900 people to report to each week, means that I have to take the time to keep learning around the topic consistently. 

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