Insight
Fisher: Fastest-growing and most ambitious startups often crash and burn
“I don't think that the way you build a big company or the way you get a big exit is by investing in the most ambitious companies, growing the fastest. Those are also the companies that crash into it.”
Insight
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.”
Opinion
Fisher: Raising too much seed capital distorts startup culture and execution
“No, at seed I don't think so. I think it distorts everything. Everything from the go-to-market model to how you hire, to the offices and the culture you're creating, it's all wrong. I, so I completely disagree.”
Insight
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…”
Insight
Fisher: Raising more capital at higher valuations does not build bigger companies
“Being more ambitious, raising more money, a higher valuation. But that's actually not the way in which you build something bigger.”
Disclosure
Fisher: Back founders who can raise capital even when missing operating plans
“I invest in people who I think can raise money even when they're not, even when they don't meet their plan.”
Insight
Fisher: Never raise funding at valuations equal to your target sale price
“I try and make sure my companies I back never raise at valuations that they want to sell the company at, and I warn them of that.”
Disclosure
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.”
Disclosure
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…”
Disclosure
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 …”
Insight
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…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
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.”
Insight
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…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Fisher: I have achieved surprisingly high exits on sub-$2M revenue startups
“And so I would say at least six or seven times I've had exits where, I mean, the company Was almost worthless. You know, less than two million dollars of revenue, and we had offers that shockingly good.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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…”
Assertion Supported
Fisher: Lead VC partners stay on startup boards longer than co-founders
“There's a higher likelihood that that partner from that VC will be on your board than your co-founder will, just statistically.”
Insight
Fisher: Absolute certainty about an early-stage idea is a bad signal
“But if they're so certain about the idea at such an early stage, to me, that's a bad signal.”
Insight
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.”
Insight
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…”
Insight
Fisher: Category creation only works when serving a new buyer type
“I think where category creation makes sense is when they've identified a new type of customer or a new type of buyer.”
Insight
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 …”
Disclosure
Fisher: Raising $50M for an early-stage startup is inappropriate
“I mean, any early stage company that's raising fifty million dollars, I don't know what stage that was that you were thinking about, it's inappropriate. Those are not the type of invest, of entrepreneurs that I back.”
Insight
Fisher: Growth at all costs is unsustainable for early-stage startups
“It's rarely growth at all costs in my book that just doesn't last, and it's very painful when it's, when it stops.”
Insight
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…”
