O'Donnell: Venture investors must separate decision quality from outcome control
Charlie O'Donnell · 20VC: Why Companies Going Bust Is Part Of The Plan, Why Most VCs Are Later Stage Than They Think & Why Venture Capital Is Humbling with Charlie O'Donnell, Founder @ Brooklyn Bridge Ventures · Jan 2, 2017 · at 6:20
Charlie O'Donnell, founder of Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, explains why venture capital is humbling, pointing out that VCs cannot control final startup outcomes regardless of how thoroughly they screen deals.
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“It's important to separate decisions and outcomes. Hopefully, you make all good decisions, but you can't control the outcome, and that's sort of the humbling thing, is that you can check off every which box you come up with in terms of decision making and screening, and where you get the companies, and the markets are big enough, and the founders are, you know, exactly who you said is the type of person that you want to back, and you're just doing really hard things, and sometimes it's not going to work out, despite the extremely hard work of very smart people doing things that should be attempted, and so when you realize you can't control For outcomes, the world is a lot bigger than you are, and so you feel very powerful sometimes writing a check, but you feel not as powerful when you realize that, you know, all you can do is put up the sail. You can't control the wind and the, you know, forty-foot swells.”
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