1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Gus Tai of Trinity Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: The whole experience of curated personal shopping is just barely starting to come into the fore. The computer science required to power that is going to deliver a very different kind of experience once that starts to come into existence. As Gus said, is it a large enough segment? Fashion is a gigantic

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Gus Tai of Trinity Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: The reason why I ask this question is to explain how a VC looks at an investment opportunity. Mark Vadon had his own investment thesis but Trinity Ventures and Gus also had their own investment thesis. The two thesis merged for an investment to happen. I’ve said this many a time. Over 99%

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Gus Tai of Trinity Ventures (Part 1)

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Gus Tai was recorded in September 2014.  Gus Tai, General Partner at Trinity Ventures, discusses their investment thesis around e-commerce over the years – from BlueNile in 1999, to Zulily, Dot, and Bo, and

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Web 3.0 and E-Commerce Investment Thesis of 3 VCs

Last fall, we had three VCs participate in our 1M/1M roundtables to discuss their Web 3.0 and e-Commerce investment thesis. These interviews cover as well as build upon the themes discussed in my two recent books, Billion Dollar Unicorns and From E-Commerce to Web 3.0. If you are looking to build a Unicorn company in

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The Future Of Venture Capital: Trinity Ventures Partner Gus Tai (Part 7)

SM: What is the future of venture capital? GT: It will go back to its roots. It will be a smaller industry with fewer firms practicing it as a craft. There will be smaller fund sizes. I do not believe there is evidence that venture capital is an industry that scales.

The Future Of Venture Capital: Trinity Ventures Partner Gus Tai (Part 6)

SM: A third major area in which I would like to see leadership is in education. What do you think needs to happen for that momentum to build up? GT: We are seeing innovation on education in two fronts. One innovation trend in education is the notion of crowdsourcing education in modules.

The Future Of Venture Capital: Trinity Ventures Partner Gus Tai (Part 5)

SM: There was a time when VCs stepped into uncharted territory even though they did not understand the risks. The disruptive potential made all the risk worth it. Today, if we need to break open new areas of potential, my guess is that they will be in territories which require cross-domain innovation. That will require

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The Future Of Venture Capital: Trinity Ventures Partner Gus Tai (Part 4)

SM: Since the dot-com crash we have seen a few different things come together. The SaaS market has really developed, and the Web 2.0 and cleantech markets have also developed. SaaS and Web 2.0 are not capital intensive areas which have had a lot of investment while cleantech is very capital intensive. What is your

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