Samir Kaul: Double down aggressively when positive startup signals emerge
Samir Kaul · 20VC: Khosla Ventures Founding Partner, Samir Kaul on Why Pro Rata Is A Cop Out, Why He Likes Technical Risk and Does Not Take Market Risk & How To Approach Time Allocation Across The Portfolio In Venture · Jan 13, 2020 · at 12:32
Samir Kaul, Founding Partner at Khosla Ventures, outlines why venture firms must take concentrated follow-on bets given low base-rate success probabilities.
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“The odds of one of our initial investments being successful is lower than 50%. Sometimes it's 10%. And so when you get a signal that it might be better, you've got to really push your chips to the table and have the courage to do that.”
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More from Samir Kaul
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“So to me, I think pro rata is a total cop-out.”
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“In this business, being conservative is a real problem, because we're in the business of returning 20% or greater net IRR to our investors, and we don't get judged by how many companies succeed out of the number of companies we invest in.”
Khosla Ventures has never had a partner deal veto in 17 years
“In my 17 years being here, I can't remember a veto. We don't really even have a number for a veto.”
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