Adam Fisher
47 statements across 1 episodes · 11 bullish · 17 bearish · 1 people on the record · first statement Jan 22, 2024 by Adam Fisher · said 3 times in 3 episodes since 2021 · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Adam Fisher's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year
brought up most by Harry Stebbings (2), Michael Eisenberg (1)
tap a year for its mentions
2025 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
2021 1 mention in 1 episode
Everything said about Adam Fisher, oldest first
Jan 22, 2024 negative
Jan 22, 2024 negative
Fisher: High cost basis forces VCs into risk-averse board mindsets
“When you invest a lot more money at a lot higher valuations you actually end up behaving a little bit different as a board member even when all of a sudden you have a hundred million of cost basis in a company, in which I do have several companies where that's…”
Jan 22, 2024 bearish
Fisher: I refuse $20M AI seed rounds driven by competitor fundraising
“No, I don't. I don't do them, but for different reasons. I don't do them because the way they rationalize needing twenty million dollars is because their six competitors also raised twenty million dollars, and in that sense, they're absolutely right.”
Jan 22, 2024 positive
Fisher: Founders need a confidant partner, not a prescriptive investor
“One of the things that I eventually, ah, did myself when I started at Bessemer, ah, this is in 2000 and seven, was to, Take a very different approach to take this kind of partnership type of approach with the entrepreneur, because I realize what they really ne…”
Jan 22, 2024
Fisher: Investing exclusively in my ideal founder typecast does not scale
“I accept that sometimes I have a lot of biases towards certain types of entrepreneurs, and I can't always invest in the same Adam Fisher typecast entrepreneur that even though that works for me, it doesn't scale and I'll probably miss out on some very good one…”
Jan 22, 2024 positive
Fisher: Rapid learning speed between meetings is key for first-time founders
“The key for looking at first-time entrepreneurs is, is, is identifying somebody that you have chemistry with that you have back and forth from, that they can learn from you, you're learning from then. It's also people who progress very fast on the learning cur…”
Jan 22, 2024 positive
Jan 22, 2024 positive
Fisher: Niche market first movers offer better arbitrage than big market competitors
“That that it's a better arbitrage opportunity to be the lone player or the first mover in a even in a smaller market, even in a niche market, than to be the number two or three in a large market. Because a number two, it's like a gladiator competition. Number …”
Jan 22, 2024 negative
Jan 22, 2024 negative
Fisher: Early venture capital was adversarial and paternalistic toward founders
“I worked back then at a time where it was much more adversarial relationship with entrepreneurs. The VCs kind of acted as if they knew what they were doing, that they knew the right way. A lot of these VCs were former Maybe entrepreneurs themselves, or at leas…”
Jan 22, 2024 neutral
Jan 22, 2024 neutral
Fisher: Executive mis-hires stem more from stage mismatch than personality clashes
“The latter because hopefully I've done my work and I've figured out the personal chemistry and the founders pretty good at that themselves, which I, again, I look for when I fund people. But sometimes it's a mismatch in the stage.”
Jan 22, 2024
Fisher: Investing lessons learned over 30 years come too late for oneself
“What are the things you learn over this kind of a period, 25, 30 years, you learn them too late to make them truly valuable to yourself, and so the best thing you can do is then try and give it to younger people and hope that they'll, they'll, they'll, they'll…”
Jan 22, 2024 bearish
Fisher: Late-stage VCs will prioritize getting 1x returns by 2026
“100%. That is exactly what's going to happen over the next 24 months. Various ways in which to get, you get your one X. And when you know that you want your one X, you want it now. You don't want to wait two, three, four years from that.”
Jan 22, 2024
Jan 22, 2024
Jan 22, 2024
Fisher: Founder relationship outweighs market and product when investing
“I make it very clear to the entrepreneur that I'm choosing them more than I'm choosing the market or the particular product, and that I'm choosing them because I'm also not just choosing somebody that I hope will succeed or want to succeed, but somebody that I…”
Jan 22, 2024 negative
Jan 22, 2024 negative
Fisher: Evaluating financial KPIs at $500K ARR is meaningless
“Trying to focus on KPIs when a company has half a million dollars of ARR also doesn't make much sense. Those numbers are, if it's, if they're fantastic numbers, I say it's anecdotal. And if they're horrible numbers, I say, well, we need a bit more scale to get…”
Jan 22, 2024 negative
Fisher: I refuse to double down on companies with unsustainable burn rates
“I don't mind having missed an opportunity to invest three more million dollars in a company that could have generated another thirty million dollars of gains, but I do worry a lot about doubling down in a company, investing another twenty million dollars, and …”
Jan 22, 2024
Jan 22, 2024 negative
Jan 22, 2024 negative
Fisher: Avoid second-time founders who attribute past success solely to ambition
“Like I said before, there are two types of second time entrepreneurs. There are those that don't recognize the luck that was involved. They think that building something big is just more ambition. And I steer clear of those.”
Jan 22, 2024
Fisher: Founders in down markets must take low M&A offers early
“You always want the previous deal. This is the stage where you always want the previous deal. You want what they off, what you could have had before, and you have to preempt that, meaning you have to realize that it only gets worse from here, and so you actual…”
Jan 22, 2024 positive
Jan 22, 2024
Jan 22, 2024
Fisher: Avoid contrarian investments that lack follow-on venture capital interest
“As much as I am willing to be contrarian, I'm not willing to invest in something that others are not going to fund. So I need to find, it's a fine line, but I need to find something That perhaps is not mainstream, perhaps is not and yet a headline in TechCrunc…”
Jan 22, 2024 positive
Fisher: Founder naivety beats industry insider experience due to lack of bias
“Insiders are just blinded by convention, by knowing a little bit too much of what hasn't worked in the past of where others failed. Naivete is a strength in these cases, and if you have the right entrepreneur who, again, is self-aware and perhaps also has a ce…”
Jan 22, 2024 positive
Jan 22, 2024 neutral
Jan 22, 2024 positive
Jan 22, 2024
Fisher: Maintaining composure drives founder transparency and lasting VC partnerships
“And when you express that kind of balance, when you react to entrepreneurs, whether it's good news or bad news, with some kind of composure, they become more transparent with you, more forthcoming. They'll share the good information and the bad information as …”
Jan 22, 2024 neutral
Fisher: Israeli startup ecosystem is not just cybersecurity and technical founders
“Oh, it's probably that they're all techies and they're all in cyber security, which is just not the case. I've backed a lot of entrepreneurs that have no technical background or minimal technical background. And obviously I have very few, if not any cyber secu…”
Jan 22, 2024
Jan 22, 2024
Jan 22, 2024
Fisher: VCs cannot accurately predict which portfolio companies will win
“There's no question that, at the end of the day, you, most of your returns are gonna come from very few deals. It's not gonna be spread evenly. That's a fact. The question is, can you recognize it early on, or can you recognize it really at any point? And I do…”
Jan 22, 2024 negative
Jan 22, 2024
Jan 22, 2024 positive
Jan 22, 2024 negative
Fisher: Claiming category creation from day one is a mistake
“I think if you're, from the get-go, if you're talking about creating a category, you're making a mistake. I think a lot of times when we talk about category creation, it's in retrospect that we see that a category was created. It wasn't started that way.”
Jan 22, 2024 positive
Jan 22, 2024 negative
Jan 22, 2024 bearish
Fisher: Avoid high-capital, low-margin mainstream AI use cases
“Well, I know it's hard to sit out in an entire market, and it feels like AI is like the equivalent of cloud, and so I'm not suggesting sitting out of anything related to AI. Of course not. I'm talking about some of the very mainstream type AI use cases, especi…”
Jan 22, 2024
Fisher: Being the third or lower player in a market leads to failure
“I think it's more about thinking that you could be number three or four or five in a market and still succeed. I think that's such a mistake on the part of entrepreneurs, investors, and even employees who join these companies. Obviously there are exceptions, a…”
Jan 22, 2024 negative
Jan 22, 2024 positive