2024 in Review: Our Numbers, Milestones, and the Path Ahead
Holiday Gifts, Discounts, and More
š Hi, Iām Andre and welcome to my newsletter Data-Driven VC which is all about becoming a better investor with Data & AI. Join 30,689 thought leaders from VCs like a16z, Accel, Index, Sequoia, and more to understand how startup investing becomes more data-driven, why it matters, and what it means for you.
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The days between Christmas and New Year's Eve offer a perfect opportunity for reflection. It's a chance to pause, look back at what went well and what didnāt, and thoughtfully plan for what lies ahead.
Although I typically enjoy reflecting solo, my choice to develop this newsletter as a ābuilding in publicā project compels me to use this year-end edition for open and transparent reflection. Iāll share an overview of our projects, the numbers, and a lot more. Letās jump in!
If you only have 30 seconds, hereās the most valuable takeaways..
Holiday Gift: To celebrate the milestones of 2024 and thank you for being part of our journey, Iām offering a 30% discount on premium subscriptions for the newsletter and 40% discount on our community platform āThe Labā
The past: Monthly post reads grew 3.2x YoY, recently surpassing 4M+ annualized views, and subs grew 2.4x YoY to 40k+ (31k via email and 9k via Substack app) with top tier features across Forbes, TechCrunch, Business Insider, and more
The future: Get your ticket for the Virtual DDVC Summit 2025 and participate in the survey for the DDVC Landscape 2025
The early days..
I formally started DDVC as a weekly newsletter in September 2022 because I wanted to share my journey of reflecting on the impact of data-driven methods and AI on startup investing and our venture capital industry more broadly. By the end of 2022, we surpassed 78k post views from 3.4k subscribers.
I quickly learned that many of us have been sharing the same frustrations: manual and inefficient workflows, window dressing and lack of transparency on what other firms do, noise across tools and data providers, cultural blockers within our teams - but first and foremost the fact that we were mostly lonely riders trying to transform a legacy industry with technology.
To create more transparency about the true state of digitization in VC, I created a simple survey to collect first-hand datapoints and share the results with all participants. Looking at the submissions just a week later, I was honestly surprised that we surpassed more than 100 participants with many of you sharing it with peers across the industry. Clearly, there was an unmet need and I decided to team up with report-veteran Christopher to create the first version of the Data-Driven VC Landscape, which we published in May 2023.
By the end of 2023, our weekly newsletter surpassed 1M post views and 16k subscribers, while the DDVC Landscape report got voted into the top 10 of ProductHunt, received more than 200k social media views, 100+ shares, got featured in leading media outlets like Business Insider or Sifted, and downloaded 3k+ within the first 10 days after launch.
On the basis of our two pillars ānewsletterā and āreportā, we started into 2024 with big plans..
2024 in reviewā®ļø
This newsletter is not only about being data-driven when it comes to startup investing, but it is built with data, facts & figures in its core itself. I looked at the numbers, what performed well and what didnāt, and listened to your feedback via DMs, our annual reader survey, polls, and other channels, and eventually crafted an ambitious roadmap for 2024. Hereās what we accomplished:
#1 Newsletterš
In addition to our existing āThursday Essaysā, I launched two new weekly formats "Tuesday Insightsā and āSunday Picksā. To maintain the highest quality standards while increasing quantity meant to also bring on board a co-author to help with research and writing. I was lucky that one of my earliest readers Jerome reached out to support.