I have always been a big fan of breakfast, lunch and dinner business meetings. There is something about breaking bread over a meeting, or a glass of wine or beer or a cup of coffee. The ideal location is a place where others are doing the same thing so you can bump into friends, colleagues, and others regularly.
For years, I would do my breakfast meetings at The Coffee Shop (now closed) in Union Square and my lunch meetings at Taralucci or Punch (now closed). I moved my regular breakfast spot to Maialino (now closed) in or around 2010 and most mornings I would grab one of the front tables there and see so many friends in the NYC startup sector coming and going.
When we moved USV to the south side of Union Square in 2022, I started looking around for a place near our new office to do my breakfast and lunch meetings. I could not find anything that felt right.
I noticed a beautiful space with dramatic high ceilings in the ground floor USV's new office building at 817 Broadway and I asked our landlord about it. He told me that "we want something special in that space." So I called my friends Nick Anderer and Natalie Johnson who own and operate Anton's, our favorite restaurant in the West Village, and said "you should take this space and make a restaurant there."
The good news is they did exactly that. And last week they opened Leon's, an all-day fine dining restaurant that features Italian cuisine with French and Egyptian accents.
I have now had the pleasure of three dinners, three breakfasts, and one lunch at Leon's in the last week and I have loved everything. They have a barista making coffees and a baker making pastries in the mornings to compliment a fantastic hot breakfast menu. The salads and sandwiches at lunch are perfect. And the dinner features an amazing array of appetizers to start and fantastic pasta and main courses. And the gelato and tahini cookies are just too good not to order to finish the meal.
I plan to use Leon's the way I used Mailino and before that The Coffee Shop and Taralucci. I hope the NYC startup sector in the Union Square area does the same and we can recreate the vibe we had going at those spots before the pandemic came along and messed things up.
Leon's is open every day of the week from 8am to 11pm. However, they will be closed on Mondays until December 16th so they can tweak a few things without impacting customers.
I hope to bump into you all at Leon's in the coming months and years. You can book a reservation here.
I have worked with many former lawyers in my career and my experience with them has always been fantastic.
The first former lawyer I worked with was Milt Pappas who, along with his partner Bliss McCrum, were my first bosses in venture capital and they taught me so much.
Milt told me that he believed that a legal education was a fantastic preparation for the business world. Milt had attended law school but never practiced law. He went right into a trust and estates department at a leading bank in Cleveland Ohio, where in the 1960s he became acquainted with private investments and that led him to doing deals with some of the earliest VCs. In 1970, he and Bliss started Euclid Partners and that's where I got my first job in venture capital. Milt taught me so much about being a minority investor, being a great board member, balancing responsibilities to our portfolio companies and our investors, and so much more.
Three of my partners at USV are former lawyers, John Buttrick, Andy Weissman, and Samson Mesele. They are great investors and great partners.
I have helped quite a few former lawyers move from legal careers to working in startups. I have found that they are often great business partners to early-stage founders. They can take on many roles, including finance, HR, business development, business operations, and, of course, legal. I am not entirely sure what it is about a legal education, but I feel that it prepares people to be effective across a range of activities.
I have run into business leaders who see a legal background on a resume and pause. They think it is a limiting background. I feel the opposite about it. I see it as a sign of range and capability. Particularly with people who left the practice of law early or mid career.
So if you need someone on your team who can take all of the administrative functions off your plate and run with them, consider a former lawyer. It is a bit of an unconventional move, but I think it is a strong one.
For many years, I took a multivitamin every morning and that was it. Then maybe five years ago, during my annual physical, my doctor told me I was "very vitamin B deficient." That led to a month or so of regular injections in my thigh and I've taken Vitamin B12 every day since.
Over time, I added Vitamin D3 to my daily routine. A friend on the golf course told me to try Glucosamine for my aching knees and so I added that. My dermatologist told me to add Niacinamide to my daily routine and so I did. My friend Gordon told me to start taking Omega 3s and that was added.
And now I've got a "supplement stack." I take six supplements every day and Zinc every other day. Here it is.
That link and image is powered by our portfolio company Supp's new mobile app. You use the app to read the bar codes on your supplements and it creates a stack for you. It is shareable, obviously. And you get ratings and recommendations. Here's mine:
I don't take Supp's recommendations as gospel. I share them with my doctor and a few friends who are way more into this than I am. So I may or may not be adding Lycopene and Turmeric to my stack. But I do appreciate the recommendations. And may incorporate them.
At USV, we are totally bought into patient centric health and wellness. We believe that each and every one of us should own our wellness and wellness data and the health care industry should revolve around us not the other way around. Which, unfortunately, is where we are today. Supp is a piece of that. Starting with supplements.
If you want to download the Supp app and give it a try, iOS is here and Android is here.
I have always been a big fan of breakfast, lunch and dinner business meetings. There is something about breaking bread over a meeting, or a glass of wine or beer or a cup of coffee. The ideal location is a place where others are doing the same thing so you can bump into friends, colleagues, and others regularly.
For years, I would do my breakfast meetings at The Coffee Shop (now closed) in Union Square and my lunch meetings at Taralucci or Punch (now closed). I moved my regular breakfast spot to Maialino (now closed) in or around 2010 and most mornings I would grab one of the front tables there and see so many friends in the NYC startup sector coming and going.
When we moved USV to the south side of Union Square in 2022, I started looking around for a place near our new office to do my breakfast and lunch meetings. I could not find anything that felt right.
I noticed a beautiful space with dramatic high ceilings in the ground floor USV's new office building at 817 Broadway and I asked our landlord about it. He told me that "we want something special in that space." So I called my friends Nick Anderer and Natalie Johnson who own and operate Anton's, our favorite restaurant in the West Village, and said "you should take this space and make a restaurant there."
The good news is they did exactly that. And last week they opened Leon's, an all-day fine dining restaurant that features Italian cuisine with French and Egyptian accents.
I have now had the pleasure of three dinners, three breakfasts, and one lunch at Leon's in the last week and I have loved everything. They have a barista making coffees and a baker making pastries in the mornings to compliment a fantastic hot breakfast menu. The salads and sandwiches at lunch are perfect. And the dinner features an amazing array of appetizers to start and fantastic pasta and main courses. And the gelato and tahini cookies are just too good not to order to finish the meal.
I plan to use Leon's the way I used Mailino and before that The Coffee Shop and Taralucci. I hope the NYC startup sector in the Union Square area does the same and we can recreate the vibe we had going at those spots before the pandemic came along and messed things up.
Leon's is open every day of the week from 8am to 11pm. However, they will be closed on Mondays until December 16th so they can tweak a few things without impacting customers.
I hope to bump into you all at Leon's in the coming months and years. You can book a reservation here.
I have worked with many former lawyers in my career and my experience with them has always been fantastic.
The first former lawyer I worked with was Milt Pappas who, along with his partner Bliss McCrum, were my first bosses in venture capital and they taught me so much.
Milt told me that he believed that a legal education was a fantastic preparation for the business world. Milt had attended law school but never practiced law. He went right into a trust and estates department at a leading bank in Cleveland Ohio, where in the 1960s he became acquainted with private investments and that led him to doing deals with some of the earliest VCs. In 1970, he and Bliss started Euclid Partners and that's where I got my first job in venture capital. Milt taught me so much about being a minority investor, being a great board member, balancing responsibilities to our portfolio companies and our investors, and so much more.
Three of my partners at USV are former lawyers, John Buttrick, Andy Weissman, and Samson Mesele. They are great investors and great partners.
I have helped quite a few former lawyers move from legal careers to working in startups. I have found that they are often great business partners to early-stage founders. They can take on many roles, including finance, HR, business development, business operations, and, of course, legal. I am not entirely sure what it is about a legal education, but I feel that it prepares people to be effective across a range of activities.
I have run into business leaders who see a legal background on a resume and pause. They think it is a limiting background. I feel the opposite about it. I see it as a sign of range and capability. Particularly with people who left the practice of law early or mid career.
So if you need someone on your team who can take all of the administrative functions off your plate and run with them, consider a former lawyer. It is a bit of an unconventional move, but I think it is a strong one.
For many years, I took a multivitamin every morning and that was it. Then maybe five years ago, during my annual physical, my doctor told me I was "very vitamin B deficient." That led to a month or so of regular injections in my thigh and I've taken Vitamin B12 every day since.
Over time, I added Vitamin D3 to my daily routine. A friend on the golf course told me to try Glucosamine for my aching knees and so I added that. My dermatologist told me to add Niacinamide to my daily routine and so I did. My friend Gordon told me to start taking Omega 3s and that was added.
And now I've got a "supplement stack." I take six supplements every day and Zinc every other day. Here it is.
That link and image is powered by our portfolio company Supp's new mobile app. You use the app to read the bar codes on your supplements and it creates a stack for you. It is shareable, obviously. And you get ratings and recommendations. Here's mine:
I don't take Supp's recommendations as gospel. I share them with my doctor and a few friends who are way more into this than I am. So I may or may not be adding Lycopene and Turmeric to my stack. But I do appreciate the recommendations. And may incorporate them.
At USV, we are totally bought into patient centric health and wellness. We believe that each and every one of us should own our wellness and wellness data and the health care industry should revolve around us not the other way around. Which, unfortunately, is where we are today. Supp is a piece of that. Starting with supplements.
If you want to download the Supp app and give it a try, iOS is here and Android is here.
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