The Profile: The VC who’s seen it all before & the queen of heartbreak

Jun 30, 2019

Greetings from Bali! (more on that next weekend)

I recently went hiking with Andreessen Horowitz managing partner Jeff Jordan — all in the name of journalism. We decided to profile Jordan because he’s stayed largely behind the scenes even though he invested early in what are now some of the hottest companies in tech.

As is often the case with print features, some details don’t make it into the final version of the story. I want to share one that you might find interesting. Jordan organizes a weekly pickup basketball game at Stanford. The star-studded roster often includes founders, fellow VCs, professional basketball players, and even Joe Lacob, the owner of the Golden State Warriors.

Jordan believes that you can tell a person’s personality through how they play on the basketball court. Are they selfish? Are they hotheaded? Jordan is both a player and the referee, and he doesn’t hesitate telling people they need to dial it back a notch. He’s dubbed it the “No Asshole Rule.”

So what happens when someone violates the rule?

“It’s pretty much the same as what I would tell a founder. I pull them aside and say, ‘My perception is that we’re having this issue. In the interest of trying to make the game work, it’d be great if you could try to monitor your behavior.’ You do it individually and off the beaten path because you don’t want to embarrass them in front of everybody. The game wouldn’t be what it is if we just let that type of behavior go. It’s the greater good argument.”

I made the story this week’s recommended profile below, and I encourage you to read it and send me your honest feedback.

From the hike: Inside Jeff Jordan’s backpack: Water bottles, protein bars, an emergency water filtration straw. // Inside mine: A pen.

Here we go:

— The VC who’s seen it all before [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]
— The people who quantify trauma
— The soccer star who flamed out
— The child soldiers of ISIS
— The queen of heartbreak
— The startup helping high school athlete go viral
— The media site dumpster fire
— Gen Z’s favorite social media app

PEOPLE TO KNOW.

The VC who’s seen it all before: Jeff Jordan is the most successful investor you don’t know. He was an early backer of home-sharing giant Airbnb, grocery delivery company Instacart, and the hobbyist site Pinterest. The bet he made on Pinterest alone, one of Jordan's first after joining Andreessen Horowitz in 2011, is worth $1 billion. Yet Jordan is a bit of an outlier. He didn’t become a VC until he was in his fifties. He’s not a technologist but rather a general-management type. In this profile, Jordan shares his lessons of success — some of which he’s learned the hard way. (Fortune)

“It keeps me young.”

The people who quantify trauma: “How much is a little girl worth?” That was the final question former gymnast Rachael Denhollander asked at the sentencing hearing of USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar. Denhollander became the first survivor to publicly accuse the doctor of abuse in 2016. As a result of the trial, hundreds of female victims learned what their suffering was “worth” in dollar terms. This profile takes a close look at the protocols of a system that can wield tremendous influence, in ways that victims of abuse can find both empowering & upsetting. (Fortune)

“You cash that check, and it feels dirty.”

The soccer star who flamed out: Freddy Adu was the phenom who was supposed to save American soccer from irrelevance. At age 14, in 2004, he signed a $1 million Nike deal. He did a "Got Milk?" ad. He was on the cover of Time magazine. As a player, though, Adu's career didn't work out as everyone expected. He was supposed to be the next Pele. Instead he became a vagabond, traveling the world in search of a team where he could thrive. He never found it. This is a great story about what happens when the hype comes before it’s deserved. (ESPN)

"He couldn't cope with it. He believed what he was reading. He believed he was worth all the money he was being paid."

The child soldiers of ISIS: What will become of the thousands of children press-ganged into ISIS’s forces in northern Iraq? ISIS separated Yezidi children from their families, sometimes killing their parents in front of them. They laced the boys’ food with Captagon, an amphetamine, to dull their fear and trained some as suicide attackers. This profile is heartbreaking, but it takes a close look at the boys who now occupy the gray zone between guilty and forgotten. (Time Magazine)

“These kids, ideologically and practically, have been prepared to attack. They are made into a bomb, ready to be triggered by ISIS.”

The queen of heartbreak: If you’ve ever gone through a breakup and you didn’t listen to Alanis Morissette, did you even break up? In the 1990s, Morisette became an angsty heartbreak icon. Unlike many of her peers, her music has aged well. “I'm just like how is this possible that something I wrote when I was 19, I can still stand behind it now,” she asks. This profile covers a lot of ground — from Morisette’s postpartum depression to the #MeToo movement — and it does not disappoint. (Self Magazine)

“It used to be really uncool to be an over-communicator, and now it is a boon for people … So now what people used to shame is something that people appreciate, which is the best part of evolution I guess.”

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COMPANIES TO WATCH.

The startup helping high school athletes go viral: The old model of live televised sports requires a sustained engagement that the younger demographic may not develop. That’s the whole idea behind Overtime. The sports network company wants to be the dominant sports network for kids who grew up with iPhones in their pockets. It helps high school athletes go viral, but it comes at a cost. What happens when athletes act in the interest of their own highlight reel rather than what’s best for the team as a whole? (The New Yorker)

“What we’re doing is creating a reality show around the next generation of superstars.”

The media site dumpster fire: Remember babe.net? It was the blog that published the explosive Aziz Ansari story accusing the comedian of aggressively trying to pressure a woman into sexual acts, disregarding her cues. Well, the Ansari controversy was just the beginning of the trouble for the website. The babe.net culture had many parallels to the story it had published — complicated sexual power dynamics of their own office, the ones that would partly lead to the collapse of the site. This story untangles the sad, wild, and horrifying demise of babe.net. (The Cut)

“Babe.net had always partied, had always had drama. This was just what happened when 28-year-olds managed 24-year-olds who managed 20-year-olds, right?”

Gen Z’s favorite social media app: TikTok videos are everywhere. Even if you don't know you've seen one, you've seen one. (here are examples) The app is hard to explain if you're not a teenager, but in essence, it's used for making & sharing short videos. The viral social media app has been downloaded 950 million times in two years. Yet the question remains: Can the company turn its popularity into profits? (Fortune)

“Unlike on Instagram or YouTube, which are far beyond their maturation point, TikTok’s a Wild West.”

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