Farmer: Traditional VCs will fade away without investing in founder support
Chris Farmer · 20VC: Why There Is A Revolution In VC, Why Boards Are Inherently Inefficient & Why Data Will Be Central To VC In The Future with Chris Farmer, General Partner @ SignalFire · Nov 30, 2016 · at 18:28
Chris Farmer is the General Partner at SignalFire, sharing his vision for the future of the venture capital landscape.
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“I think the old guard VCs are on notice and that they have to make meaningful investments in better support of entrepreneurs or they'll fade away.”
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More from Chris Farmer
Farmer: Major VC funds have devolved into momentum investors
“The major funds, I think, to drift away from their roots of sort of being that sort of foundational investor, and they've become much more momentum investors versus sort of the initial partner that a founder has from inception.”
Farmer: Founders care about operational support, not VC sourcing algorithms
“No entrepreneur gives a shit what, you know, algorithm we use to find them. They care about how we help them build the business as they should”
Farmer: Traditional VC model is outdated and must be rebuilt from scratch
“After a few years, I felt that VC was outdated. So I left Bessemer to study one question. If you were to strip a venture curve down to the bare metal to where to recreate a firm from scratch, how would you build a next generation VC?”
Farmer: Most venture capital firms operate exactly as they did in 1970
“So for the most part, the way most VCs do business has barely changed since 1970.”
Farmer: Most venture capital data efforts are superficial window dressing
“Some firms have begun to dabble with data, but almost none have serious efforts in the area, so it's mostly window dressing at best.”
Farmer: SignalFire almost always beats traditional seed funds head-to-head
“And as a result of that, we have an unbelievably high win rate against the top venture firms in the industry and almost always win head to head against the seed funds because typically we're competing with, you know, two guys and a dog and we're bringing an ar…”