🌴 Introducing Product Club (and a cool new app...)
I haven’t sent this tiny list an update in awhile, but want to get back to writing more often. Hopefully you don’t mind and are still excited for updates on product and investing. No hard feelings at all if you unsubscribe, as I know this has been awhile & your inbox is valuable :)
I am now a full time investor as some of you know. I started Chapter One a few years ago, but have always thought of investing as a “weekend project” — and finally decided to do this full time. I’ve never been happier and more excited to wake up for work in the morning.
Product Club
This week was huge for the fund. We announced Product Club, an early stage product incubator that I have always dreamed of building. The feedback on the concept was insane and we are already 200+ companies who have applied.
We are building the smallest, most personalized program for early-stage "product first" startups. The program is 10 weeks and we give every team access to world class designers from Robinhood, Google, Tinder, and Squarespace for free.
There is also lots of product star power involved as mentors in the program, some of whom are Chapter One LP's. Each mentor has committed to doing a private personalized product session with each company in our batch:
Manik Gupta (former CPO at Uber, Product at Google Maps)
Scott Belsky (CPO at Adobe, CEO & Founder of Behance. Early advisor & investor in Pinterest, Uber, Periscope)
Jules Walter (Product at Slack)
Josh Elman (former VP of Product at Robinhood, former VC at Greylock)
Merci Victoria Grace (Former Head of Growth at Slack)
Brian Norgard (former CPO at Tinder)
Sriram Krishan (former Product Lead at Twitter, Snap, Facebook)
Danny Trinh (Head of Design at Zenly)
Here is the Techcrunch article on Product Club that was published on Monday: https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/13/former-tinder-vp-jeff-morris-jr-opens-up-product-club-an-accelerator-meant-to-stay-small-and-focused/
If you know any friends, teammates, or startups who are building interesting companies right now, we would love your referrals. The application is due tomorrow so please send to everyone today :)
Here is the application: https://chapterone.vc/product-club/
Chalk:
Many people subscribe to this newsletter because they want to see interesting products before anyone else.
The product I most recommend checking out this week is Chalk. They are building private communities (with live audio and messaging) and the product execution is awesome.
I launched my own Product Club group on Chalk this week and the community we have built is insane. We have 1000+ community members in 48 hours.
The rise of live audio is perhaps the most interesting trend in consumer tech. If you want to join my club and check out the product, sign up here: https://www.chalkapp.com/productclub
Promise this will be worth the sign up. Amazing product.
Happy weekend.
JMJ