Albert Lee
1.5K posts
Albert Lee
@albertlee
Co-founder @myfitnesspal, former SVP @underarmour, board @skillestapp, @Cal and @BerkeleyHaas alum, golf nerd
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Patrick Collison: “Working with people you’re close to is underrated.” Patrick started Stripe with his brother John and Arc Institute with his wife Silvana. He offers founders the following advice: “I think working with people you’re close to is underrated… For all of the ventures of any significance in my life, they’ve been with people that I’m very close to and who I had and would like to have an enduring relationship with. Sometimes one hears the advice that you shouldn’t work with friends or your partner, and all of these things are idiosyncratic and there are instances of every possible permutation, but for me it has been a really rewarding experience.” He continues: “I think John and I can work together for, you never know, life. But I think we’ll probably work together for decades. For us, it has been both an important source of meaning and fulfillment, but I also think there’s a real complementarity.” Source: @dwarkesh_sp (Feb 2024)
There's a legendary investor named Nick Sleep who at one point held basically 3 stocks (Amazon, Berkshire and Costco). One of his strategies was based on a Jeff Bezos quote: “Advertising is the price you pay for having an unremarkable product or service.” For example, he noticed GM spent $5.3 BILLION on advertising in 2008. They could've paid off a size-able chunk of the company's debt with that amount of cash. And the ads just covered up poor strategy and products. Now, I don’t entirely buy this given GEICO advertises like crazy and Buffett owns it. Coca-Cola too. And Amazon. Great companies CAN be great advertisers. But I do dig the sentiment. Shaan and I talked about this on MFM recently: youtu.be/t3HWIey2lh8?si…
You can't fake that look. The passion. The intensity. The belief. What an Interview from Mikal Bridges here. 0-0.
I was once pitching in a board room at a top 3 VC firm for a $15M Series A. 12 people in the meeting. One of the GPs fully fell asleep. Out cold for 30+ minutes. Nobody acknowledged it. Everyone just kept going. I kept presenting my Series A slides to an unconscious man in a Herman Miller chair and somehow that was considered normal. That's venture capital. You might fly across the country to perform for people who may or may not be conscious. It's a dance. And sometimes you lead and sometimes you follow and sometimes your partner is unconscious. If you're raising right now, just know: every founder has a story like this. The process is weird. The power dynamic is weird. You're not crazy for thinking it's weird. No one talks about it because they want to continue raising. But I'm happy to stick my neck out there. It is weird.
US, top 5 largest metro areas: 1800: NYC, Philly, Baltimore, Boston, Charleston (aura) 1900: NYC, Chicago, Philly, Boston, Pittsburgh (aura) 2025: NYC, LA, Chicago, Dallas-FW, Houston (insane loss of aura, thanks Texas)
We updated our 4 company values this week to keep up with how the company has changed. Here's what I shared with the team internally. I hope it could be helpful for other companies.
