Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Geoff Lewis: Building an unfun corporate machine is a VC failure mode

Geoff Lewis · 20VC: Bedrock's Geoff Lewis on Whether VCs Actually Provide Value or Not, Why Bedrock Does Not Have An Ownership Focus and The Difference Between Principles and Rules When Building a Firm or Company · Feb 14, 2022 · at 28:12

Geoff Lewis, co-founder and managing partner of venture firm Bedrock, discusses the pitfalls of scaling VC firms with 20VC host Harry Stebbings.

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“I'd say the one that we are most paranoid about avoiding is building a machine that's not actually fun to operate. And so I think there are like lots of firms that have built really impressive machines. And then if I was to transpose myself into being the manager of that machine, I think I'd be having a lot less fun than I'm having today at Bedrock. And so we want to be here for the long haul. I want this to exist as an institution to 20 years from now, but I want to keep having fun, and have more and more fun with every year that passes, and so I don't want to build a machine that I become a prisoner to, and I think that's a huge failure mode for venture capital firms.”

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