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1/ I neither directly invested in, nor passed on, @Airbnb prior to the company's historic #IPO last week. This website has enjoyed much #VC banter about who invested, who passed, and who mocked up the best fake pass meme. However, I have a story to tell. It's 
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2/ It's an old fashioned tale of both luck and randomness that encapsulates the baseball pitcher Lucky Gomez's famous quote, "I'd rather be #lucky than #good."
3/ In 2011, I was in a period of career transition. I was working on closing down my travel technology startup @travelgoat in order to start business school @Columbia_Biz and ultimately move into the real estate business.
4/ I started networking in the nascent #NYC "Silicon Alley" scene and meeting many entrepreneurs who were building exciting new social, local, mobile platforms leveraging the @Foursquare #API and other location based data.
5/ I realized that I could help some of these companies because of my experience and connections in New York City so I began angel investing small amounts of capital into these businesses.
6/ One day in 2011 I received an email from my friend @bassinir who was working @newscred at the time and knew I was interested in location based mobile applications
7/ After seeing this email, I read the article about @localmind in @thenextweb and thought it was the greatest idea ever: @Foursquare meets @Quora.
8/ So, I cold emailed the founder of Localmind, @lennysan, and asked if I could invest.
9/ Lenny kindly allowed me to invest alongside @GraniteVentures who led the round and @yearonelabs in #Montreal, where the company was accelerated.
10/ Localmind was gaining some traction and caught the eye of the team @Airbnb in 2012 when Airbnb was first contemplating adding local content and local "experiences" to the platform.
11/ Airbnb made an offer to acquire Localmind in 2012 and all the Localmind shareholders became shareholders in Airbnb. The Localmind team joined the product team at the larger company and many remained there for years.
12/ But wait, there's more. Localmind wasn't the only social, local, mobile company I hunted down in 2011, cold emailed and convinced to take my money. Keep unraveling the 
13/ In 2011, I was in Los Angeles watching the live stream of the @TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield competition and I saw a group of #nyu students present their startup called SpotOn. It was an artificially intelligent version of the @Zagat Guide.
14/ I thought that it was the coolest thing ever and it was one of the ideas we had been kicking around to try to build ourselves at Travelgoat. https://techcrunch.com/video/spoton-startup-battlefield-presentation/
15/ So naturally I had to cold email the CEO @gauri and ask if I could invest.
16/ She responded and we met for coffee @thesmilenyc and I committed to investing in a round on the spot. The round was led by @EniacVC with participation from the legendary @rimalovski and others.
17/ The company changed its name to @fondu and was also ultimately acquired by Airbnb in 2012. @gauri and @oburt joined @lennysan working on product at Airbnb.
18/ I was able to befriend the team @EniacVC and leverage that relationship into an internship. In 2013 I was able to visit the Airbnb headquarters in San Fransisco and saw my friends from both companies working together. It was a day I will never forget.
19/ The circuitous and strange nature of the venture business is what makes it exciting. If you are just starting out, please remember how important sheer luck is in the process and also how important it is to always send cold emails. /FIN
