The Syndicate Year in Review: Cryptocurrencies & ICOs, AI, The End of Uber and Apple and Much More…

Both professionally and personally, 2017 has been an amazing year. I set the goal of becoming a full time angel investor and startup advisor after transitioning out of my last business I sold.

After considering the best ways to learn from and invest with heavy hitters in the space, I settled on a podcast. With the podcast I could not only connect with and learn from some of the top angels and VCs in the space (who I could then send deals to later on), but I could build a platform as well. As I definitely do not have the cash to be an all-in angel and have attractive economics, I started a sidecar syndicate to allow listeners and individuals to invest alongside me in promising early stage deals. The Syndicate podcast and investment have been growing nicely, although I always push myself to grow faster.

But stepping into 2018, The Syndicate is in a good place.

For this post, I wanted to recap the year through a series of audio interviews. 2017 has been the year of many things, especially ICOs. Most people however have not seen the full picture.

This post will be a roundup of the top interviews and panel discussions and posts of the year — all designed to make you think.

Top Interview of 2017

The most listened to episode of year honors goes to Gil Penchina, one of the top super angels of all time. Gil’s hit tons of unicorns, investing in Ripple, Brave, Polychain, Paypal, Filecoin, Civic, Linkedin, Cruise, Dollar Shave Club Wealthfront, Discord and Fastly. He now he runs 20+ syndicates on Angellist with millions in backing.

How Gil Penchina Tried to Lose Money and Hit 5 Unicorns and the Future of Cryptocurrencies

Listen and Learn:

How Gil invested early in Paypal
What he looks for in founders and markets
Why Gil is bullish on cryptocurrencies
His exact asset allocation strategy
How he built a massive network of Angellist syndicates
What blockchain means for society as a whole
How ICOs are affecting all of us
What all angel investors need to know about getting started

The top themes of 2017:

Cryptocurrencies and ICOs
AI and Autonomous Driving
The Future of Commerce
The Future in General

1. Cryptocurrencies and ICOs

There is no denying the frantic excitement of ICOs. Bitcoin’s been blowing up (and crashing) and is up big this year. And according to Coin Schedule, ICOs have raised an unprecendented $3.7B this year.

In June of this year, ICO funding surpassed early stage VC investments, sending the industry industry into a fury over the future of venture.

To dig deeper, The Syndicate hosted a Future of Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain roundtable with Joey Krug (Augur and Pantera Capital), Andy Bromberg (CEO of CoinList), Gil Penchina and Lou Kerner. This is a must watch for anyone interested in crypto.

Blockchain interviews

But plenty of other investor interviews focused heavily on blockchain as well. To add to the narrative and help you and others make informed decisions, I’ll add the best of these below.

NOTE: Gil’s interview above was also cited as one of the top cryptocurrency episodes of 2017.

Cryptocurrencies, ICOs and the Future f Public Markets with Joey Krug of Pantera Capital

Listen and Learn:

Why Ethereum is the cryptocurrency of the future
What ICOs mean for investors and startups going forward
Why first is the worst for startup companies
How angel investors should think about Blockchain
The big shift happening now in the derivatives market

Kendrick Nguyen on Angellist, ICOs and Equity Crowdfunding Eating Traditional Venture Capital

Listen and Learn:

How Title 3 Crowdfunding is affecting startup fundraising
Why traditional VC is being turned on its head
The future of ICOs and fintech
Angellist’s role in disruption
Why equity crowdfunding can outperform venture capital
How startups should view fundraising and taking investor money

Offered 1/4 of Facebook for $5M Lou Kerner on Israel, Social Media and Cryptocurrencies

Listen and Learn:

The secret story of social media
What VCs will never tell you about deal flow
Why Israeli is the place to invest
How Tel Aviv compares to SF
Why cryptocurrencies are disrupting the world as we know it
How Lou invested early in Facebook
Ways to validate traction and market caps

And I did a lot of writing in 2017. Here are two of the top crypto articles to make you think

The Exponential Boom, Bust and Rebirth of the ICO Economy, ie Dotcom Bubble with Dumber Money

The Cult-Like Religion of ICOs and End of Amazon?

2. AI, machine learning and autonomous vehicles

The next big theme 2017 brought us was the explosion of driverless, both in terms of startup successes and buzz in the industry.

With Trump in office and fear mongering about jobs and society, AI started to become more and more of a hotbed issue.

And Universal Basic Income and superintelligence started to become real topics on the public’s mind as more and more, technically forced itself into society.

To dig deeper, The Syndicate hosted a AI and autonomous driving roundtable and future of society with Zach Coelius (investor in Cruise Automation), Dennis R. Mortensen (founder of x.ai), Clara Brenner (founder of Urban Innovation Fund) and Prateek Joshi (founder of Pluto AI) to discuss the ramifications and future of artificial intelligence. This was a ton of fun and is a must watch for anyone interested in AI

Zach Coelius on 1st Billion Dollar AngelList Exit and Building a Top Tier Syndicate

Listen and Learn:

Why it is better to be good and lucky
The value of social proof with co-investors
How to build a top 10 AngelList syndicate
The massive opportunity in South East Asia
Why competitive markets kill startups
Poker and meeting startup founders
The way to add value to entrepreneurs
How to invest unicorns

Unfortunately most of our AI related episodes have not been released to date, so they won’t make it on our 2017 year in review.

3. The future in general

Perhaps it is just the venture industry, or perhaps it is the confluence of industries that are rapidly accelerating towards interdisciplinary progress, either way 2017 had a futurist feel to it.

Between voice and IoT devices coming to market, AR and VR adding to the excitement and decentralization and AI technology transforming everything, it was an interesting year.

To dig deeper, The Syndicate hosted a consumer tech roundtable with Tim O'Reilly (O’Reilly Media, Author, Futurist), James Allworth (Exponent podcast), Jeff Morris Jr. and Ben Gilbert (Acquired podcast). This was a top notch panel of futurist experts and we attempted to see the future and how it unfolds. Absolute must watch!

BONUS:

Ben Gilbert of Acquired on The End of Government, The Death of Apple and The Amazon Apocalypse

Listen and Learn:

Why most acquisitions and IPOs fail
An unconventional and effective approach to venture
How to spin out a startup
What driverless cars mean for the future
Why Apple is in trouble and Google’s business model is over
The future of IPOs and the stock market
How Amazon will own everything
Why Facebook is the king of acquisitions

And on the subject of the future, I did a lot of writing in 2017 and put out a few posts that at least according to the numbers and comments, made the world think.

I figured I would share these here to hopefully add some food for thought to your new year.

Uber is Going to 0, and Benchmark Knows It! Network Effects, Unstoppable Monopolies and The End of Innovation

4. The future of commerce

Last but certainly not least was the dominance of Amazon and the detail of retail as a topic that dominated 2017. It was hard to hear about anything else?

Where will Amazon’s 2nd HQ go? What happens to all the jobs they automate away?

Even ToysRUs went bankrupt. That was every kids favorite store. What is the world coming to…

Semil Shah on Instacart, Amazon and the Future of Retail and Groceries

Listen and Learn:

How to raise your first venture fund
What product geniuses know about UX/UI
How Semil invested early in DoorDash and Instacart
The best way to connect with top investors and influencers
What happens when VCs have kids
The future of groceries
How Amazon and Facebook are affecting exits and IPOs
Which field will dominate startup returns

The Amazon Apocalypse is Killing Ecommerce

Game Over, Groceries: Inside Amazon’s Acquisition of Whole Foods

The Broken Business of Ecommerce and Why Your Startup Won’t Be The Next Casper

The best of the rest

Themes don’t tell the whole picture. There is a lot happening in the world of venture and throughout the podcast series, we’ve talked to some of the smartest investors around.

Here are my favorite theme agnostic interviews of 2017.

Christopher Mirabile of LaunchPad on Valuations, Exits, Startup Trends and the Future of IPOs

Listen and Learn:

Why Boston is one of the best US startup scenes
How a top angel network operates and consistently wins
What investors don’t know about vetting opportunities
Why active investors outperform passive ones
The perfect startup team composition and how to improvise
What AI and machine learning mean for venture
Why syndicates and angel networks are disrupting VC
How to help angel investors succeed

How Pascal Levy-Garboua Runs a $1.4M Angellist Syndicate and an AL Venture Fund All At Once

Listen and Learn:

How to run a top syndicate while working a day job
Why local commerce is the future
The way Angellist funds work
What most angel investors do wrong initially
How Angellist has evolved in the past three years
Why liquidity is hard to come by
How the on demand economy is changing commerce as we know it
Why cryptocurrency is overrated in the short term and underrated in the long term