Sam Lessin, Partner at Slow Ventures, discusses misallocation of capital in Series A venture rounds.
Opinion
Lessin: Founders who ask VCs for help are weak
“Because I, if you're coming to me for help, my view is you're almost by definition, or you're saying, I need help or whatever I want help. I think you're a weak founder.”
Opinion
Lessin: Venture fund paper markups are irrelevant and often negative signals
“I know full well, I know this is an investor. That the marks that you made up or the marks of SoftBank listed something somewhere are completely irrelevant. In fact, the negative signal in a lot of cases. So like the marks are irrelevant and stupid.”
Opinion
Lessin: $1 billion venture capital funds operate in a death zone
“I don't know how you make multiples on a billion dollars consistently, right? In VC. I think once you're doing 10, you're playing a completely different game of asset gathering and asset deployment where you no longer have the same Goals. So I personally think…”
Opinion
Lessin: Chime is not an important or paradigm-shifting company
“Is Chime an important company? I just don't see it, right? Like, is it, you know, it's good company? Like, they provided some banking products to unbanked people or underbanked people. I get it. It's not bad. They did a good job. They built a good app. But lik…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Lessin: The factory model of seed investing is dead and won't return
“My view when I say Seed is dead is that I think the factory model of Seed, which supported massive scaling of it, is dead. And we're kind of back to where we have been historically, which is Seed is a bespoke It's a bespoke thing. Some people can do it well. I…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Lessin: I will not fund Stanford graduates trying to be Elon Musk
“So yeah, of course, like the kids coming out of Stanford who like have this, like, I want to be Elon Musk thing. Like, I'm not gonna fund those people, right? Like, you know, every once in a while, I'll miss one because like, I love the founders fund guys. The…”