Garry Tan, co-founder of Initialized Capital, argues against passive, high-volume seed investing strategies.
0:00 / 0:06exact quote · 6.5s
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“If you're spraying and praying, it's not going to work. You can't help the founders, and you can't keep in touch to actually increase their chance of success.”
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More from Garry Tan
AssertionPartly supported
Mutual fund private startup valuation marks are based purely on sentiment
“We're more or less at the worst possible scenario right now. We have no information rights, no liquidity. Valuation committees at Fidelity and BlackRock basically get to mark things up and down with no information, so it's basically all sentiment.”
Garry TanDec 14, 2016▶ 26:4920VC: Garry Tan on The Biggest Takeaways From Advising 700 Companies @ Y Combinator & Why Now Is The Golden Age For The Early Stage?
Insight
Tan: Founders who ask investors if they are failing succeed more often
“That was actually one of the big secrets of Y Combinator that if a founder frequently comes to their investors and asks, am I failing? That's almost always correlated and found in the founders who succeed because, you know, at that point you're actually asking…”
Garry TanApr 1, 2019▶ 11:1120VC: Initialized's Garry Tan on The Most Important Thing A Seed Investor Can Do For Founders, How Ownership Requirements Change With Evolution of Funds & Why There Is Not Too Much Capital Chasing Too Few Deals
Insight
Tech networking events deliver no value due to founder posturing
“You go to your average meetup, or hangout, or dinner, or networking event, and it's basically people running around always with a happy face on, saying, how are you doing? We're doing great. We're killing it. How are you doing? And we're also killing it, and s…”
Garry TanDec 14, 2016▶ 6:5020VC: Garry Tan on The Biggest Takeaways From Advising 700 Companies @ Y Combinator & Why Now Is The Golden Age For The Early Stage?
Disclosure
Tan turned down being Palantir's first engineer due to media sentiment
“Why did I turn down being first engineer at Palantir? I spent a lot of time trying to figure that out, and it actually came out of this thinking, because this is why I'm very, very careful about it, that when I was 23 and I got an offer from one of the best in…”
Garry TanDec 14, 2016▶ 21:0720VC: Garry Tan on The Biggest Takeaways From Advising 700 Companies @ Y Combinator & Why Now Is The Golden Age For The Early Stage?
PredictionDidn’t hold up
Initialized Capital will remain strictly focused on the 0-20 employee stage
“Yeah, I think we should be disciplined around, well, We really should focus on the zero to 20 employee sort of stage. I think there are tons and tons of people out there who are fantastically great scaling operator, like series A and later investors. But for u…”
Garry TanDec 14, 2016▶ 24:1420VC: Garry Tan on The Biggest Takeaways From Advising 700 Companies @ Y Combinator & Why Now Is The Golden Age For The Early Stage?
Insight
Tan: Operational VC coaching adds more value at pre-seed than post-Series A
“Post series A, series B, and later in particular, it really is about care and feeding the organization. So as a company, you've already chosen your direction. In fact, often you've chosen your go-to-market. And so now it's about taking that go-to-market and sc…”
Garry TanApr 1, 2019▶ 9:2320VC: Initialized's Garry Tan on The Most Important Thing A Seed Investor Can Do For Founders, How Ownership Requirements Change With Evolution of Funds & Why There Is Not Too Much Capital Chasing Too Few Deals
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