The Ledger
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why aren't all 26 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
Barnes: Traditional VC Fee and Carry Model Fails for Platform Services
“Then the fee and carry model doesn't work because those services show up as a cost center on the statement, the cash flow statement of the VC firm itself.”
Barnes: VCs Losing Deals to Mega Funds Have a Product Problem
“And so when I hear people say that, I think you have a product problem. And if you can't convince a founder that partnering with you is what's best for their business in the face of your competition, You need to do something different.”
Phin Barnes: VC Pattern Recognition Is Just Intellectual Laziness
“I think pattern recognition is another name for intellectual laziness, right?”
Barnes: Capital Efficiency Matters Far More Than Theoretical TAM for Early VCs
“I think for early stage investors, It matters much less that there's a billion dollar opportunity in a market. There's a TAM that, you know, you can back your way into that suggests that there's, you know, tens of billions to be captured and you can rationaliz…”
Barnes: Founder Value Creation Is a Multiplication Problem, Not Addition
“And I think in that case, the quality of that founder, the value they will create is a multiplication problem, not an addition problem. And so if you have a zero anywhere in a multiplication problem, the value is zero.”
Phin Barnes: Startups With Early Diversity Debt Rarely Achieve Diversity at Scale
“I think that burden quickly becomes untenable for the vast majority of people, and it becomes unlikely that that company will ever achieve diversity between 10 people and a hundred or 200 or 500 people”
Phin Barnes: Retaining Underrepresented Talent Is Exponentially Harder Than Recruiting Them
“At the same time, retaining them, because of the DNA of those businesses, because of the cultures that have been established, is a whole nother challenge, which is exponentially harder than recruiting them in the first place.”
Barnes: Professionals Should Seek Work-Life Integration Over Work-Life Balance
“Work-life balance, I think is not the right model. Like, I think you want a life that you're proud of. I think you want work that you're proud of that weaves into your dinner conversations with your family”
Barnes: Raising Too Much Early Capital Creates Adverse Cultural Effects
“And I think there's adverse effects in terms of the culture at the business, if you raise too much”
Barnes: Analyzing Initial Market Size Causes Investors to Miss Market-Expanding Founders
“When you get stuck thinking through that and working through the hundred reasons why owning the black car market isn't worth it, then you miss That Travis would figure out UberX.”
Phin Barnes: VCs Have Little Control Over Long-Term Financial Outcomes
“The challenge with that measure is as an investor, I think you have very little control over that success metric.”
Phin Barnes: Top VC Returns Come From Market Creation, Not Pattern Matching
“The largest outcomes in venture capital come from new markets that are created by entrepreneurs, not entrepreneurs matching patterns and capturing markets that already exist.”
Phin Barnes: High Capital Velocity Lowers Startup Quality and Venture Returns
“When you think about what it takes to get funded as the velocity of capital increases, what it takes to raise money. Decreases. So not only do you have increasing prices due to increased supply, but you also have a lowering of quality due to the increase in ve…”
Phin Barnes: Durable Enterprises Cannot Outsource Their Moat to Capital Markets
“I think that I cannot think of a company that has a durable enterprise where they've outsourced their moat to a third party, right?”
Phin Barnes: Exercising Pro Rata Without Active Evaluation Is Lazy Investing
“I think any time can make a decision without making a decision. It is a lazy approach”
Barnes: Greatest Career Opportunities Come From Leaving Your Best Job
“You find your greatest opportunities when you leave the best job you ever had.”
Barnes: Junior VCs Should Focus on Daily Excellence Over Partner Targets
“Don't Set yourself a goal of, you know, being a partner in five years, because you probably have very little control over that, but be very intentional about the day-to-day work that you're doing and making sure that that is both excellent in terms of quality …”
Barnes: A Founder's Expression of Priorities Is the Primary Investment Signal
“I think I've come to believe that your priorities and the way you express those priorities and explain them is probably the most important thing to understand when you think about partnering with a founder.”
Barnes: Great Founders Balance Long-Term Ambition With Focus on Act One
“The key thing is in both cases, the founders know there's more, they know they want more than the core thing they're doing. And they also have a deep appreciation for getting the first act right.”
Barnes: Applying Rules Across Startups Distorts Investor Vision
“Anytime you talk to anyone about an investment, anytime you apply a rule that is not, you know, is from one company to another, you're distorting your vision and you just have to decide, is that corrective or is it blurring?”
Barnes: Having Children Brings Less Happiness But Significantly More Joy
“Yeah, you have a child and it's way less happiness, way more joy. Like that's what it is. You have less happiness moment to moment. You have more joy in these moments that are just beyond you're holding a child.”
New hires in learning mode miss early opportunities for impact
“So I think there can be a bias when you join a team, and especially it's exacerbated when you join a small, close-knit team, frankly, in a role that you've never held before. And the bias is to shift into a hundred percent learning mode. And when you do that, …”
First-year VC partner success is measured by influencing the partnership
“It's a hard question, because of course, it's a long-term game, and given we form our partnerships with founders at the earliest stages, a new partner, you certainly won't be able to measure returns for some time. So for me, it's really about being able to mov…”
Phin Barnes: VCs Must Provide Psychological Support Beyond Professional Distance
“In that process, I think having someone there with you To support you psychologically as well as strategically is critical, and it's hard to do that through the glass of a professional as, you know, in quotes professional relationship.”
Phin Barnes: First Round Operates on the Sell Side of Venture
“I believe that we at first round are on the sell side of the equation, not the buy side. And so we build a product that founders decide whether they want to buy with their equity. And we set a price for that product and that price needs to be in line with the …”