This newsletter tells the stories of founders as they journey through the idea maze to figure out what to build. Most startups have developed founding myths that over-simplify a startup’s origin story (for example, the Ebay Pez Dispenser Myth). But the real stories are often much less tidy and more unpredictable. This newsletter hopes to share these unfiltered stories and to be a source of inspiration (or perhaps just additional fodder) for founders figuring out what their next big thing will be.

A field guide for surviving, getting ahead, and succeeding as a venture capitalist. Created by David Beisel (@davidbeisel) and Rob Go (@robgo), Venture Upward is written for non-partner VCs working their way through the ranks. We recognized that this self-proclaimed “apprenticeship business” didn’t offer much structured support, and so we wanted to reflect some of our own hard-earned lessons. Our goal is to share some advice your partners wish you knew (but aren't likely to tell you) and perhaps some that they wish you didn’t. The two of us are not claiming to have all of the answers or that we are the most successful venture capitalists. What we do have is direct firsthand experience working at our previous established firms, as well as starting our own firm together (which now counts five unicorns in its portfolio), along with the countless private conversations with peers about these exact issues over the past decade plus of our careers.

I’m a partner at NextView Ventures, a seed stage VC firm, which I co-founded in 2010. I started my career as an early employee at PayPal in product management and then was a co-founder of LinkedIn.