CM Weekly: Rolling Funds, Banking System Primer, How to Find Anyone's Email Address
Chris McCann's weekly newsletter on technology, investing, and fintech.
A quick personal item before this week’s newsletter:
LinkedIn asked if I can try out their new newsletter feature so I’ll be giving it a try. No change on your end but if you do want to sign up via Linkedin you can do so here.
Written by - Chris McCann, General Partner @ Race Capital, former Greylock Partners. More about me.
Rolling Funds
Rolling funds are all the rage in Silicon Valley right now. Individual GP’s raising capital from micro limited partners (LPs), what could go wrong?
However, as Alex Danco points out, rolling funds do flip the chicken and the egg dynamic of new managers finding LP’s:
When you consider the social returns to angel investing, the equation flips. When you’re pursuing the status, credibility and social capital of being able to say “I gave this entrepreneur their first term sheet, when no one else would”, then you can’t afford to wait.
The social returns to angel investing resolve our chicken/egg problem: they turn angel investing into a kind of “race to be first” that is much more aligned with the founder, and more conducive to breaking inertia and completing deals. The founder wants you to move first, and so do you.
This same social pressure of angel investing is now being applied to fund investing. This trend is early but interesting.
Our fund Race Capital is not a rolling fund but we are always open to talking to new people. Send me a DM!
US Banking System Primer(s)
The US banking & payment system is complicated, cumbersome, and confusing - especially to outsiders. This is why there is a whole host of payment providers, payment gateways, payment processors, and oh so many more other types of middlemen.
William Woodruff, a developer, breaks down the very basics of account numbers, routing numbers, payment card numbers, and the automated clearing house (ACH) system.
This post in combination with a higher level explanation of how money moves around the banking system, are two great reads to get a basic understanding of the banking and payments system in the US.
How to Find Anything on the Internet
One of my super powers is being able to find hidden non-public information, publicly. This is hugely useful, especially while doing due diligence on companies, referencing people, and impressing founders.
Alec Barrett-Wilsdon, lays out some of these advanced googling techniques that really come in handy. I use a lot of these in my daily work, and learned a few more techniques while reading the post.
Here is one google search string to highlight how useful these can be:
How to find find work account emails:
In Google
Search: first_name last_name “@domain.com”
Example: chris mccann "@race.capital"
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