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 15 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
Weissman: Venture capital is a service business and VCs should be invisible
“By the way, I don't believe at a fundamental matter, I'm old fashioned in the way that I believe actually VCs should be invisible, you know, and so I know you ask this question to a lot of people, what would you like most like to change in the world of VC? I'v…”
USV does not vote on investment decisions, relying on consensus
“Well, as a firm, we do not vote. We have a conversation, and that conversation leads to a point where everyone is comfortable with the parameters of an investment”
Andy Weissman: Venture Capital Success Stems From Process, Not Foresight
“And so, I believe that a large, if not the largest part of that, is about the process you create to make those decisions, and if you have a process, and you perfect that process, and you stick with that process, sometimes it works, and that's luck, right? Whet…”
Weissman: Traditional VC works near-perfectly for software, but nothing else
“I believe on one point that early stage software technology based venture capital is a near perfect craft for what it does. And by that, I mean, it is a near perfect allocation of a certain type of capital, risk capital, into endeavors that are focused on retu…”
Weissman: ICOs act as an external catalyst for financing innovation
“Part of what is exciting about ICOs, if one believes in what's happening, and there are lots of Reasons to be skeptical is that they are resulting in an external stimulus for change in financing structures for a certain type of sector”
USV publishes a public blog post as its investment memo for every deal
“We're public about every investment we make. In fact, our investment memos are our blog posts. You know, when we make an investment every single time we write a blog post explaining why we made that investment, that acts as our internal and external investment…”
Weissman: VC funds only need a few right decisions per fund
“Well, that's okay because with this business, we actually don't have to be right every time we have to make a decision just a couple times each fund.”
Andy Weissman: USV's fund structure has not changed in 30 years
“Because what we do is, in a way, we're very conservative in the structure, and we look like this, we look like the same VC, way VC firms looked 30 or 40 years ago. Our structure has not changed at all.”
USV has invested in quantitative funding models like CircleUp and Numerai
“We have made investments in other sectors where we believe the answer to that question may be yes. We've done that in consumer products with CircleUp. We've done it in quantitative hedge type financing with Numeri.”
USV repeatedly rejected Betaworks before making co-founder Andy Weissman a partner
“And as a New York company, we wanted what we thought the best and smartest and most empathetic venture investors in New York to invest in our company, which was USV, so we kept pitching them, and they kept saying no. They rejected my company as a business”
Andy Weissman: USV operates from one office to keep partners together
“So for example, I believe this is a methodology that works best when everyone is in the same room, so therefore we only have one office.”
Andy Weissman: USV invests in 8 to 10 companies annually
“So we view ourselves, and we don't invest a lot, you know, maybe eight or 10 times a year, so we're long-term, very engaged partners, so that means we reserve full amounts for our companies, and we generally keep investing in them.”
Andy Weissman: Capital recycling reduces effective management fee ratios for LPs
“Everyone wins with recycling. It's so good for your LPs. It's additional investment dollars that they're not paying management fees on, and so over the course of a fund, if you take gains and you reinvest it, that's more money that you're investing that lowers…”