Pattern Recognition is a journal of thoughts and strategies on venture capital investments.
Ian is a co-founder and partner at Greycroft Partners in New York City. He has been a venture capitalist since 2001.
Archaeologists debate when the first stock exchange was formed – most say it was around 400 BC in ancient Rome. By that account the hand-to-hand trading of securities existed for over two millennia before the US Congress and SEC authorized the first electronic exchange in 1998. Within a few years the physical stock exchange was replaced […]
I am amazed at the recent ascent of RocketFuel, which has grown faster than any ad network I have ever seen. Budgets in the display media business are guarded by large agency holding companies, and agencies typically discourage clients from scaling this fast with a specific vendor. It looks like Rocketfuel has found a way […]
Welcome to my first political-themed blog post (with a mix of social science): Every election cycle, research firms contact voters and ask questions like “How important is reforming Medicare and Social Security?” or “How important is reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80% over the next 20 years?” I get these forms in the mail too, […]
As we approach the end of 2013 I am feeling a little anxious. If you are a gambler you might know the feeling, it is the same sense you get during a good run. The dice are hot and the numbers keep coming. Like a good sport you keep pressing. But at some point you […]
When Twitter upgraded their mobile application this year, to a version called “New, New Twitter”, there was one significant change. When I clicked on a link, rather than open my Chrome browser to load the web page, Twitter loaded a built-in browser. This made a seamless transition between Twitter and the web, without ever leaving […]
In 2010, while the financial crisis was still unwinding, I traveled down to Tampa with my wife to visit her family. On a back road not far from our hotel was a recently built housing complex. These were beautiful, low-rise brick buildings, with landscaped lawns and tile roofs that reminded me of Florence. The sign […]
[Title borrowed from Aileen Lee’s essay “Welcome to the Unicorn Club.” It is worth a read.] [Editors Note: I don’t know the guy in this photo.] This past February we flew the entire Greycroft team to Utah for a ski weekend, which doubled as our firm-wide offsite. In addition to the usual stuff, every partner had […]
I recently realized that I have given a lot of entrepreneurs bad advice when it comes to software sales. Unfortunately I have been doing it for many years as an investor. I used to think that the goal of a Series A software investor was to build a great team, build a great product, and […]
Five years ago, in a three floor walk-up above an Indian restaurant, the team at Buddy Media unveiled the first social media management system. I remember the board meeting like it was yesterday. For the first time, someone could create a Facebook page without using Facebook’s obscure, in-house programming language. This would be a huge […]
We have all done it – you visit a website and start looking for information, but quickly get frustrated because what you want is not on the home page. Next you try site search, which takes you to a landing page filled with blue, indecipherable links. Out of frustration you click on the back button […]