O'Driscoll: Trillion-dollar prizes require capital, but over-raising kills billion-dollar exits
Rory O'Driscoll · Enterprises Fear Frontier Models | Sam Altman Offers Trump 5% of OpenAI | DeepSeek Builds Own Chips · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Jul 9, 2026 · at 24:13
Rory O'Driscoll, General Partner at Scale Venture Partners, explains the trade-off between capital efficiency and aggressive fundraising based on expected outcome scale.
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“Look, there's no doubt if the price is a trillion dollars, which it has been in at least three cases, it looks like, it really doesn't matter what it takes to get there. You just have to get there. And if skimping on it reduces the probability of getting there, even 10%, it's a huge mistake. If, on the other hand, the prize is, as you say, a billion or five billion, then raising too much eliminates the optionality of taking that billion-dollar exit, right?”
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