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 9 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
Bussgang rejects requirement for day-one positive unit economics for startups
“I totally disagree with that VC, and I'll give you an example. So, and the reason I disagree is that there are cases where equity value creation is achieved through adoption-focused strategies. I'll give you two examples. One is in our portfolio, one is MongoD…”
Bussgang: Prior operating experience is not required to become a top VC partner
“I don't. I never believe there's one path to the final journey. Great examples of VCs who never have any operating experience, and I have one of them sitting next to me in my office, and Chip Hazard, who's an incredibly successful investor, was my co-founder h…”
Bussgang: Hypergrowth startups must reinvent organizational systems every 6-12 months
“The learnings I had from hypergrowth, and we went from Zero to a hundred million revenue in a couple years, and 600 employees, and a couple billion dollar market cap over the course of my five-year tenure, and so we experienced quite a bit of growth, and my ex…”
Bussgang: Maintain constant company culture while constantly discarding organizational structures
“If you have a consistent set of values and culture and hopefully a consistent mission and a consistent purpose that you're trying to achieve with your startup, hopefully centered around a big problem and a particular customer or customer persona that you're tr…”
Bussgang: Staging VC capital yields better decisions than large upfront checks
“What it net results in is that venture capitalists can dole out the money and mitigate the risk over time, and so if I put in 500,000 dollars into a firm, live with it for a year, and then I have another investment decision to make, That's going to be a better…”
Bussgang: Top pitches address more startup risks than VCs anticipate
“I think the most compelling pitches are when the founder articulates more risks than I can think of, and then lays out really thoughtful risk mitigation plans, and also articulates those plans in the context of the financing.”
Bussgang: VCs evaluate startup risk as data-driven pattern recognition algorithms
“VCs, VCs are big data decision makers. Think about us as pattern recognizers and machine learning, deep learning algorithms that feed on data. And the more data we take every data point and make decisions and judgment based on those data points and signaling r…”
Bussgang: VC partners can deeply evaluate only two or three deals simultaneously
“An individual investment partner can only focus on two or three new investment opportunities at any given time in a truly deep and proactive fashion. And if you're not one of those two or three, then you're not really in the investment process.”
Bussgang: LPs expect venture funds to deliver 3x return and 15-20% net IRR
“Most investors look for something on the order of a three X money on money return, in a fund and a 15 to 20% IRR net to them, net of fees, net of carry, net of any compensation to the venture capitalist return to the investor. And if you can't achieve those me…”