Social Leverage Letter | Issue #25

I’m excited to announce Facebook parent company Meta has closed the acquisition of our Fund II portfolio company Kustomer. Facebook initially reached an agreement to acquire Kustomer in November of 2020, but the deal was subject to an FTC review, and a separate approval by authorities in the U.

One Month ago I wrote ‘The End of Fomo‘. The gist: The last twelve to 18 months was a FOMO era. They will say that inflation and interest rates killed this great market run, but as someone watching and writing about investing every day here I knew it was going to be supply. Supply is …

I wrote about pacing a few years ago. I am a fan of a steady pace, not too fast, not too slow. Sometimes the opportunity set forces you to go faster. As I wrote then: I don’t think a VC firm should manage to a pacing number. It should manage to the opportunity set that […]

Listen to this episode from Odd Lots on Spotify. It's been a terrible few months for growth stocks. Small, unprofitable tech companies have crashed. SPACs have gotten crushed. Recent IPOs got crushed. And even the FANGs are way off their old highs. Of course, we don't have very much visibility into what's happening in private markets, so we only have anecdotes and inferences. But what's the big story? And is this the start of a big change? On this episode, we speak to Howard Lindzon, a GP at Social Leverage and the co-founder of Stocktwits, to get a sense of what's really going on. Howard launched a SPAC last year, does public market stock investing, as well as private VC investing, so he really knows the whole space very well. He discusses multiple reasons why tech turned rapidly, and why it might be awhile before it all bounces back. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

Listen to this episode from Panic with Friends - Howard Lindzon on Spotify. I'm excited to bring one of my favorite guests back for his second round of Panic: Yoshi Yokokowa, founder of Alpaca, a Social Leverage Fund III portfolio company. Coming to you all the way from Japan, Yoshi is here to talk fintech, the stress of a recap, and the stress of losing momentum at an early stage. And to all those founders out there listening, we don't talk about recaps or losing momentum much because it's not fun. But people pricing their companies to perfection in the first year, should be careful what they wish for; things can and do go sideways.  Guest - Yoshi Yokokawa, Co-Founder and CEO at Alpaca  howardlindzon.com, alpaca.markets  Twitter: @howardlindzon, @PanicwFriends, @iyoshyoshi, @AlpacaHQ, @knutjensen  linkedin.com/in/yoshiyokokawa  #fintech #invest #investment #venturecapital #stockmarket #finance  Show Notes: (00:39) – Show intro (04:50) – Introducing Yoshi (05:46) – Quick summation of Alpaca (08:44) – A distributed global workforce (10:32) – Extreme tailwinds in the fintech industry (11:46) – The "Great Round Trip" (13:14) – A macro bet on owning the stack (14:40) – Disrupters, incumbents, and wallet share (17:10) – Not everybody gets a balloon and lollipop (19:08) – Transparency and how things work (19:45) – Open source. Like water/public utility (22:02) – The 'sameness' of financial services (22:14) – Leveraging information asymmetry (23:36) – Advice to Robinhood (24:12) – Understanding your customers (24:56) – Laying some digital pipe (26:48) – Advice to fintech founders (32:34) – Filling the gap for certain regions (37:03) – Creating more convenience peer-to-peer (37:48) – Keeping up with fintech trends (42:06) – Closing thoughts

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