Growing up in Palo Alto, CA, with supportive, entrepreneurial parents, I knew I wanted to build. I remember completing my Computer Science degree, thinking I finally had a skill that would at least keep me employed, and I was privileged enough to know that if I ever truly became destitute, my parents would bridge me. (In reality, they went above and beyond to give me everything I ever needed and wanted, which is a privilege I don’t take lightly.)
I wanted to create organizations that made meaningful impacts, and so far that has happened. …
I recently started making more investments using Options, and wanted to share initial impressions on uses for Options Trading:
Reasons to Trade Options
- Lottery Tickets
- Don’t like the current price
Lottery Tickets
In reviewing advice from the world’s Top 99 Investors(1), a consistent rule is ‘you can’t time the markets.’
Now the best investors have made good timing or event-based calls, notably George Soros who correctly made a currency call that I believe netted $1B. However, this is not a core strategy of the best of the best.
It is healthy to view short-term options as lottery tickets, or a…
Public safety, with a focus on respect and privacy
In this unprecedented year, community safety has never been more top of mind. We are all in this together and only get through this trying time with respect and consideration.
In this backdrop, Flock Safety is poised to be Atlanta’s next start-up success. The company’s security system captures license plate numbers to help minimize crime. A license plate is a public record, and being able to drive is a privilege, not a right, hence recording them is much more ‘American’ than facial recognition.
How effective is Flock? Well, if it can…
There are a few unique opportunities to invest in a company doing well by doing good, and I am excited to share my recent investment in PadSplit.
*Disclaimer — I am working hard to not make this the ‘VC victory lap’ (btw, all I did was cross the starting line — nothing to boast about) post that you see often. I just want to highlight an amazing company, where I feel fortunate to have a seat on their ride.*
A short commute is one of life’s greatest luxuries
Getting to and from work quickly and easily is a huge luxury…
A CEO I invested in asked me this question recently, so figured I would share with the group, hopefully, to share some learnings.
We were two years into building Kahuna and we were again constrained by capital. We had closed Tier 1 customers and needed a bigger team to better support them and build more product, faster. Hence I was starting the A round fundraise.
I made the common mistake of living and breathing Kahuna. (nuanced discussion on how much is ‘too much’ focus on your start-up) My answer was always to do more work, to the detriment of family…
Started and ran Glow for the first two years, then transitioned to hyper-active Board Member.
In a decade (2006–2015), GLOW was able to serve over 300,000 students with financial education and aid. I am tremendously proud of all the hard work 100’s of people put into GLOW and am grateful for the 1,000’s of people who contributed to GLOW’s success.
GLOW was acquired by BUILD (www.build.org) to continue the mission of financial literacy and advocacy for the future of America.
The Glow Foundation combined financial planning with monetary grants to ensure that deserving students attend college. Students are enrolled in…
More product innovation from Kahuna in partnership with early customer ApartmentList
Re-print from https://andrewchen.co/why-people-are-turning-off-push/ — 2014
New data shows up to 60% of users opt-out of push notifications (Guest Post)
[Andrew: There’s a real shortage of information about push notifications, CTRs, response rates, etc. Partly this is due to the immaturity of mobile as a marketing platform, but it’s also because of the opacity of the iOS platform. I recently ran into Kahuna, a Sequoia-backed startup led by Adam Marchick that’s compiled a treasure trove of data about push notifications. Today, in an article authored by Shannon and Alli of the Kahuna team, they share some of what they know about why people turn off push notifications. …
Early customer innovation with Yahoo — 2014
Adam Marchick
Investor & 3x Founder —Active Investor (15+ private investments); Founder/CEO Alpine.AI (through Acq.); Founder/CEO Kahuna (beat plan 12 quarters in a row)
