About Me

Before we get started, you’re probably here because you have at least interacted with me personally and/or any of my ventures, i.e., Metagrove Ventures, The Prompt Podcast, or even Argon Labs (sold). This also includes my work with founders across several accelerators — Techstars Global, Y Combinator, Plug and Play, Startmate, and many others. Otherwise, you’ve engaged with some of my musings on the socials (Substack, LinkedIn, and X)

These ventures have a lot of overlap, and I’ve been getting a lot of interest lately in consolidating most of my insights, learnings, and collaborations into a single piece around what I've found and what I’ve learned — this is Alpha Bytes (the name probably needs some workshopping).

Finally, if you’re here by accident and have no idea who I am, never have interacted with me, or don’t find it useful, feel free to unsubscribe — no hard feelings :)

Hi Friends,

In 2014, after college (or university; it depends where you’re from), I decided to move to Silicon Valley (from Sydney, Australia) and cut my teeth in the startup world, and I loved every minute of it.

I've worn many hats — including engineering, marketing and growth, recruiting, product, operations, and sales.

I have since worked across many startups and have been fortunate to be a part of their growth into successful companies. Some of these have been acquired (Verizon), and others are backed by top-tier investors like SoftBank, Intel, Samsung, and many others.

After nearly a decade of working as an operator, I decided to jump to the other side and become an entrepreneur and an investor.

I now wear a few hats.

In 2022, I founded Metagrove Ventures to invest in early-stage companies between Silicon Valley and Australia/New Zealand. Being in a unique position for me, I've been able to leverage my experience across both sides to help support great companies to go global. We're currently deploying Fund I, so reach out if you're building something sick! — if you're a founder, go here. If you're an interested investor, go here.

In 2023, I founded Argon Labs (sold) to help high-growth technology companies with their technical content marketing. A unique niche, but a huge opportunity to build their brand, presence, and authority in a crowded world.

I'm currently living between Sydney and San Francisco.

I hope you all get some value from this, and feel free to reach out and say hello!

Barry.

LinkedIn / X / Spotify / Apple / YouTube

Alpha Bytes

The goal of Alpha Bytes is simple — every week, I’ll send you the latest high-quality signals on news, updates, insights, and discoveries around technology, business, innovation, and anything else I find useful and interesting.

To help you better understand this publication, here’s a brief FAQ.

1. Why should you read it and be subscribed?
   There’s a lot of tech and business news already out there. Alpha Bytes aims to provide a curated list of not-so-mainstream news that you typically would have to be recommended or go out of your way to find. Each piece of news will include an in-depth, concise summary of the key highlights and why it’s so important. But wait, there’s more…

2. What else do I get besides the news?

   Every other week, you can get one of two things:

   • A deep dive into interesting topics through the lens of technology with valuable startup lessons.

   • A tactical field guide (which might include a podcast) from some of the best in the business on how to take what you’re excited about and turn that into something worth building, especially at the very early stages of growth.

3. Do you have samples?

   1. Newsletter: The Weekly Signal #001 (Archive)

   2. Micro Essays:

      • Ideas Are Meant To Be Thrown Away

      • Build Fast or Die

   3. Deep-Dives:

      • How China Moves So Freaking Fast!

      • Is the Internet Running Out of Electricity?

      • Why Taiwan Builds all of the Chips?

   4. Tactical Field Guides:

      1. How to Use Amazon’s Powerful PRFAQ Framework

4. Do you collaborate with others?

   Absolutely. We are very active in making sure we bring in fresh insights and perspectives from folks across the industry. Currently, we are looking for folks who have ideally been through early-stage growth (0 to 1 and beyond) and those who are deeply knowledgeable about building with AI. Please DM us if you’re interested.

5. What notable guests have you had on?

   1. Mark Gainey (Co-Founder of Strava) [PODCAST]

   2. Adam Schwab (Co-Founder of Luxury Escapes) [PODCAST]

   3. Arvid Kahl (The Bootstrapped Founder) [PODCAST]

   4. Abby Davidson — The Art of Decision Making [PODCAST]

   5. Liam Bolling (ex-Google PM) [PODCAST]

   6. Nazneed Rajani (Hugging Face) [PODCAST]

   7. Jennifer Garvey Berger — Mental Models for Effective Leadership [PODCAST]

   8. Shawn Tsao (ex-Caviar, acquired by Square) [PODCAST]

   9. Peter Buckingham (ex-NVIDIA) [PODCAST]

   10. Jessica Box (ex-Linktree) — How to Build Your Advisory Network [FIELD GUIDE]

   11. Marcelo Calbucci (ex-Amazon) — Using Amazon’s PRFAQ Framework [FIELD GUIDE]

6. Any other resources you can share?

   1. The Blueprint — this is a work in progress. Its goal is to help builders navigate the startup journey from ideation to product market fit and beyond. This is slow-moving but coming together. Will make an announcement when this is ready.

   2. Helpful Bookmarks — This is an archive of random and hopefully useful things I've collected over the years on becoming a better builder. It’s a living document.

You will start receiving updates right here in your inbox. You can also check out our full archive and other posts as they are published.

Work with me and my team

Metagrove Ventures: an early-stage venture capital fund focused on investing in the most ambitious founders between Australia/New Zealand and Silicon Valley.