After a week in Miami, I got back home to San Francisco. As I was opening my mail, I got this letter from Macy's. It told me that a store that I've never been to is closing.
There are so many things wrong with such a move. At some point, someone had a meeting about doing this. They thought it would be a good idea to inform customers of a store closure. A store to which they have never been to. No data correlation. No omnichannel strategy. Nada.
Some traditional retailers deserve pain. This is lunacy and a waste of marketing dollars.
I love shopping offline and local. That said, the ones that don’t innovate will die pretty fast.
If Macy's does stupid things like this and had US$24.9B in revenues last year, imagine what you can do when you start and scale your company. This is the beauty of venture capital and entrepreneurship.
Long live $SHOP and $AMZN + the entire sea of DTC founders out there. Short $M — Just mentally since I don't short stocks as a matter of principle.

Transparent VC is purely tactical advice on how to raise money in a clean, efficient way while giving you the heads up to avoid all the common pitfalls.
Returning to serenity requires minimalist action. Take the very next step. Break it down into something so small that you look silly by not doing it.
Paulo is the founder and CEO of Arena, a data platform for consumer enterprises that has over 25,000 customers in more than 50 countries.