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Peter Wagner: VCs Funding Capital-Intensive Sectors Are Repeating Bubble Mistakes

Peter Wagner · Peter Wagner: 27 Years of Investing Lessons of Picking Founders, Price Discipline & Reserve | E1123 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Mar 6, 2024 · at 36:46

Peter Wagner, Founding Partner at Wing VC, evaluates whether venture investors currently backing capital-intensive hard tech, climate, and defense startups are repeating historical mistakes.

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“Yes. And you know, and you can get away with it sometimes, just like I got away with it, with that early deal. If you can find, you know, other people's money on advantageous terms to sort of fund you through you know, the valley of death there you know, like, I mean, there's, Famous, you know, big important companies like Tesla, you know, that wouldn't be what they are today if there were, if, you know, if there wasn't sort of certain miracle financings that occurred at just the right time, you know, and so then people, you know, see those sort of hero experiments, and they think, well, let's do another one of those maybe not appreciating the singularity of, you know, the unique circumstances that, that actually allowed some of those situations to prosper.”

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