Rob Go

The Author

Rob Go

Cofounder of NextView Ventures. Seed investor. Formerly VC @ Spark Capital and Product Marketing @ Ebay.

An Uplifting Win

I was very pleased to see that “This is Us” was nominated for 11 Emmy’s and that Sterling Brown won the award for Best Actor in a drama series. This is Us was my favorite show in the last year and I’ve been encouraging my friends to watch it for a...

Rob Go 09/18/2017

Seeds and Pre-Seeds: History is Repeating Itself

As the atomization of seed has become more mature, it is increasingly clear that history is repeating itself. What I mean is that the things that played when seed VC became institutionalized is beginning to happen in the pre-seed market. And the words I am hearing from seed...

Rob Go 09/07/2017

Splitting vs. Expanding the Pie: Thoughts on the New Early-Stage VCs in Boston

Recently, I’ve been spending a fair bit of time with a number of the new early-stage investors in Boston. There are a lot of new folks in the space. Just last week, Axios announced that Stephen Marcus is raising a fund called Riot Ventures and Term Sheet announced that...

Rob Go 04/19/2017

What Are Your Valuation Expectations?

One question I know investors sometimes ask founders is “what are your valuation expectations for this round?” It’s a tricky question to answer because you kind of can’t win either way. If you say something that is around market, you are somewhat...

Rob Go 04/06/2017

What We Talk About When We Talk About Companies

A big chunk of our time as VC is spent on internal discussions about companies we are looking at. We believe strongly that when making investment decisions, it’s important to score opportunities quantitatively but make decisions based on conviction. What this means is that...

Rob Go 03/02/2017

Boxes vs. Conveyor Belts

Commerce businesses are notoriously difficult for a number of reasons. Multiples in this category are usually pretty low, due to low margins, capital intensity, and competitive rivalry. Also, Amazon has made it such that consumers are accustomed to fast, free shipping,...

Rob Go 02/22/2017

Welcoming Ginny Mineo to the NextView Team!

Our entire team at NextView is very pleased to announce that Ginny Mineo will be joining us as Director of Platform. Ginny comes to us from HubSpot, where she had a tremendous impact on the company in a variety of ways. Most recently, she led the team responsible for growing...

Rob Go 02/08/2017

How Important Is The Idea?

I was on a panel last week with some friends in the VC and angel ecosystem. One thing that gets repeated often (that I generally agree with) is that ideas are a dime a dozen. As investors, we tend to value the grit and tenacity of a founder and their commitment to solving a...

Rob Go 01/23/2017

Should Your Have A Lifecycle VC In Your Seed Round?

Although seed investing has become increasingly the domain of specialized seed funds, large lifecycle VC’s continue to participate as well. In the last three investments I’ve made, there has either been a lifecycle VC involved or one was interested but didn...

Rob Go 01/17/2017

Getting A VC Job

I get asked a lot about how to get one’s start in the VC industry. I have a somewhat standard response, but realized that I never put it into a blog post. So, here it is. FYI – this is tuned towards an individual who is still in the relatively early stages of...

Rob Go 01/10/2017

Quick Thoughts on Term Sheets and LOIs

This is something that isn’t that obvious to founders, so I thought I’d write a quick post. When a VC invests in a startup, the two parties usually sign a term sheet that lays out the major terms of the investment round. This is usually followed by several weeks or longer of...

Rob Go 12/14/2016

How VC’s Source

One question I get surprisingly often is “how do you find companies to invest in?”. Surprisingly, this isn’t just an LP kind of question, I actually get this a lot from founders or even just friends who are not directly involved in the startup community. I...

Rob Go 12/13/2016

Don’t Be Slippery

All investors are allergic to certain things. One of those things for me (and many investors I know) is what I’ll describe as slippery-ness. When we make an investment, we enter into a long term relationship with founders. The business may change. Things may unfold in...

Rob Go 12/09/2016

Traction vs. Product

I’ve had a couple conversations with other investors recently around what a seed stage company needs to achieve to raise a series A. This is something we think a lot about given that we are exclusively seed stage investors, and we’ve written a fair bit about it...

Rob Go 11/15/2016

Some Thoughts on Jay’s Side Project “Unthinkable”

I wanted to take moment to share some thoughts on a project you may have seen Jay Acunzo, NextView’s VP of platform,working on over the past few months — a show and related projects under an umbrella called Unthinkable. For those who have followed our firm and...

Rob Go 11/03/2016

Choosing Optimism

I just watched the first two episodes of Black Mirror’s season 3 last night. I love the show – it’s totally my flavor of the dystopian fantasy / technology gone wrong genre. But, I find myself a bit tired of the negativity that these shows portray. It’s probably a...

Rob Go 10/26/2016

Getting Value from Your Angel Investors

Nearly all seed rounds we are a part of include angel investors. In some cases, there are also smaller checks from funds as well that are playing a support role as opposed to a lead role. In almost all of these cases, these smaller investors were included into a syndicate...

Rob Go 10/12/2016