Philip Cortes Application to

Version One Ventures

Created by Philip Cortes / @philipcortes

Where You Can Find Me Online

About.me Page.

My Blog.

Twitter .

Op-Ed Piece in TechCrunch.

Op-Ed Piece in PandoDaily.

LinkedIn Profile.

Why I Want To Work At Venture One Ventures

My experience with Meeteor has taught me that I love the early stages of a company - it's the most thrilling and rewarding part of a company's life cycle by far. Working at Version One would enable me to leverage what I've learned operationally, to evaluate companies and help them achieve their goals, while interacting with the early stage companies I've come to love.

Additionally, Version One Ventures also presents a unique opportunity for me to learn from someone who has a much broader and deeper range of experience than me, both operationally and in terms of investing. I'm in the learning phase of my career, and this opportunity represents the best exposure to what I want to learn.

Which web products inspire you and why?

Twitter

It created a new messaging paradigm at a time when I thought our bandwidth for additional ways to express ourselves was zero. It inspires me to express myself, and connect with new people everyday.

Reddit

Inspires me to realize that a shiny UI will never be the best point of differentiation - but community can be.

Which mobile products inspire you and why?

Strava

Inspires me to be active, everyday. Their UI and UX around the workout experience is flawless, and the immediacy of feedback doubles the endorphins you get from a workout. You set personal records, and course records, just for loading an app.

Evernote

Inspires me to think about everyday non-tech products that seem simple, but could be made to be incredibly powerful when connected online. I used to take notes in a notebook, I now only take notes in Evernote.

What is the biggest insight you recently had about startups?

You have to couple vision with process.

A startup with an amazing customer development and iteration

process, but no vision, will find local maxima, but will never change the world.

A startup with a vision to change the world, but no process to bring

that vision to a product people understand and love, will die frustrated the world never understood their dreams.

You need both to succeed, and most startups are overweight on either their process, or their vision. You need both to survive and change the world.

Thank You for Reading.

Special thanks to hakimel/reveal.js and @brandonhilkert for helping me navigate node.js and heroku