Schroepfer: Passing on great founders in weak initial markets caused biggest misses
Mike Schroepfer · Mike Schroepfer: Former Meta CTO on "Why The Best Leaders are Like Music Conductors" | E1158 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · May 29, 2024 · at 58:59
Mike Schroepfer is a Partner at climate VC firm Gigascale Capital and former CTO of Meta. He reflects on venture investing mistakes and the risk of underestimating adaptable entrepreneurs.
0:00 / 0:32exact quote · 32.0s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“The biggest like misses I've made Is sort of trying to outsmart the entrepreneur, and that's basically, ooh, I love that entrepreneur. They're so good, but like, I don't really like the market they're in, and then they pivot into a different market that I really like, and I was like, oh, should have invested, like, and now they're in the hot market, and everyone's trying to throw money into them, so the definitely mistake I've made that I try not to repeat is like, oh my god, you're working on climate problems, and you're amazing, and you're thinking through these problems, like, I'm gonna go ahead and get behind you. Like, I, I've definitely missed out on, on, on some where I just, I should have gone in”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Mike Schroepfer
Schroepfer: Cheap clean energy access is humanity's primary rate limiter
“Availability of cheap, clean energy is probably the biggest rate limiter to human progress right now.”
Schroepfer: Team organization trumps individual talent quality
“I think people way, way undervalue this sort of coordination and optimization. I've seen the difference between a well-organized team and a not well-organized team, and it, I think it often trumps the, like, quality of the individuals.”
Schroepfer: Meta's early AI lab built the skills that powered Llama
“We built an AI lab at Meta and it was kind of like, huh, this AI thing is going to be pretty big. Let's like start building the skill set. And that's why you see Meta doing Lama now and a bunch of other things, because they, we had all the people, we had all t…”
Schroepfer: Climate startups must offer cheaper or better products, not green premiums
“When I invest, I'm like, I'm a capitalist. I'm like, your pitch to your customers is we are cheaper or we are better. And they're like, oh, by the way, we're good for the environment is like the little asterisks at the end. Because my thesis is like, most peop…”