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We have our own point of view on the people, technologies, and conversations that will shape the future.
History may not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.
As we consider the post-COVID economy, we reflect on previous recessions to inform our predictions about how various asset classes and business models might perform.
Today we congratulate Neil Blumenthal, Dave Gilboa, Andy Hunt, Jeff Raider, and the entire Warby Parker team on becoming a publicly-traded company.
Today we congratulate CEO Aaron Easterly and the entire Rover team on becoming a publicly-traded company (NASDAQ: ROVR).
Today we congratulate CEO Manish Chandra, co-founders Tracy Sun, Gautam Golwala, Chetan Pungaliya, CFO Anan Kashyap, and the entire team at Poshmark on going public (NASDAQ: POSH)!
The end of 2020 will be marked by a series of high-profile consumer technology IPOs, including several marketplace businesses.
An inflection point is a decisive moment that marks the start of significant change. As startup investors, Menlo wants to drive that inflection.
Physical retail is dying—a trend which has been ongoing for years and is now accelerating.
We are announcing today the closing of the Menlo Ventures Opportunity Fund. This is a $250 million vehicle, and we’re very flattered that it was significantly oversubscribed.
In this post, we will explain why on-demand marketplaces have a distinct advantage in terms of avoiding disintermediation, maintaining pricing power, and boosting acquisition efficiency.
At Menlo, we encourage our companies not to neglect the supply side, as supplier retention is directly correlated to overall platform quality and NPS.
Within a broad horizontal marketplace, it becomes more difficult to achieve sufficient liquidity, whereas a vertical marketplace immediately brings together buyers and sellers seeking to complete the same category of transaction.
It’s simply inevitable that high-flying businesses’ growth rates will moderate over time, as the universe of unaddressed consumers becomes smaller, and each incremental sale becomes more difficult or less of a natural fit.
If a marketplace expands into the “shadow market” (or a class of buyers that was previously unavailable to a supplier), then it has the potential to accrue far more value.
It has many names: the Sharing Economy, Collaborative Consumption, the On-Demand Economy, and even most recently called by Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, the Gig Economy.
We are excited to announce today our lead investment in the Series A financing of UpCounsel. This investment continues our strong investment thesis around vertical marketplaces.
