Hankes: Investors Over-Attribute Startup Success to Execution During Market Booms
Vince Hankes · Vince Hankes: Why We Put $300M into OpenAI; Sam Altman's Pitch; Lessons from Josh Kushner | E1009 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · May 3, 2023 · at 52:17
Vince Hankes, Partner at Thrive Capital, reflects on changing macro environments and how investors misattribute market-driven momentum to company execution.
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“This is probably more, this is not for the rapid fire, but you know, one thing that's become clear as we've kind of come out of or gone into this more difficult environment to operate in is in the good times, we probably over attribute to teams and products, how good they are. And in the bad times, you can't just blame everything on macro, but I think it makes you reflect on the over attribution you probably did in the good times. And so You know, one thing I've changed my mind on is you got to be more balanced about how much credit you give to the momentum of a company from the market environment versus the actual execution they're doing and know that there's the balance there and, you know, good execution doesn't always mean that it leads to great momentum. Sometimes great momentum is also influenced by these market environments or variables that are harder to quantify.”
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