Unlock the NFX map to understand how each network effect works — in episode 3 of the Network Effects Masterclass, General Partner James Currier will review the 16 types of network effects and how they reinforce each other in powerful ways. Learn to analyze the NFX map to determine how to engineer sustained, long-term growth into your startup. This is an abridged version of episode 3 from The Network Effects Masterclass, curated for audio and listening on the go. For the full video...

Unlearn what you thought you knew about network effects. This episode takes you to the very beginning and lays out network theory from square one. Listen in as James covers the basics of network principles to use as a launchpad for the rest of the course and see how your startup behaves as a network itself. This is an abridged version of episode 2 from The Network Effects Masterclass, curated for audio and listening on the go. For the full video experience, transcripts, and recommended...

Few understand the hidden complexities of network effects - learn all there is to know about building iconic companies from day one. This is episode 1 of the Network Effects Masterclass (audio edition). You'll hear a short introduction from NFX Partner James Currier on what you will learn in this masterclass to build your company into the next world-class startup and understand why network effects are the #1 advantage in driving exponential growth. This is an abridged version of episode 1...

At NFX, we've spent over 20 years studying the power of network effects. As founders, we’ve built them into companies worth $10B+. As investors, we teach our founders these playbooks. Now we’re putting everything we know into an 11-episode Network Effects Masterclass, made for early-stage startup founders and their teams. There will be a full video and transcript experience on NFX.com — but we’re also abridging each episode for a native audio experience here for our NFX podcast listeners....

NFX Bio is committed to backing Scientist-Founders who are inspired to change the world. But there are far fewer scientists-Founders today than there should be. Instead, scientists often follow the path that academia paves for them: from graduate school, to a PhD, to a postdoc, to another role in academia. In this episode, NFX General Partner and Head of NFX Bio, Omri Amirav-Drory, sat down with Stanford professor and Pumpkinseed Founder Jennifer Dionne and former Columbia professor and...

Some problems are so big, they feel crazy to even try to solve them. Global homelessness, for example. 1.6 billion people today are living without adequate housing*. This represents a massive, underserved market, and a type of problem often overlooked by tech Founders. Fortunately, Brett Hagler and his Co-Founders at New Story Charity are tackling it head-on, with an unlikely combination of 3D printed homes, Bitcoin-based mortgages, and fundraising via NFTs. Pete Flint has had the...

Nextdoor, the social media app for neighborhoods, which is actively used in 1 in 3 households in the U.S., was recently valued at $4.3B and listed on the NYSE last week (November 8, 2021) under the ticker symbol "KIND." Today’s episode is a glimpse into the thoughtful, humanist view of Sarah Friar, the CEO of Nextdoor, former CFO of Square, and board member of Slack. She cautions us not to disappear into the metaverse, and also encourages today’s and tomorrow’s Founders to cure gaps in the...

NFX has been increasingly active in LatAm over the last few years, largely drawn there by an incredibly talented pool of Founders in the region. To understand the unique challenges and opportunities of LatAm, James talked with Antonia Rojas, the youngest female partner at ALLVP and a rising star in the startup ecosystem there. They co-led the Nuvocargo Seed round together. Based in Mexico City, she has a “boots on the ground” view of Latin America that I love. Methods for building network...

The Covid pandemic removed barriers to global hiring and remote team building. It exposed startups, by necessity, to all-new solutions for growing and bonding their teams. Most companies advanced through the pandemic by stages: first survival mode, then waiting it out -- and now they are ready to fundamentally shift their hiring strategies to reflect our new reality. It’s clear now that there are lasting shifts in the market, and that Founders and CEOs need to update their mental models for...

The next evolution of companies will be created in public with early customers, partners, and supporters. They’ll be community-owned and operated, building upon the playbooks created by early NFT and play-to-earn projects. Because many of the web 3.0 advantages are hard to adopt as a large web 2.0 company, as a Founder you have to focus on the big ideas: ownership, collaboration, and community. In today's episode, NFX Partner Morgan Beller talks with Cuy Sheffield (head of crypto at Visa)...

Visionary Founders, instead of solving market failures or fixing problems that are clear, push market evolution. They commit to pushing society to the upward bend of the exponential technology curve. Today, our friend Azeem Azhar, former VC-backed Founder, creator of The Exponential View blog, and author of the new book The Exponential Age, gives Founders specific hooks and non-obvious ways of explaining how quickly something’s going to change — right before it does. For Founders, market...

Today, Mammoth Biosciences announced their series C and D at more than a $1B valuation. Mammoth is a startup story that Founders should be following because there is so much to learn from their path from the lab to unicorn status. At no other time in modern history has the need for science to lead our society toward a better future been more apparent and immense. We can meet this need by investing in the next generation of tech-bio companies like Mammoth. NFX led Mammoth’s Pre-Seed and Seed...

"We have all the technical and economic ingredients needed to build a massive economy in space. We’re not focused on Mars or the Moon, we’re singularly focused on building a space economy that makes life better on Earth.” Today NFX Partner Morgan Beller is joined by Andy Lapsa, Co-Founder & CEO of Stoke Space Technologies, a company building reusable second-stage rockets to seamlessly Earth and orbit. Founded in 2019 and based in Renton, Washington they have been focused on the...

This is The Founders’ List – audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community. Network effect businesses are reshaping the world. Network effects are still the best and most powerful force we know to create persistent value for billions of people. However, we think that too little has been said about how society should adapt to these new network effect behemoths we’re helping create. NFX Partner James Currier outlines how the network...

'Stoner Cats' is an adult animated series centered on five house cats who repeatedly save their beloved owner created by Mila Kunis, Ashton Kutcher, and friends, including the creative forces behind Toy Story 2, Spider-Verse, Happy Feet, and Cryptokitties. Users will be able to buy Stoner Cats NFTs and can use those tokens to access the comedy cartoon online. The show will be an estimated five minutes long per episode. The tokens purchased will go toward funding future episodes of the...

What few people see is that Trillion-Dollar Leadership focuses relentlessly on the “who.” Jeff Bezos and Eric Schmidt both aligned their companies around this question: Who are we serving and who is going to get us there? Today, Ann Hiatt (former Chief of Staff / Executive Business Partner to Bezos and then Schmidt for 14+ years) shares with NFX Partner James Currier her insider stories, analysis, and patterns of Bezos' and Schmidt's leadership principles and mental models. She gives us...

This is The Founders’ List – audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community. In this article (published in 2014) Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin challenges the Bitcoin maximalist movement a few different ways. Bitcoin maximalists believe that all other digital currencies are inferior to Bitcoin. The idea that an environment of multiple competing cryptocurrencies is undesirable and that it is both righteous and inevitable that the Bitcoin...

Over the past twenty years, tech entrepreneurs have created and captured enormous value by launching new marketplaces to the world. Today NFX Partner James Currier talks with Professor Scott Duke Kominers, who has been teaching the course 'Making Markets' along with other classes at Harvard Business School. With over 80 academic papers published, he is in the MBA Class of 1960 Associate Professor of Business Administration in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit, as well as a Faculty...

This is The Founders’ List – audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community. Everyone knows that KPIs are critical, but often Founders are not looking at KPIs from the right angle. As a General Partner at NFX, Gigi Levy-Weiss now asks three questions to every Founder he meets. Their responses speak volumes about their odds of success: - Do you diligently track KPIs? - What KPIs have you chosen to track? - Have you set appropriate goals...

This is The Founders’ List – audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community. When the economy eventually normalizes, demand for labor will recover, and work will recover, but the shifts in supply and demand will result in a new and sizable set of unmet market needs for job placement. Online marketplaces will be a critical tool in getting people back to work quickly, efficiently, and at scale. They will also enable new ways for people to...

In the face of a global pandemic and a financial meltdown, Founders are confronted with a new reality. If you are running a startup today, this will likely be one of the most challenging climates you’ll ever face. Launched in July 2012, Bizzabo is a SaaS All-in-One event success platform. They help organizers create successful events by empowering them to build amazing websites, sell tickets, grow communities, go mobile and maximize event experiences - using a beautiful, user-friendly...

Rob Goldman joined the growth team at Facebook in 2012 - the same year that News Feed ads launched. He became Facebook's VP of Ads and was responsible for more than 99% of their revenue until he left seven years later in 2019. Today, Rob and NFX Partner James Currier focus on the tragedy of measurement inside these complex dynamic systems like Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. Very few people in the world understand how to pick the measurements to be measured, measure them accurately, then...

This is The Founders’ List – audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community. Fundraising is a learned skill – and VCs almost always have the upper hand because they deal with it all day, everyday. Over the years of founding, advising, and investing in companies, Gigi has learned that VCs are better at startup fundraising than entrepreneurs. In reality, knowing what to expect from VCs – the negotiation dynamics Founders are likely to...