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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Patterson: Specialist VC firms always win over generalists
“The specialist always wins over the generalist.”
Patterson: VC decision-making must be distributed, unlike hierarchical PE
“Venture investing can be quite emotional because the companies are so dynamic and get into such trouble, and it's very important to have a balanced decision-making and not have it dependent on how one guy gets out of bed in the morning, and that's not true in …”
Patterson: Deal-swapping politics ruin risk-taking culture in VC firms
“The most important thing to us is we don't have politics because what you can get into in these firms is, well, I approve your deal and you'll approve mine. That's not the way to create the right risk environment. We have to encourage risk, but we have to have…”
Patterson: Early-stage venture and growth investing are fundamentally different businesses
“The biggest problem with the big firms that have had these additions of growth and later stage things, they're the tension between early stage I think Doug said, you know, if you, once you get out of early stage, you have private equity. He's absolutely right.…”
Patterson: Growth fund expansion will drive early-stage VC spin-outs
“Doing that, and then you're going to see a lot of spin-outs from a lot of the big firms with guys focusing on early stage.”
Patterson: Stock options should be taxed identically to founder shares
“I think the stock options, for example, should be taxed the same way founder shares are taxed. So if you want to take a step in the direction of equality, that's the best thing you can do in Silicon Valley.”
Patterson: A venture firm's first fundraise is always its most difficult
“The first fundraise is always your most difficult”
Patterson: Kleiner Perkins invested in Accel's $40M telecom fund in the 1980s
“Jim had made a really strategic move in about 83, 85, where we raised that XL-II was actually a focused telecom fund of a smaller size, but I think it was about forty million, and I think KP even invested in it.”
Patterson: Modern SaaS startups are less vulnerable to economic cycles
“This time, almost all of the companies are continuing revenue service companies. The managements are planning, you know, multi-years ahead, and they're much easier businesses to run and build And they're much more sustainable and much less vulnerable to the ec…”
Patterson: Accel could not have raised its inaugural fund six months later
“If we'd waited another six months, I don't think we could have.”
Patterson: Tech cycles no longer rely solely on semiconductor cost declines
“This time, we have, you know, at least a half dozen separate technologies and changes driving all these opportunities, so the dependence on the semiconductors in the cycle is Going away.”
Patterson: Early-stage investments are more price-protected than growth deals
“Well, I think if you're in the early stage, particularly, you're more price protected. You can still have a good idea for a startup. Your exposure, when you're putting money into things at the four billion dollar valuation, or something like that, and large am…”
Patterson: Accel's international funds don't dilute focus due to decentralization
“The international funds actually don't affect focus because we decentralize all the investment decisions, which is about 99% of it to them.”
Patterson: Venture capital firm success depends on entrepreneurial supply
“Venture businesses are a function of the supply, and I just hope the supply of great entrepreneurship keeps flowing through”
Patterson: Venture capitalists never know if another good deal exists
“A venture capitalist never knows whether there's one new deal, good new deal ahead of him.”
Patterson: Accel partners prepared personal checks to reach $100M Fund III
“In the end, actually, we were a little bit short, and we were going to write checks ourselves to bring it over a hundred.”