Peter Wagner, founding partner of Wing Venture Capital, explains Wing's strategy for investing in AI while avoiding frothy, highly valued LLM foundation model startups.
Opinion
Wagner: SoftBank and mega-funds pollute good startup opportunities with excess capital
“There's certainly lots of otherwise good opportunities that have been polluted or dragged down by, you know, whatever soft bank showing up, and, you know, or any other number of people that, that we can name”
Opinion
Peter Wagner: VCs Funding Capital-Intensive Sectors Are Repeating Bubble Mistakes
“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,…”
Opinion
Wagner: Excessive fund scale gets in the way of VC excellence
“The adventure is a scale game. Like, I think it actually kind of runs quite the opposite, that excessive scale, you know, gets in the way of excellence. So, you know, you can be too small too, you know, don't get me wrong, and scale, scale has its benefits, bu…”
Insight
Wagner: VC partners are rarely punished for consensus mistakes
“There's this kind of safety in the herd thing, and I, a belief within, you know, firms and partners, and not incorrect, that if they're making the same mistake that everyone else in the industry is making, they probably won't be punished for it, because, you k…”
Insight
Wagner: Venture capital splits into AUM gathering vs return generation
“I think for an asset gatherer, you know, there's sort of two business models in venture, you know, you can be in the assets under management game, or you can be in the generate best possible returns game.”
Insight
Wagner: Investors emphasizing annual capital deployment are asset gatherers
“Anytime you meet an investor that talks about the amount of capital they deploy per year, right, you know you're talking to, you know, an asset gatherer”