venture capital investor
also referred to as: venture capital investors
48 statements across 47 episodes · 9 bullish · 17 bearish · 44 people on the record · first statement Apr 20, 2015 by Brandon Lipman · across every show →
Everything said about venture capital investor, oldest first
Apr 20, 2015 neutral
Lipman: VCs are reducing deal volume to provide better portfolio support
“And I think that investors are starting to recognize that. And that's why they might be also scaling back on the number of deals they're making, so they can make sure they're adding enough value to the companies that are in their portfolios.”
Nov 4, 2015 negative
Aug 1, 2016
Justin Kan: Successful Investors Need Platform, Selection Thesis, and Relentless Pursuit
“Well, I think investors have to have, you know, there's three qualities of investors that I, or of investors or firms that I think are important investing. I've thought about this a little bit. The first one is a platform that generates leads for them or reaso…”
Aug 19, 2016 negative
Aug 29, 2016 neutral
If a VC doesn't engage within 24 hours, they aren't genuinely interested
“I have a general rule I call the 24 hour rule which is in any, is there any engagement with you inside of 24 hours? And I might expand that to like 36, but generally 24 hours. And I'd even consider a favorite of a tweet an engagement. Right? It's something. Di…”
Apr 14, 2017 negative
Kimball: Lowball VC negotiation tactics damage founder trust and board relationships
“So, you know, like you establish that trust early and I'm sorry, but like the, a very chaotic and unpleasant negotiation phase is not a good way to, you know, have then, you know, have that person transition onto your board. I know I think that there's a much …”
May 17, 2017 bearish
Raney: Investors refuse capital-intensive startups lacking clear profitability
“Companies that are maybe are scaling, but have more speculative business models, ones that aren't converging on profitability, Are finding it very, very difficult to raise money, and it's, I think investors are kind of unwilling, are becoming increasingly unwi…”
Aug 25, 2017 positive
Abrams: Investor empathy and founder experience provide a key VC advantage
“For me, an investor that has an entrepreneur background that has been in my shoes, that's a big advantage to me because I think they're going to be able to understand my side of things better. And contrary to somebody who's been recently in the news, I actuall…”
Nov 3, 2017 positive
Mar 30, 2018 negative
Drori: Early male VCs failed to understand Daily Harvest's frozen food concept
“And the reason why is because I started speaking to people early on and I found that they just didn't get the business. It was mostly middle-aged men who I was talking to, and they would taste one of our first collections, which was smoothies, and they'd be li…”
Apr 2, 2018 positive
Chen: Good venture investors must maintain relentless optimism
“To be a good investor, you have to always be optimistic to see the possible Because if you're always focused on what can go wrong, you're never going to put money to work. You're never going to invest. You're never going to believe the founder.”
Apr 9, 2018 negative
Jul 13, 2018 negative
Blumenthal: Venture investors lack conviction and display follower mentality
“I often find that there's generally not much conviction across the board and that there's a lot of follower type behavior where everybody wants to get in on a deal, a business, an opportunity that everybody else wants to be in on. It creates this follower ment…”
Mar 18, 2019 negative
Very few VCs are actually interested in pre-traction startups
“And too often, everybody says they do all of it, when in fact, they're very Few investors, VCs, who really are interested in pretraction, So I think there's just a lot of confusion in the marketplace in terms of who really wants to invest when and clarity arou…”
Apr 29, 2019 positive
Smith: Startups should raise capital to pay higher salaries instead of equity
“Why wouldn't we instead go raise some additional capital from people who adequately value it or value it at least at a higher rate and instead convert that money that we get from investors into higher salaries to make us more competitive? And so I'm surprised …”
Jul 15, 2019 negative
Subotovsky: Two-week fundraising cycles are problematic in most cases
“It's like getting married after meeting someone online for two weeks, chatting, and then the next thing you do is you get married. That's, I mean, the majority of the cases, that's going to be problematic. You might get lucky every now and then, but it's going…”
Aug 9, 2019
Oct 4, 2019
Boehmig: Allowing VCs to drive key business decisions means founders failed
“I think it goes back to that intellectual rigor before is a VC can't make a critical business decision for you. And it seems like a failure to me just on first principles of a VC is driving a critical business decision for you. That means you, by definition, h…”
Oct 4, 2019
Oct 18, 2019
Roy Bahat: Founders should share sensitive data with VCs gradually
“You got to go gradually. I call it the egg toss. Of trust. You know, that game kids play where you stand near each other and you toss an egg and then you stand a little bit further away and you toss the egg a little bit further. That is to me, the model is I w…”
Jan 24, 2020 negative
May 15, 2020
Kunst: Founders risk pricing out investors who rarely circle back after passing
“If you set the price, you have no idea if that price is going to be attractive to a buyer, right, to an investor, and you might find out too late that everybody loves your deal, but they feel like it's too expensive, so they all pass, and once investors pass, …”
Jul 7, 2020 positive
Aug 3, 2020
Aug 7, 2020
Aug 16, 2021
Sep 14, 2021
Leone: Recovering from multiple bad investments is harder than a first failure
“I don't think the first bad investments is as dangerous and as fruitful a lesson as waking up one day, and you're on six boards, and you've got four bad investments, because that takes a whole bunch of time. I think the first bad investments, it's a lot easier…”
Apr 8, 2022
Apr 22, 2022
Cillufo: VCs cannot rely on operator skills to fix incomplete founder teams
“One of the terms we use is operators masquerading as investors. A lot of us have experience either at Capital One or at startups or other places operating businesses. And I do think at times we've fallen in love with an idea. We may not have been totally sold …”
Aug 8, 2022 positive
Investors Prefer Re-Backing Founders Who Shut Down Failing Startups Gracefully
“The investors are That are in your cap table today are infinitely more likely to back you again, watching you make that kind of mature decision as an entrepreneur, rather than watching you piss that money down the drain over the next two years, and actually, i…”
Oct 25, 2022
Emil Michael: Startup board seats should have term limits after 10x returns
“So, so, or when early stage investors Get to this point where there's just a lot of paper gains. We, there should be sort of term limits on board seats, like term limit out. If I get to, you know, a 10 X return and can get you some liquidity, then you can move…”
Feb 13, 2023 negative
Loverro: Late 2023 and 2024 startup fundraising wave will overwhelm VCs
“The way I back into the math says that there's a lot of companies that are going to be raising the end of this year and next year, and what's going to happen is there's only so many hours in a day for the investors who do, say, A, B, and C rounds that are goin…”
May 22, 2023 negative
Sep 18, 2023 negative
Grimshaw: VCs who enforce generic checklists distract and burden founders
“I've been in some board meetings where investors don't really get the product, don't really get the strategy that has to be pursued. They're trying to apply like procedures and checklists, you know, versus strategies specific to the instance. It becomes a repo…”
Oct 11, 2023
Nov 20, 2023 positive
Dec 11, 2023 neutral
Jul 22, 2024 neutral
Jul 29, 2024 positive
Asparouhov: Future VCs will be hard tech polymaths, not SaaS analysts
“I think what you will see is the, you know, sort of profile of investors start to change. You need these very sort of broad polymaths that can, you know, sort of get up to speed across biotech, material science, aerospace, et cetera, more so than people whose,…”
Sep 23, 2024 negative
Oct 14, 2024 bearish
Frankel: VCs are quiet quitting on struggling portfolio companies
“I do. I do. You know, I think it's for the entrepreneur, It's like, there comes a point where it's like, you can have, it goes back to your earlier question, you can have words, you can have as many discussions. If the business is just not working out, like, d…”
May 8, 2025 neutral
O'Driscoll: Founders care about capital and help, not VC stage strategy
“To the founder, they don't give a damn about your nuanced stage specific strategy. A founder wants two things from his venture investor. He wants money, money, lots of it with the minimum amount of hassle and perhaps the maximum amount of help, right?”
Aug 21, 2025 negative
Lemkin: VCs are ignoring major platform dependency risks in B2B AI startups
“These are ones we used to shy away from in venture. These are one of the many risks we're ignoring today because the growth is epic. We're ignore, we're ignoring so many risks and platform attaches all over AI B to B. There's so much platform risk and we've gi…”
Sep 19, 2025 positive
Zhang: Top engineering candidates care heavily about venture capital investor brands
“I mean, I just think that most people care. If you're responsible about your career, like, you're gonna look at all the different factors and Maybe the sort of kernel of truth behind that quote is that that shouldn't be the only thing they care about. But if y…”
Feb 5, 2026 neutral
Feb 9, 2026
Daily Product Usage Is Essential for VC Investors, But Most Don't
“Well, I think the number one thing, and here's my free advice to other investors, but also founders, is just like, you have to use the products today more than ever. You know, and I think the investing landscape of five or seven years ago when there was a ton …”
Jul 9, 2026
Aug 12, 2026 bearish
Investors ignore dubious revenue metrics like GMV if growth exists
“I think whether it's literally GMV or not, I think there are plenty of folks getting benefits of revenue that make no sense. It's not even just lying or cynical. I think there's a lot of, I think investors to some extent don't care as long as the growth's ther…”