About a year ago, a good friend of mine, Jonathon Triest, mentioned that I should start a fantasy VC portfolio. As a young VC, there’s no better way to gain exposure to the ecosystem by placing bets and watching the results unfold over time. Taking Jonathon’s advice and being a huge fan of Danielle Morrill’s fantasy portfolio posts, I’m excited to share my fantasy VC portfolio.
Thesis
Over the past year, I’ve been developing an investment thesis that aims to answer who I want to invest in and why? The thesis is evolving, but the foundation will remain the more or less the same. I’m passionate about:
- Founders that have extraordinary drive to make the world a better place
- Founders that are exceptional storytellers
- Ideas that radically change the status quo
- Ideas that once the story is told, you can’t imagine a world without it
Investments
With this in mind, I’m excited to share two angel investments that I’ve made that embody this thesis. My first investment in Lemonade is about the need to break up the cult of the insurance industry, realign incentives, and be a force of social good in an industry that mainly interacts with customers during their worst moments. You can read a bit more about why I love Lemonade (and the founders Daniel and Shai) here.
I’ve also been fortunate to invest in uBeam, an LA-based startup that is developing wireless charging by leveraging ultrasound technology. Seeing this technology function in real life blew me away. Aside from the clear market need for the technology, I invested in a founder, Meredith Perry, who is perhaps one of the most impressive people I’ve ever met. Along with COO/CBO, Kostas Mallios, the uBeam team is quite literally “making a dent in the universe”, to quote Steve Jobs.
If VC is about investing in moonshots, Meredith, Kostas, Daniel, and Shai will take us to the moon.
Fantasy Portfolio
Although I’ve just started out, here is a list of startups that I have my eye on. These are companies that if I had a fund, I’d love to back based solely on public information. The goal of this experiment is to see how these “investments” take shape and perform over time, while encouraging other young VCs to not let a lack of access or funds restrict them from the fun of backing awesome dreams and founders.
- Standard Cognition— AI powered checkout. Heard of Amazon Go? Standard Cognition is the technology that enables the same solution, but better. Using only computer vision, the team is able to track purchases, consumer behavior, in-store insights, and more.
- Brandless— Have you ever noticed the premium you pay for brand-name items like Advil or BandAids? Brandless levels the playing field by offering online groceries shopping of “brandless” products for the sweet price of $3 each.
- Point — fractional home ownership. When you buy a home, you’re typically tying up hundreds of thousands of dollars until you liquidate the property. With Point, you can unlock the wealth in your home by selling fractional ownership. Point gets paid their fractional stake when you sell the house or buy back the equity whenever you choose.
- WayUp— jobs for college students and recent grads. Ever notice how many entry level jobs require 3–5 years of experience? WayUp partners with enterprises and students to create a new job hunting experience. Candidates only see jobs that are relevant for them and enterprises are able to hyper-target the type of candidates they attract from the best universities in the US.
- Zebra Medical Vision— leveraging AI to diagnose diseases. Zebra develops advanced algorithms to read and analyze radiological images and diagnose patients. Zebra recently partnered with Google with offer their solution for $1 per scan.
By design, this “portfolio” is only five companies. Over the next few months, I’ll be adding more to the list and tracking the progress of the existing companies.
Thanks to Jonathon and Danielle for the inspiration and for the companies above for being awesome!
Hi! I’m Jordan, and I work in VC in Israel. There’s a lot happening in the VC/startup scene and I figured I’d post my observations here. All opinions above are my own. Feel free to follow on Twitter: @jordanodinsky.