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Startup founders have probably heard this advice a lot: You need to focus on doing one thing well.

Don’t worry, we’re not trying to convince you that this is bad advice. Startups should absolutely focus on doing one thing well — after they’ve found product-market fit. But we’ve seen founders embrace this idea at exactly the wrong time, before they’ve found PMF.

That doesn’t mean those founders aren’t iterating at all. Instead, they approach iteration in a narrow, brute force sort of way. Rather than building and testing new core product features, they keep trying to push the same product in the hopes that something will change; rather than stepping back and thinking holistically about the problem they were trying to solve, they commit themselves to a single approach.

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Everyone’s heard the sound bites and seen the tweets about how an economic downturn is the best time to start a company — but that can be cold comfort for startup founders who are wondering what to do when demand for their product plummets or if no one seems willing to back their next round.

With that in mind, Eniac Ventures has organized a virtual roundtable bringing together investors and entrepreneurs who’ve made it through past recessions, and we’ll be asking them to share the gritty details about what they’ve learned along the way.

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I’m excited to announce the newest addition to the Eniac Ventures team: Leelena Asfaw, who’s joining us as an investment analyst for the summer.

Leelena grew up in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia before moving to Mississippi to attend The Piney Woods School. Apparently, after helping a friend apply to the boarding school, she thought, “Why can’t I do that?” — and not only was she accepted, but she also graduated as valedictorian and won a full scholarship to Jackson State University.

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Eniac Ventures recently hosted the 2022 edition of our Annual General Meeting, which included a public session covering topics like startup origin stories, fundraising tips, and the risk of a crypto winter.

Of course, we think the entire program (embedded right there 👇) is worth watching, but you can also check out some of the most interesting moments from each conversation belo

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The team at Eniac Ventures will be (virtually) hosting one of our biggest events of the year on Tuesday, May 24 — yes, that’s tomorrow!

Just as we did last year, we’re treating the 2022 edition of our Annual General Meeting as something more than a presentation for our limited partners. Since the AGM will be online, we’re opening it up to the larger tech community — in other words, anyone who’s interested in stories, advice, and conversations about the broader state of the ecosystem featuring from some of our most impressive founders, plus other notable guests.

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We’re excited to share that Drip has raised $28.5 million in combined seed and Series A funding from Base10 Ventures, Kindred, Harlem Capital, as well as various angels — plus, of course, Eniac Ventures. The Series A values the company at more than $100 million.

You can read more about the funding in TechCrunch, where CEO Javaughn Lawrence describes his startup as building “the Shopify for livestream commerce.” In other words, it’s creating tools that anyone can use to offer live shopping experiences such as livestream auctions and drops.

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It’s been almost exactly six months since Eniac first announced our crypto investment strategy. While the firm’s partners had been investing personally in the ecosystem for years, web3 was growing so quickly (especially developer growth) that we felt the need to rethink our approach as a firm.

Specifically, we implemented an on-ramp strategy into the space by writing checks that were smaller than the typical Eniac investment, with the ability to participate in syndicates and invest in token offerings as well. In doing so, we hoped to learn as much as possible about the most promising parts of the ecosystem while offering full partnership support to web3 founders and helping to push the ecosystem forward.

We’ve moved quickly since then, making more than 20 investments in web3 startups.

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The position is a unique role based in our New York City HQ (remote possible, but not preferred). We want a team member with a balance of hustle, passion for learning, and strong organization and communication skills, who is ready to play a key role in serving the founders we work with, as well as the broader startup community.

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At Eniac Ventures, we’re big believers in the adage that “your network is your net worth,” which is why we’ve decided to expand and relaunch the Eniac Network.

We know most founders are skeptical about VCs who spend a lot of time talking about the “value” they can add, and there are good reasons for that skepticism. But we also believe that we’ve made introductions that have fundamentally altered the trajectory of numerous startups, helping them find a crucial hire or sign an important customer.

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As Hadley noted in a recent tweet, one big danger facing startup founders is the premature belief that you’ve found product-market fit.

Understanding that idea is critical for startup success, so it’s worth revisiting Marc Andreessen’s 15-year-old post, in which he defined PMF as “being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market” and claimed that founders “can always feel when product/market fit isn’t happening.”

So how can someone be wrong about finding product-market fit?

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