The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 16 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
DFJ's Total Dot-Com Losses Were Less Than SoftBank's Buy.com Loss
“If you aggregate all of our losses from every loser that we did in the internet, it was much less than soft bank lost in a single investment with buy.com.”
No substantial business was ever built as an analogy to another
“No wonderful business, no substantial business was built because it was an analogy off of something else.”
DFJ replaces portfolio CEOs primarily for failing to learn from mistakes
“The number one reason where we do occasionally say, Hey, this is not the right leader for the company is when you see someone who's not able to learn from their mistakes, right. And adapt to them.”
DFJ Completed 33% of All 1995–1996 Internet Venture Deals
“Strangely in 95 to 96, we did a third of all internet investments for the entire venture industry. Not in dollar amounts, but just sheer number of deals. So we literally were a third of the market.”
A Fund's Top Company Equals All Other Returns Combined
“If you look at the power laws of portfolio returns in an early stage venture fund, both within the fund and across multiple funds, it is unbelievably consistent from Across firms. So you can aggregate all early stage venture. You can do all the early stage ven…”
Median Tech IPO Market Cap Since 2010 Is $1 Billion
“Since 2010, we've gone back and looked at all of the tech IPOs since 2010. It's nearly 160 IPOs, and the median market cap at IPO Is a billion dollars across all of those IPOs.”
The rise of celebrity VCs and personal branding is disturbing
“One of the things I have found a little bit disturbing is this rise of kind of the celebrity investors or all of this need to do personal branding, particularly for venture capitalists early on in their career, because I think what really demonstrates if we're…”
Early-stage VCs must evaluate upside potential over downside protection
“What you really want to think through, it's not the downside scenarios, because we're investing early, and we're not writing large, large What we really need to understand and what we're evaluating new opportunities is how much could this be worth if everythin…”
DFJ succeeded in Tesla and SpaceX by staging early capital
“And that's why, you know, we were able to be successful with entities like Tesla or SpaceX. Companies that most people would find as not working well for venture, but the way that we thought about it and how we, you know, got involved in the companies at early…”
Box and Twilio Reached $200M ARR Prior to Going Public
“In fact, the last two IPOs that we've seen at DFJ over the last couple years, Box and Twilio, were both companies that were on nearly two hundred million dollar annual revenue run rates before they got public.”
DFJ made three search engine investments before Google was even funded
“DFJ had already made three investments in search companies prior to Google even being funded. One of those was GoTo, which ended up was Overture, which was acquired by Yahoo, which was, at the time, viewed as an amazing success.”
Building an early-stage startup is statistically irrational
“What you have to recognize is building a company, an early-stage company, is insanely risky. It is It's extremely challenging. You know, statistically, this is not something that a rational person wants to do. You, there are a lot of easier ways to go and make…”
Conflating investment fads with pattern recognition causes venture capital failures
“And where you get into a lot of trouble is where you conflate a fad with pattern recognition.”
Founder motivation determines whether a startup survives hardship or gives up
“I think you need to really spend that time to delve down and understand what is motivating them, because that's what's going to actually mean the difference between success and failure. Because there's going to be so many times in the course of a company where…”
The next breakout tech giant will not resemble past winners
“What I know for sure is that whatever the next big business is that is going to be built, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to look like the last, you know, big company that's these five year cycles. Like there's always some new entity that emerges t…”
Tim Draper hired Emily Melton at DFJ after a 10-minute interview
“I actually emailed a number of VCs. There were investors in a couple of the companies that I was thinking about joining, and one of those was Tim Draper, and he agreed to meet me, and I walked into a meeting. He was late, too, and I was extremely nervous. I ha…”