Opinion
Wagner: SoftBank and mega-funds pollute good startup opportunities with excess capital
“There's certainly lots of otherwise good opportunities that have been polluted or dragged down by, you know, whatever soft bank showing up, and, you know, or any other number of people that, that we can name”
Opinion
Peter Wagner: VCs Funding Capital-Intensive Sectors Are Repeating Bubble Mistakes
“Yes. And you know, and you can get away with it sometimes, just like I got away with it, with that early deal. If you can find, you know, other people's money on advantageous terms to sort of fund you through you know, the valley of death there you know, like,…”
Opinion
Wagner: Excessive fund scale gets in the way of VC excellence
“The adventure is a scale game. Like, I think it actually kind of runs quite the opposite, that excessive scale, you know, gets in the way of excellence. So, you know, you can be too small too, you know, don't get me wrong, and scale, scale has its benefits, bu…”
Insight
Wagner: VC partners are rarely punished for consensus mistakes
“There's this kind of safety in the herd thing, and I, a belief within, you know, firms and partners, and not incorrect, that if they're making the same mistake that everyone else in the industry is making, they probably won't be punished for it, because, you k…”
Disclosure
Wagner: Wing Avoids Investing in High-Priced LLM Development Shops
“Where we haven't been investing is the super capital intensive very, very high priced you know, sort of LLM development shops or other, you know, other sorts of similar projects.”
Insight
Wagner: Venture capital splits into AUM gathering vs return generation
“I think for an asset gatherer, you know, there's sort of two business models in venture, you know, you can be in the assets under management game, or you can be in the generate best possible returns game.”
Insight
Wagner: Investors emphasizing annual capital deployment are asset gatherers
“Anytime you meet an investor that talks about the amount of capital they deploy per year, right, you know you're talking to, you know, an asset gatherer”
Insight
Wagner: Price Sensitivity in Early-Stage VC Signals Weak Conviction
“When I'm getting really nervous about a price getting too high often actually what that also is, it's an indication that maybe my conviction is lacking. I don't have sufficient conviction around this investment, and so queasiness about price is actually a symp…”
Opinion
Wagner: Capping round dilution at 10% attracts passive spray-and-pray investors
“There's been so many new entrants that have pounded into venture that, you know, maybe aren't, you know, devoting that kind of company building craftsmanship to their projects, and they're really, you know, they're pursuing a spring and pray strategy or a capi…”
Insight
Wagner: Early-stage VCs adding opportunity funds underestimate multi-strategy complexity
“That it's difficult to have all these different strategies cohabitate under one roof. They have different methodologies, You have to build the teams differently. You know, the investment decisions are made, you know, with very different criteria, and it's not …”
Insight
Wagner: Top B2B founders are frustrated domain experts, not outsiders
“In B to B technology which is where we focus deep understanding of what you're on the part of the founders. Of what they're attempting to disrupt is actually really important, but you need to have also, you know, that, that deep understanding, which is really …”
Opinion
Wagner: Replacing Salesforce with a new CRM is a fool's errand
“I'd rather have been doing that in sales tech than, oh, here's a better CRM, you know, unplug Salesforce and plug in my CRM. You know, like to me, that's a fool's errand. You know, that's not happening.”
Opinion
Peter Wagner: The best companies are not built through stampeded fundraising
“The stampeded process, I think, you know, I don't, I just don't think the best companies Are built that way.”
Disclosure
Wagner: Wing invested $7M in Pinecone's seed at $35M post-money
“We invested seven million dollars at 35 post, right? Like, oh, 35 post for a company with, like, no revenue and no customers and blah, blah, blah. That's what we did.”
Insight
Wagner: Traditional 20% VC ownership target no longer makes sense
“Fund sizes are different. Outcome sizes are different. You know, so there's no, no real reason the 20% rule should make any sense”
Assertion Supported
Wagner: History shows predictions of lower VC returns have always been wrong
“Yeah, no, and we've heard this before. We've, I mean, this type of statement has been made at multiple times, even just during, you know, the time that I've been in the business and it's been wrong every time.”
Disclosure
Wagner: My biggest cleantech contribution at Accel was avoiding bad deals
“Like, I devoted a substantial amount of my time to cleantech at one point you know, just because, and this was in like, 2006, 2007, 2008. And it was because, you know, no one else at the firm was spending any time on it, you know, I sort of felt like it was an…”
Insight
Wagner: Early-stage VCs miss key factors by over-relying on quantitative metrics
“I think over-reliance on quantitative metrics in investment decision-making. So the whole, and in early stage so the, I think the dependence upon this sort of suite of metrics as indicators of what, you know whether you should invest or not, you know, is it ha…”
Insight
Wagner: LPs are frustrated by mega-funds and seek pure-play early-stage VC
“There's a lot of demand for unadulterated early stage venture capital, you know, being practiced by experienced people with a track record. And a lot of the very best people with those track records, you know, are within aircraft carriers now, and the LPs are …”
Insight
Peter Wagner: The best founders maintain high-bandwidth investor engagement
“The very best founders that I work with, the most talented, most capable, most sought after are also the ones where, you know, we have the highest bandwidth engagement.”
Insight
Wagner: Great startups require pissed-off founders solving glaring deficiencies
“You need to have just some glaring deficiency in the current approaches. And so you almost need to find, you know, founders that are like just pissed off.”
Insight
Wagner: Early VC Success Builds Credibility but Can Delay Crucial Lessons
“You know, it's a double edged sword, right? So it can be very good in terms of building some credibility and some reputation. And that certainly was the case, you know, for me. And so it brought, You know, maybe sort of more relevant and interesting to founder…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Wagner: Price discipline caused 1990s VCs to miss internet boom
“Back to the late nineties, you know, there were people good venture capitalists that were like, you know what, you know, these valuations are just too high. I'm not investing in these internet companies, you know, it just doesn't make sense. And, you know, the…”
Insight
Wagner: Balancing guardrails and autonomy accelerates VC investor learning
“And then you give that person both enough rope to hang themselves so that they're, you know, feeling tremendous accountability. You know, what will be called the sleepless night factor. But also guardrails that protect them from making, you know, really egregi…”
