Hey There! I'm Chika!
After more than twelve years in startups and venture capital, you learn to recognize the patterns. You see the cyclical nature of hype, the ebb and flow of capital, and the perennial challenges of building something from nothing. You get a feel for the rhythm of the game. But this isn’t just a change in […]
Over the years, I’ve launched companies, advised others, raised capital, missed signals, hired wrong, scaled too fast, pivoted too late—and learned a few things in the process. Recently, I had the chance to give a guest lecture at Harvard on what it really takes to launch and scale a startup. Here’s a condensed version of […]
Every industry has its jargon. In venture capital, there’s traction, scale, product market fit, etc. The problem with jargon in venture capital is it’s purposely elusive and nebulous. The core of private equity markets is information arbitrage. There’s information asymmetry between capital and operators. As a result, different stakeholders create different definitions and everyone ends […]
Marc Andreessen, one of the co-founders of Andreessen Horowitz, wrote a timely piece during the height of the US COVID-19 crisis. Titled “ It’s Time to Build “. It’s essentially a call to arms for builders to focus on creating a better reality where we’re prepared for tomorrow’s challenges. It was a collective call to […]
