James Currier ’90 is General Partner at NFX, a venture firm that invests with a thesis that network effects drive nearly 70 percent of a company’s value. It turns out that network effects also impact nearly every aspect of your life: what city you live in, who you date or marry, which job you choose, what clothes you wear.
We all think we make these choices ourselves. It certainly feels like we’re in full control. But it turns out that our choices — both in our startups and in our lives — are more constrained than we think. The unseen hand in them all is the networks that surround us and the powerful math they exert on us.
Working with network effects in our 100+ companies makes it impossible not to notice how the same mechanisms and math that create near-destiny for companies also create near-destiny for us as individuals. It’s mind-blowing once you see it. They are highly determinative of how your life will turn out, guiding us inexorably down one path or another in ways that are both quite predictable. Yet these forces are typically unnoticed.
This webinar will explore how network effects impact nearly every aspect of your life. With that lens, it lays out a perspective on how to make the seven most important decisions of your life. It will hopefully help you make decisions that are more true to the kind of life you want to lead.
The event will begin with a presentation and overview by James, followed by questions posed by Jeff Phaneuf, an MPA candidate in the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and Founder of AdventureList. James will then take questions from the audience.
In advance of the webinar, please read the paper Your Life is Driven by Network Effects. It will provide an excellent background for the webinar.
This event is co-hosted by Princeton Entrepreneurship Council, Keller Center for Innovation in Engineering Education, GradFUTURES Professional Development and Center for Career Development.
Speaker Bio
James Currier '90 is one of Silicon Valley’s foremost experts in growth and network effects. James is a four-time CEO of VC backed companies, including Tickle (acq Monster), WonderHill (acq Kabam), Iron Pearl (acq PayPal) and Jiff (acq Castlight). James is a pioneer of user-generated models, viral marketing, A/B testing, crowdsourcing, and myriad other growth techniques that have since been adopted by nearly all technology companies, including LinkedIn and Facebook. In 2015, James co-founded NFX, a $425M early-stage venture capital firm focused on network effect businesses along with Pete Flint, Gigi Levy Weiss, and Morgan Beller. You can read his world-leading analysis of network effects and growth at www.nfx.com/essays.
Who can attend?
Open to graduate students, undergraduates, postdocs, research scholars, faculty, staff, and alumni.