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Why Did Jeff Morris Jr Move to Kansas City?

Jeff Morris Jr left San Francisco for Kansas City the day after a team call because other people wanted the growth marketer job.

He was mostly meeting people on Twitter when a growth marketer posting went up. He sent the founder a direct message, and the team got on a call the next day. They told him to move to Kansas City tomorrow. He went with one bag of clothes and no place to live, without knowing whether Kansas City was in Missouri or Kansas. To him it was just one place. Friends thought he was crazy for leaving the tech ecosystem to work in the Midwest.

The founder already lived in Kansas City, and the plan was to focus on the Midwest, so the team lived there. Funding came together so quickly that being anywhere else did not make sense then.

Grokipedia·San Francisco

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Building a Venture Firm Like a Product | Jeff Morris Jr, Chapter One ·

The Peel with Turner Novak

More from this episode

  1. Why Does Chapter One Publish Its Investment Committee Notes?Jeff Morris Jr says Chapter One publishes its weekly investment-committee notes because those partner meetings are the firm's best conversations, and sharing…
  2. Do Seed Round Labels Still Mean Anything?Jeff Morris Jr says a $60 million seed round would be below average now, and the old venture-round buckets no longer mean anything.
  3. Why Did a Seed Fund Back Erebor?Jeff Morris Jr says his seed fund backed Erebor's $2 billion round, a deal that was not a classic pre-seed, because refusing it would have cut the fund off…
  4. Why Did Venture Investors Start Preferring Deep Tech?Jeff Morris Jr says investors started preferring deep tech because AI software bets from 2022 to 2025 went badly, not because hardware suddenly got easier.
  5. Why Did Chapter One Become More Thematic?Jeff Morris Jr says one adjustment at Chapter One was being more thematic, so the firm can presumably get to a founder and a company before the rest of the…
  6. How Did Jeff Morris Jr Source Deals While Working at Tinder?Jeff Morris Jr sourced startup deals with software he wrote while he still worked full time at Tinder, because he could not spend the day calling founders.
  7. Why Did Chapter One Decide Not to Be a Crypto-only Firm?Jeff Morris Jr says Chapter One's biggest moment was refusing to become a crypto-only firm, right after the crypto book in fund two was marked at 22x.
  8. Why Does a Single Pivot Predict Startup Success?Jeff Morris Jr says one single pivot is a greater predictor of success for a startup than no pivots or a bunch of pivots.
  9. When Should a Founder Consider Pivoting?Jeff Morris Jr says a founder should consider pivoting the company as soon as the thought is in the back of their mind.
  10. Why Did Jeff Morris Jr Hand-deliver Valentine's Flowers?Jeff Morris Jr delivered every Valentine's Day flower order in Kansas City himself because he did not have enough people there.
  11. What Do Founders Get Wrong About Shopping?Jeff Morris Jr says founders sometimes get things wrong by assuming people want to automate everything in their lives.
  12. How Do You Build a Venture Firm Like a Product?Jeff Morris Jr says you build a venture firm the way a product team works: run a pile of experiments, expect most of them to fail, and follow the few that work.
  13. Why Do Sequoia and USV Only Pick Winners 4 to 7 Percent of the Time?Jeff Morris Jr says Sequoia, USV, and the other best venture firms have historically turned only 4 to 7 percent of their companies into investments that…
  14. Who Is Jeff Morris Jr's Favorite Businessman?Jeff Morris Jr names his grandfather, Mervin Morris, as his favorite businessman.

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