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.
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Shah: Assimilating to firm norms sets VC investors up for failure
“If your goal is to be the best version of yourself and your firm's goal is to be the best firm on the planet, there's no room for assimilation and confirmation, right? Conforming to other norms. So I think it's absolutely wrong. I think if you try to assimilat…”
Shah: Index Ventures' three rules to avoid missing generational founders
“The sins of omission for us distilled into three lessons. One don't be cute on price. Two don't overthink it. Three don't pass on generational founders.”
Shah: Datadog co-founder Olivier Pomel was initially not a great fundraiser
“When we invested in Olivier and Alexi Series A at Datadog, so he was not a great fundraiser.”
Shah: There are no predictable human patterns for successful founders
“When it comes to patterns of selection and patterns within people, The only pattern is there is no pattern.”
Shah: Describing founders as 'A-plus' without substantiation is VC BS
“It really irritates me when I hear, ah, investors say it's an exceptional founder, ah, an A-plus founder, without any, like, specificity or substantiation.”
Index Ventures missed investing in Spotify, Snap, Airbnb, and LinkedIn
“One is Spotify, another one is Snap, another one's Airbnb, another one's LinkedIn. Those are the four that we had real opportunity in some fashion or another to manufacture the opportunity for Index to be in the round, and we failed for different reasons.”
Index Ventures' biggest mistakes come from holding investments too long
“The biggest mistakes that we've done as a firm is holding on too long rather than selling too early.”
Index Ventures sold Etsy too early before Josh Silverman's turnaround
“Another one where we sold too early was definitely Etsy. We didn't take into consideration the fact that Josh Silverman was going to come in and totally transform the organization, and that obviously we left a lot of money on the table.”
Danny Rimer: Staying at Index in ten years indicates a failed transition
“I shouldn't be there in 10 years. If I'm still there, I'm doing something wrong, or they, or they're doing something wrong. So I'd like to see that the baton has been passed, and that the folks are taking Index to Higher and higher territory, but maintaining w…”
Danny Rimer: Almost no Index Ventures portfolio companies have mainstream brands
“Very few of our companies across the portfolio, and we have a pretty significant portfolio, and we thankfully have some great entrepreneurs, very few of them legitimately have brands yet. In fact, I'm not sure that any of them truly have mainstream brands.”
Danny Rimer: US founders overrate their abilities due to excess polish
“In the US, folks are super confident, and so, you know, they will not only spike in certain areas, but they're actually not that good in certain areas, but they'll still think that they spike in those areas, and so the level of polish and sophistication that y…”
Danny Rimer: Apple and Airbnb are rare exceptions in product-driven marketing
“Most companies that have been successful, be they enterprise or consumer in the tech space, The marketing has been a byproduct of a great product or service. Really, the exception to the rule would be Apple, and probably Airbnb, and I'm, and I scratch my head …”
Index misjudged Airbnb by focusing on hotel cannibalization over market creation
“When one of the big lessons on Airbnb was when we were evaluating it, we were thinking, how many hotel rooms is Airbnb going to cannibalize? Rather than thinking, actually, Airbnb is going to create an entirely new market, an entirely, entirely new amount of i…”
Danny Rimer: Evan Spiegel spiked in key areas but lacked well-roundedness
“By the way, what I would say about Evan is he spiked in certain areas. I mean, he was not Great in other areas, and I'm still not sure that he's great in the other areas.”
Danny Rimer: Larger VC funds delay carry and shift focus to fees
“We've always been focused on getting to carry as soon as possible. And the larger the funds, the longer it will take and the more attractive the management fee is.”
Danny Rimer: Rescue attempt for Nasty Gal carried high opportunity cost
“And I did get a positive vote, but it was not the high average that I got on the first one, and so I felt responsible to the partners that I didn't put good money after bad, and not only did I put good money after bad, but the opportunity cost of spending time…”
Danny Rimer: VCs should prioritize gut instinct over analytical decision rationalization
“And I'm sort of saying actually, you know, what is the first impact? What is the first reaction that you have to the founder, to the opportunity? How does it make you feel? Can you build on that? Like, all of that other stuff is actually gonna help you rationa…”
Index passed on Snapchat due to fund concentration limits
“What happened there was we, to my recollection, we had the opportunity to invest, but we had a growth fund, and we were unwilling to put the amount necessary to lock in the round, and so as a result of that, we didn't do the deal.”
Index Ventures scales new offices by relocating existing partners
“When we open offices, we don't actually hire folks to open the office. We actually take partners from one office and move them.”
Index Ventures has no sovereign wealth fund or family office LPs
“Our LPs are, we have no family offices and sovereign wealth funds. So, they're all institutions, and they're mostly non-profits, or Their customers are nonprofits.”
Loom raised Series A from Kleiner after Index rejected their seed
“Now, we ended up fundraising from Ilya, who had moved over to Kleiner at that point from Index, but we were worried, even though he individually had a ton of conviction about Loom, we weren't able to get the seed round done with Index, and so there was no guar…”
Cannon: Notion Is The Third Great Collaboration Platform
“And our view is that notion is really the third great collaboration platform.”
Midha: Index, Benchmark, and First Round operate as service providers, not financiers
“And all three of these firms, index, benchmark, and first round operate as if they're being evaluated as a service provider. Not as financiers.”
Danny Rimer: Nasty Gal Was His Worst Investment to Date
“So a big lesson was in the worst investment that I've done today, which is Nasty Gal, which was an e-commerce brand that we invested in.”
Danny Rimer: VCs Get Paid for Finding Winners, Not Dodging Failures
“We don't get paid for dodging companies that are not successful. Most companies are not going to be successful. So the schadenfreude or The pat on the back for having missed or not invested in something that could have been a disaster, that's not really helpfu…”
Danny Rimer: Amazon Is Poorly Positioned to Capture Niche Consumer Markets
“As much as Amazon is fantastic on the mainstream, we think that when it comes to niches, Amazon is not particularly well positioned to go after it.”
Danny Rimer: Index Ventures Restructured Good Eggs After Other Investors Bailed
“The second one was, Good Eggs was an example of a company that we invested in. It basically went under. We had to restructure it. The other investors decided to bail. We brought in a new CEO who He, as Jeff Wiener talks about with Reid Hoffman, had a founding …”
Danny Rimer: VCs Shouldn't Prioritize Equity Ownership Over Helpful Syndicate Partners
“So that, that was a big lesson that I learned relatively recently, which is never really focused so much on ownership and make sure that you have people around the table who are going to be really helpful in the journey of making a successful company.”
Danny Rimer: Excess Capital Leads to Operational Laxity and Repeated Mistakes
“In our experience, the more money you have, the more lax you are, the more likely you are to make repeated mistakes across multiple places at the same time.”
Danny Rimer: Global Connectivity Causes Niche Markets to Explode in Scale
“I think that if there's something that we've gotten wrong repeatedly is underestimate the size of specific niches, and what we tend to forget is when you're connecting most of the world's population, there are going to be niches that explode in size as a resul…”
Danny Rimer: Generational Transition Is the Single Biggest Trap for VC Firms
“Being a student of history, it's probably, from an industry standpoint, the biggest amount of quicksand that there is there for firms that have been great and have failed over time, and so, given the fact that we're not great yet, we're going to make sure that…”
Danny Rimer: Etsy Scaled From 250k to Over 3M Merchants, Defying Critics
“I'll never forget investing in Etsy and folks saying, well, it's crazy. You know, they already have 250,000 merchants online, all these arts and craft stores. Like, how many more can there be? And I think we're three million plus at this point in counting.”
Danny Rimer: VCs Must Spend Most Time With Companies Needing Them Least
“I mean, I would say that this is the biggest difference between a venture capitalist and an operator. You have to figure out how to spend the most amount of time with the companies that need you least, and the least amount of time with companies that need you …”
Davis: Amazon won multi-brand e-commerce; new entrants must build single brands
“My thesis around e-commerce investing was that multi-brand e-commerce had already been won by Amazon, which was true then. It's even truer today. And if you wanted to play in e-commerce, you had to go the branded route.”
Volpi: World-Class Venture Capital Firms Require a Silicon Valley Presence
“If we wanted to build a world-class firm, we had to have a presence in Silicon Valley. We were not going to do that remotely.”
Fushman: Slack will become workplace productivity's primary operating system
“Slack is one of the fastest growing companies, I think, that's been around, and it's poised to transform how people work and communicate, and build a true operating system and platform for productivity going forward.”
Mignot: FOMO is healthy and essential for venture capitalists
“I think in a way, you know, It's healthy, because that's because that's what VC is all about. That's what I think about, you know, that's what I dream about. And, you know, at night, it's like, you know, which, when I find a company that I really love, that's …”
Index Ventures maintains a 'life's too short' rule for unbearable entrepreneurs
“Some of us here have a rule of what we call the life's too short category, you know, so people who are, you know, entrepreneurs who are so unbearable that even if their business is fantastic, we just like, you know, life's too short to deal with it.”
Enterprise AI Startup Town Valued at $1B by Index and Benchmark
“Consensus status as well in the B to B world, because town, which is kind of the B to B enterprise alternative has also been funded to the tune of a billion dollar price by index. And I think it was benchmark who co led that round.”
Stebbings: Chai Discovery raised $400M at $3.8B valuation
“Four hundred million at a 3.8 billion dollar valuation led by Index, Kleiner, Sequoia, Dimension.”
Mignot: I will never go deep on product during board meetings
“And also, you know, I haven't been an operator and a founder, so I won't try to, you know, I will never be on a board meeting and kind of go super deep on your product.”
Mignot: Index Ventures has no CEO and operates as an equal partnership
“Well, first of all, there is no one running index, and Danny doesn't have a mantle. You know, it's a pure purely equal partnership.”
Mignot: Fatherhood forces investors to stop wasting time on travel and conferences
“Having kids makes you even less tolerant of wasting time, because any moment you spend on the road, at a conference, at an event that you shouldn't be on, it's time you're not spending with, you know, with the most important people in your life.”
Mignot: Index Ventures holds nearly all investments until IPO
“I think, in, by and large, we tend to hold pretty much everything until IPO.”
Mignot: Index sells post-IPO shares quarterly over three years
“We tend to have a very standard liquidity program when a company goes public, where we sell, you know, every quarter over three years in a very, you know, recurring, regular, preset way in many ways. We obviously have, you know, we have an, we set up exit comm…”
Mignot reveals Index Ventures' latest fund sizes across stages
“We have a three hundred million dollar seed fund eight hundred million venture fund, and one and a half billion gross fund.”
Mignot: Index Ventures holds investments in LLM providers Cohere and Mistral
“We're in Cohere, and in and we have a seed investments in Mistral.”
Mignot: Multiple touchpoints in a short window signals exceptional startups
“Typically, when you have exceptional companies, one of the indicator is that you will have multiple touch points about that company over a very short amount of time. So, you will, I will see them at Sitcam, but someone will, you know, I will see an ad, or I wi…”