The Ledger
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Valuation does not matter for Series A venture investments
“I subscribe completely to the mentality that price does not matter at the Series A. At the Series A level, we as venture investors, anyone with more than a 25 or fifty million dollar fund should be looking for these outsized exits. They should be looking for c…”
Board members serve companies by empowering CEOs to make final decisions
“When I said we're there as a board to serve the CEO, I call that sort of one in the same as serving the company because the CEO is the ultimate leader of the company. Yes, you could say hierarchically, I guess the CEO works for the board, but the CEO is guidin…”
New VCs should maximize meeting volume to calibrate founder judgment
“I would say if you're just starting out in venture, and even if you're not Definitely take as many meetings as you can to really understand what great looks like, not in terms of the idea and the business necessarily, but in terms of the people.”
VCs must avoid letting expert references kill great disruptive ideas
“Beware of the expert reference. I got this advice early on, also from Scott Sandel at NEA, which is we're often, in our diligence, prone to go call around and make sure we're shoring up our assumptions, and those can be some of the most helpful diligence calls…”
Daily product work risks losing broad strategic context
“In product development, in product design, when you're sitting there day to day reprioritizing product priorities, trying to ship product, trying to get things out the door, sometimes you lose the overall context of where the company is going. Because you're m…”
Startups do not need product-market fit on day one
“It's not about, I've got this little thing, and I've got huge product market fit today. Yes, you need to accomplish that. Over, you know, the early days of the company's life, but you don't have to have it on day one.”
Unicorn-stage venture investments require a 3x to 5x minimum upside
“Now, if you're investing in, say, a unicorn-type valuation, price matters a lot more. It should be more Clear at that stage, whether this is going to be, you know, a unicorn being a billion dollar valuation, whether this is going to be a fifty billion dollar c…”
Board members should proactively resolve internal conflicts before advising CEOs
“I think it's incumbent on board members to really recognize when there are just little bits of conflict on the board or little bits of Differences in opinion. I won't even say conflict, and we should be proactively trying to help the CEO resolve those and get …”