Yohei Nakajima

Author: Yohei

  • Graduation Rate of Seed to Series A in Major US Cities

    I randomly became curious about the graduation rate of startups from seed round to Series A round, specifically around the context of cities. I thought this might actually be more interesting to look at than total $ invested, or total number of rounds. For the analysis, I looked at 6 major cities: SF, LA, Seattle, […]

  • Hands-on with Magic Leap

    I had a chance to try Magic Leap last night. I’d read various reviews that the Magic Leap didn’t live up to the hype, so my expectations were low. I was pleasantly surprised with the experience. I haven’t tried other AR headsets so I can’t compare, but here are some thoughts. When you first put […]

  • An exercise in understanding the impact of new technologies.

    The effect of new technologies are difficult to understand. I think we’re still learning a lot about how social media influences the world today, which is an extension of how the internet affects us – both of which might not seem that new to us. Today, some of the newest topics we’re discussing are blockchain, […]

  • Creating Wealth Through Sustainability

    In 2017 alone, Bitcoin created massive value for early investors in it – billions of dollars. This made me think – did Bitcoin really create that much value for society? Where does this wealth come from? Can wealth be created? Or is wealth a zero sum game? My gut says it is. I leaned on […]

  • The Role of Venture Capital

    I like to view the world through different “lenses” to help me understand it. It’s a means to generalize the world and help me consider patterns. Thinking of the world simply as a collection of matter and space is what I call the “physicist lens”, a collection of incentives is the “economist lens”, a collection […]

  • VCs are like Snowflakes

    The most common fundraising question I get from founders is “what do VCs look for in a startup?” Aside from the obvious strong team, I tell them this: Each one is unique. When approaching VCs, this is important to understand. You should do as much homework as possible before approaching any VC. Here are a […]

  • Food tracking

    One of the harder data sets to track is food consumption, which can in theory provide some vague estimate count of nutrient, calorie, etc. over time. Once tracking this data becomes easier, we can start to correlate this against health outcomes. I’ve come across two approaches recently, both of which seem impressive when looking at […]

  • Venture Capital News – May 19, 2017

    AngelList is funding the minor leagues of venture capital (and giving founders $500,000 to start) AngelList continues to disrupt the venture capital industry. Here’s how they are turning operators into venture capitalists. Here’s how likely your startup is to get acquired at any stage Survival rate and acquisition rate of startups based on fundraising round. […]

  • The Ying and Yang of Love and Hate

    I’ve read a lot about love and hate these past few days, as if one is good and the other is bad. Love and hate, however, are two sides of the same coin. If you hate globalization, you probably love your country. If you love Hillary, you probably hate Trump. If you love love, you probably […]

  • The Role of Algorithms in Venture Capital

    We first saw program trading, where computers were preprogrammed to execute a stock trade based on predetermined conditions, in the 1980s. Today, over 1/3 of stock trades worldwide and well over 1/2 of stock trades in the US are executed by algorithms. Algorithmic venture capital investing is far from common place today, and many argue […]