Welcome to Ringing the Bell

Musings on consumer IPOs

I spend my days as a VC at Maveron backing purpose-driven consumer companies early on their journey from obscurity to ubiquity. In a best-case scenario, 5-10 years later the founder is ringing the bell and taking the company public. What happens along the way is opaque. The VC world is full of rumors and innuendo. This company is hot, this other one is not. A funding round happens at a crazy valuation while another company can’t raise a round. Sometimes market signaling reflects reality and, other times, a “clear winner” is a house of cards.

An S-1 filing is the first time a business raises the curtain and reveals itself to the world. For newer investors, there is no better way to learn an industry than to go back a few years and read public filings and associated analyst reports.

I have dabbled in tearing down S-1s on Twitter - analyzing late-stage companies is not my day job but I try to take an early-stage VC lens to the businesses and assess their potential going forward.

Here, I’m going to copy my old Twitter posts and add new ones. Every once in a while I’ll go back and look at my older posts and see if I was right or wrong. Maybe through this journey I’ll gain the confidence to dabble in public market investing. At the very least, I’ll be able to share my lens on the consumer world with my friends and followers. Thank you for joining me!