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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Motschwiller: Capital Gluttony Causes Startups to Lose Discipline and Focus
“There is a ton of capital in the system, and access to capital is a great thing in some respects, but to use a Rob Ward term, he frames it, there's capital gluttony. When there's too much capital, it can lead to deprioritization and defocus, Because you think …”
Motschwiller: Operating experience can cause VCs to overestimate problem difficulty
“The flip side to that is you might understand that there's a problem that's so hard to solve, it was so hard for you to solve, that then you don't believe that This entrepreneur will solve it, and it might lead you to overestimate the difficult of that problem…”
Motschwiller: Current Out-Execution Correlates Highest With Future VC Returns
“The highest correlation to a business that will be a great return and will continue to execute is one that is out executing in the current state.”
Motschwiller: Consumer VC landscape in 2018 is harder with fewer upside opportunities
“Relative to other time periods, take when I joined Kleiner in 2012, this feels like a harder time to be investing in consumer and that there are fewer high quality and super high upside opportunities in consumer.”
Motschwiller: Series A rounds for top consumer decacorns occurred pre-2012
“You look at the series A Funding times of the consumer decacorns that are out there, the Ubers, the Lyfts, the Airbnbs, the Snaps, the Pinterest, the Spotifys, those series A's were all done pre-二零 12.”
Motschwiller: Great VCs combine analytical rigor with thesis-driven art
“And so I think the marriage of both of those two is what makes a venture capitalist great.”
Motschwiller: Career VCs face limitations advising CEOs on managing large organizations
“There are certainly elements that are missed, and I feel most disadvantaged from when an operator is going through specific challenges, and they're mostly around people, right, where I haven't managed large organizations before, and so fully understanding the …”
Motschwiller: Growth VC success depends on knowing when to pay up
“Often the brilliance of a growth investor is knowing where to really stretch and pay up on price. And when I say picking, that is really the element that I think is hard and unique.”
Motschwiller: Junior VCs Fail by Neglecting Deep Co-Investor Relationships
“Where I think people get tripped up is they don't farm the bottom of the network and make sure that they develop what we call internally as best friends.”
Motschwiller: Early conviction helps junior VCs win competitive deals
“Entrepreneurs want people who believe in their vision and have conviction around the same belief that they have. And if you To that entrepreneur. And instead of have them convince you go to them and you are already convinced and share that with them and offer …”
Motschwiller: Executive recruitment and customer intros are VC's highest-leverage value-adds
“The two highest points of leverage that I find my entrepreneurs really love are, one, finding them great people, and that oftentimes means great Great executives as they're building out that team and scaling quickly and finding executives that can take them to…”
Max Motschwiller: Top founders need outside lead investors to validate market pricing
“They want, for the most part, want an outside lead to come and price the round, right? If they don't take this to market at all, they just have no sense for what market is. If all they do is listen to an offer from their insiders, they don't know if their insi…”
Max Motschwiller: Meritech Fund VI targeting $600M and 25 portfolio companies
“So we're in the process of raising our sixth fund, it'll be about six hundred million, and our view is to have roughly 25 portfolio companies in that fund, so not hugely concentrated, but we think the right balance is”
Max Motschwiller: Meritech reserves only 20-25% of funds for follow-on rounds
“Explicitly, we keep 20 to 25% of our fund captive for reserves, and that is definitely smaller than the average early stage venture firm, and because of what I mentioned before, we're just coming in at later stages such that there are fewer subsequent rounds a…”
Motschwiller: Tracking Growth Startups Across Funding Rounds Builds Conviction
“One of the easiest ways to build conviction over time is to see the company in the round before. And as a later stage firm, oftentimes we'll see and look at an A round or B introduced. And it's very clearly around too early, but then they say, hey, our budget …”