Greylock passed on Baidu at a $14M valuation over travel requirements
David Sze · 20VC: Greylock's David Sze on His Biggest Lessons Working with Mark Zuckerberg and Reid Hoffman, The Rise of Pre-Emptive Rounds, How To Think Through Price Discipline Today and How Truly Strong Venture Partnerships Function · Apr 19, 2021 · at 34:08
David Sze is a General Partner at Greylock. He shares missed venture capital deals to illustrate the importance of keeping an investor humble.
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“I looked at Baidu at fourteen million pre. And because we had this rule of thumb that said we had to be boots on the ground all the time at that time, it was that narrow a definition again back in those days, I was told that I was going to be going to China every week if I was doing this investment. And I was like, that's not going to happen. That's not going to happen for me. That made us miss Baidu.”
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