Part 2 If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. Baz Luhrman You will be overwhelmed with contradictory advice As a new aquarist you…

The FTX story is just so apropos of the issues discussed in my September 2022 post How to scam investors — 4 easy steps, that I had to write this update to add FTX to the WeWork, Theranos, Wirecard and Nikola stories. FTX — Sam Bankman-Fried Investors: Sequoia, Lightspeed Venture Partners, SoftBank Vision Fund, …

Part 1. Years ago when I lived in Arizona, I proudly showed off my 250l saltwater aquarium to a guest — after a brief inspection he commented — “have you noticed how its lawyers and doctors that have the biggest aquariums — must be related to their need to play…

VC investment business model is similar to the book publishing and movie industries — it is dominated by betting on “blockbusters” and the power law. A few stars in the portfolio will create the vast majority of your returns, while the rest of the portfolio loses money. This is…

The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new Socrates Both in sports and business at some point you will hit a wall. …

Now that our investment period at Change Ventures is ending, I wanted to gather my lessons learned from the past eight year with Fund I (USA), Fund II (EU) and the 30+ investments to date, together with the thousands of startups mentored/coached and evaluated as a judge/coach/board member at Prototron…

Lessons learned from founders of WeWork, Theranos, Wirecard and Nikola “They were careless people … they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald WeWork — Adam Neumann Investors: Benchmark, SoftBank…

Just a few years ago most VCs shunned investments into edTech, considering it to be one of the toughest industries for startups to break into, scale and monetize. In the past couple years that perception has changed dramatically. Covid closures highlighted major inefficiencies and gaps in digital transformation of…

„Doing good is good for business“ Richard Branson Change Ventures is not a so called „impact fund“ so our investors make no special allowances for making investments with a social or environmental impact that would trump their 3–5X return expectations. Nevertheless, we have invested in 4 amazing startups that…