options on weird futures
As a super early stage investor, we have numerous sources that our deals come through including referrals from top tier angel investors like Scott & Cyan Banister, Jason Calacanis, and and Dan Scheinman, as well as traditional VCs like Cantos, Boldstart, and USV; first looks at new ventures from previous company alumni (including Stack Overflow & Trello); and even companies we find and use through our daily operator work like customer.io. Because we’ve touched industries as diverse as luxury fashion and crypto developer tools, we have some of the broadest exposure to emerging industries and their stars long before cultural consensus forms on their value.
But really, our most interesting deals are inbound flow from founders, journalists, angels, and others based on being extremely visibly weird. Our Twitter DMs are lit AF. We are your favorite shitposter’s favorite shitposter. We are your favorite public intellectual’s favorite intellectual. If you want access to Silicon Valley’s oddest and boldest personalities, without the inconvenience of being extremely online, we can give you exposure to those deals before anyone else. We get them before the markets can price them correctly, or even at all, as our math is entirely about power laws.
Julie has been an early and proud “Doomer” with her work featured in the New York Times and the BBC for predicting the cascade events of major disasters including the pandemic. This has lead to her involvement with communities including prepper website The Unprepared and sustainability community The Doomer Optimists. She is regularly sought out as a featured commentator and public speaker on topics related to the intersection of technology, chaos and building a better future.
This public profile gives us access to a set of founders often before there is even a deal on the table and allows us to get to know them, and their potential, before helping them build a round. Julie’s passion is training and packaging weirdos to integrate into traditional capital flows.
Accommodating, educating, and integrating weirdos has been problem in the past for traditional multi stage venture funds, because they were improving traditional markets. Our fund is focused on investing in founders who, if successful, will create 1000x companies and entirely new markets.
Doesn’t everyone say that? Sure, but our focus is on locating the founders who don’t know they are founders yet, but who's work will change the history of their industries with a little bit of spit and polish. By definition, those people tend to be weird ,and unaccounted for in pricing mechanisms, delivering underpriced alpha and market potential. The chaos perspective gives us a unique edge when combined with capital deployment discipline.
Julie is a serial entrepreneur and operator with 15 years of operating experience at the intersection of community, content and commerce online. She previously co-founded Coutorture (fashion publishing community & ad network acquired by PopSugar) and Stowaway Cosmetics (a DTC makeup brand acquired by WIN Brands Group). Her ad network’s technology was an early player in the luxury affiliate ecommerce space and is now part of the Ebates & Rakutan family.
She was on the launch teams of Gucci.com and Prada.com, oversaw the launch and first year of wellness juggernaut Goop, and provided the corporate launch capital for TheAwl.com’s stable of properties including The Hairpin and Wirecutter (acquired by the New York Times). She also founded and ran playAPI, a developer tool kit and SaaS platform for digital brand marketers.
She has extensive experience in user acquisition, community commerce, audience development, digital and social marketing, communications and brand marketing and has worked with brands as diverse as Pepsi, Tropicana, Nike, Michael Kors, Club Monaco, and The Gap. She also spent time in-house at Equinox as well as at Ann Taylor overseeing ecommerce and digital brand growth.