Why I Built Mexzungu
A faraway galaxy of tacos and tequila. Big Law. Yale. The Camino. Africa. Then I quit and built this. The origin story.
Read postcard →Essays on venture architecture, governance, and the things nobody tells founders. The conversations I have with every founder I work with, written down so they can reach the ones I haven't met yet.
Leadership lessons from unusual places. Stories from 25 countries, a rock'n'roll career in law, and the view from the frontier.
A faraway galaxy of tacos and tequila. Big Law. Yale. The Camino. Africa. Then I quit and built this. The origin story.
Read postcard →Nairobi, 11pm. The power went out. The laptops died. I closed the deal on a napkin. In shorts. What "professional" actually means across 25 countries.
Read postcard →The conversation I have with every founder, usually about six months too late. From jurisdiction to cap tables to the five bombs that blow up at Series A. The short version and the long version.
Read essay →Weekly newsletter. Every Monday. One founder problem, no jargon, no mercy.
Published on Mexzungu Group →
She promised her first engineer 2%. The grant was valid in Delaware. That had never been the question.
Read it →Two founders. One template from the internet. 80,000 in legal fees later, they found the three clauses nobody put in.
Read it →Two founders. Same round. Same cap. One word neither of them noticed. A $10M difference by Series A.
Read it →She thought she owned 55%. The math told a different story. SAFE conversion, dilution stacking, and a free cap table calculator.
Read it →