I had intended to write about about our most recent investment in 1stdibs today.
But between the press coverage, my partner Todd’s post, and my colleague David Haber’s guest TC post on marketplaces…well, I think it’s well covered.
So instead I thought I’d talk about one of my favorite things — getting the band back together.
One of the hardest things to do in startups is putting a team together. It’s always nice when you can bring a team back together that has worked well in the past. Before I became a VC, I had this experience of working in Silicon Valley with the same team back to back in different companies. It’s a joy.
And when we started Spark Capital, it was similar. I had previously worked with my partner Santo at Charles River Ventures. He was a partner over there and I was an entrepreneur in residence.
The 1stdibs investment is also bringing the band back together. We previously backed the 1stdibs CEO David Rosenblatt at Group Commerce which he cofounded and is chairman. And we were on a board together at Twitter.
I’m delighted we continue to see the band being put together again across our portfolio in recent months.
A few additional examples:
Our recent investment in Lift, has me and Ev on a board together again after we were on the Twitter board together for more than 3 years.
John Maloney served as Tumblr’s President has now joined the board at Storenvy (we are investors in Storenvy).
Earlier this month we announced our investment in Picturelife. The founder & CEO Charles Forman was previously the founder at OMGPOP which we backed.
Ran Harnivo was the cofounder and CEO at 5min which was acquired by AOL. We were investors in 5min and Ran joined the board of another Spark portfolio company, Onswipe, earlier this year.
Fareed Mosavat worked with my partner Nabeel at Conduit and Zynga and just joined Runkeeper as head of product.
There are other examples for sure but all of this came to mind as I was thinking about 1stdibs. We are delighted to be investors in the company. It’s an exciting one for sure. And I’m personally delighted that we are back together again with David Rosenblatt.