The Ledger
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ICOs and token marketplaces will not replace traditional venture capital firms
“When we talk about disruption, I'm very skeptical that where we're going to be in 10 years is, you know, everything is initial coin offerings, and there's no VCs, and, you know, there's just sort of marketplaces like AngelList and Bitcoin, right? Like, I don't…”
VCs citing 'lack of traction' are usually just politely dismissing founders
“Yeah, I mean, just to speak to that response for a second, that drives me insane, right? Like, let me say you don't have enough traction, right? You're either not able to articulate something actionable, or you're just trying to be nice, and you really don't l…”
Bridge rounds offer strong risk-adjusted returns due to flat valuations
“So my personal opinion is bridges are a great way to make money because these are strong companies. And actually a lot of risk has been taken out of the business with Very little valuation bump”
Pre-product startups should raise as much capital as possible
“So if I'm talking to a pre-product company, right, typically my advice to them would be raise as much money as possible because you have no idea where you're going to be in a year.”
Founders who optimize primarily for minimizing dilution are a negative signal
“And I think anybody who's optimizing for dilution, first of all, if, like, that That's your mentality, and we're having a conversation, I'm already biased against investing.”
Wireless last-mile ISPs possess asymmetric cost advantages over legacy cable incumbents
“You're competing against incumbents that people hate who are digging ditches to every house, and so if you can solve this last mile problem with wireless, I think you create a fundamentally asymmetric cost structure”
Traditional VCs scale by adding partners rather than building operational infrastructure
“VCs who typically are scaling by adding a partner and then doing a few more deals a quarter or a year.”
Qualitative customer value matters more than early revenue for nascent startups
“Like, I'm more interested in the value that you're delivering than, for example, how much money you're making, because you're not making real money anyway.”
Founders should multiply their calculated capital requirements by 1.5
“I tend to talk to founders about focusing on how much money you need and what you think you can accomplish, and my general rule is figure out what you think you need and multiply by 1.5, because something's going to go wrong”
Top-tier Series A firms like Sequoia and Benchmark won't change models
“I think if you are a traditional series A and beyond VC, you're probably going to do okay if you're really value-add to the Sequoias and the benchmarks of the world. I don't really see them changing their model much at all, because it works really well.”
A founder's velocity of learning strongly predicts early-stage startup success
“How fast do these people learn is something I focus more and more on. So I try to ask people questions that give me insight into their learning process and their velocity of learning. Cause I think at the early stage, that seems to be a strong predictor of suc…”