Interviewing Maxine Bédat for Forbes this week about the Fashion Act. What would you like to know?

Sending love this Sunday AM... publishing my weekly email this morning, I wanted to acknowledge how nuanced our most meaningful relationship really is.

credit: Emily Oster

I won the biggest competition in the game today 🤓

Last call for applications to First Round's PMF Method. Thousands of founders have applied, and the cohort that's coming together so far is pretty special.

If you're a technical founder who's just getting started building a sales-led B2B product, you have until 11:59pm PDT today

This is so cool! It’s #3 and #5 for me:

Saw a couple deals the past two weeks where larger platforms overpriced a Seed term sheet to win the deal as an option to take the A round.

I thought those times were over, but they clearly are not. And I don’t think it benefits the founders.

Y’all are optimistic about TikTok’s staying power - 1.1 million creators are depending on it!

Likelihood TikTok actually gets banned (assuming no divestment)

$750B worth of goods every year in the US are returned, and most end up in landfill. Yikes.

Today I unpacked my feelings about returns, why the math of returns doesn't math, and what's ahead (hint: LOTS of liquidation):

aubriepagano.substack.com/p/caught-my-at…

This was a great article and I hope ppl take away the key point:

Women deserve second acts after faltering just as much as anyone else.

Hats off to Sophia Amoruso 3.0 for being honest and self aware in sharing her journey.

elle.com/culture/a46716…

They say if you ask 10 investors how they underwrite founders, you'll get 11 opinions. Well, we at Alpaca VC 🦙 asked 67 preseed thru Series A investors, and here's what we found...

🧵

One of the things you learn from getting the shit kicked out of you as a CEO is to be comfortable with uncomfortable conversations.

For anyone investing in consumer businesses Aubrie Pagano 🦙's substack is a must read. aubriepagano.substack.com/?utm_medium=em…

👇🏼 same with founders, the best don’t need much, if anything, from investors

Several startups pitched me they won’t need “to raise any more money”

I have 2 minds abt this strategy :
- it abates dilution + can lead to a successful outcome rel. to $$ in
- capital is fuel to best competition, so this is short-sighted + a defensive pitch signaling the times

Fascinating study from 2012 Berkeley that shows wealthier individuals are less compassionate and more greedy.

scientificamerican.com/article/how-we…

The craziest stat I’ve heard about 2024 is that Abercrombie & Fitch stock outperformed NVIDIA, soaring 285%(!!)

- From Rex Woodbury (if you don’t read him, you should), who sees this as the GenZ nostalgia factor (don’t disagree)