Niv Dror has raised $3 million for his debut venture capital fund, called Shrug Capital.
Why it matters: Dror has spent the past two years as head of marketing for AngelList (via its 2016 purchase of Product Hunt), and AngelList has become a burgeoning launchpad for small venture funds.
Dror, who is leaving AngelList to focus full-time on Shrug, says that he’s investing in founders working on “things that I’m excited to talk about for more than an hour to a non-tech audience. "So far, that’s been mostly consumer startups, such as HQ Trivia, Superhuman, Atoms, Molly, and Breaker.
“At these early stages it’s all about founders... and Niv has a pretty good eye,” Founders Fund partner Cyan Banister, who personally invested in Dror’s fund.
Dror is following in the footsteps of Product Hunt founder Ryan Hoover who also raised his own small fund last year.
Both are using AngelList’s VC fund management service. In the case of small funds led by angel investors, there are no management fees, though AL takes a portion of the carry for taking care of things on the backend. It's also started managing professional VC funds, which have traditional fee and carry structures.
A-list investors: Dror has been able to attract the who’s who of Silicon Valley as investors into his fund, including Banister, Chris and Crystal Sacca, Marc Andreessen, Chris Dixon, Amity Ventures, Social Capital, David Sacks, Keith Rabois, and Kevin Rose.
1 fun thing: Dror named his firm Shrug Capital after the ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ emoticon, which is tattooed on his wrist.
Amazon is an iceberg: People only see what's above the surface. Meanwhile, underneath, the company just keeps expanding.
Why you'll hear about this again: This has proven true time and time again. When people thought of Amazon as a bookstore, it was already on its way to being an e-commerce giant. When all people saw was an e-commerce giant, Amazon was well on its way to being a marketplace and web services provider.
Amazon Prime — with its expansion into video and music services and its moves into brick and mortar — has been similarly underestimated, though people have at least learned to fear what the company might be up to next.
Here are a couple of new data points suggesting how huge the Amazon iceberg has grown — and where it's headed:
After years of being vague about numbers, Amazon confirmed Tuesday that there are 100 million Amazon Prime subscribers. That means they have managed to convince a huge swath of the U.S. population to sign up. (Amazon didn't break out how many of the Prime subscribers were in the U.S. vs. international.)
Amazon struck a deal with Best Buy that will see the electronics chain carry televisions with Amazon's Fire TV built in. Now, fast forward a few years and which seems more likely — that this headline will come back to haunt Amazon when Best Buy takes over the online electronics business or that Amazon will get the last laugh?
Amazon is announcing today "blueprints" for Alexa, a way for home users to easily create their own quizzes and games for Echo and other devices. Again, some looked at the Echo and saw a smart speaker, where Amazon has quietly built an entirely new operating system.
Go deeper: Axios business editor Dan Primack and I went back and forth about Amazon's size and strength in a video earlier this year.