Operating experience improves board governance but not deal picking, says Sarah Tavel
Sarah Tavel · 20VC: Benchmark's Sarah Tavel on Why Investing Success Lies In Small Markets Adjacent To Very Large Ones, Why You Have To Be Judicious On When To Pay Up vs Be More Price Sensitive & Why Crypto Investing Is Like The Early Days of AdTech Investing · Sep 24, 2018 · at 6:41
Sarah Tavel, General Partner at Benchmark, responds to Sequoia's Pat Grady regarding whether an investor's operational experience decays over time.
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“But I think that most operating experience you know, the experience that you get as an executive, as a founder, as a product leader in a company, I think that experience is really timeless. You know, because what you're learning is how to hire great leaders, how to scale an organization. You get the training of thinking about strategy from first principles, and that kind of emotional, hard-earned wisdom of experiencing scaling from the inside, and just seeing that, you know, it's not always up and to the right. There's always these hard points, and how to push through those points, and so I think that that is an experience that doesn't decay, and You know, it may not make you a better investor, you know, it doesn't help you necessarily pick better investments, but I absolutely think that makes you a better board member, and ultimately, I think a better partner to the founders that you end up backing.”
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