The Ledger
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Polovets: Startups dependent on capital markets must eventually reach consensus to survive
“Eventually, you have to get to consensus. If you're dependent on capital markets, it's very hard to keep the company alive if nobody wants to fund it.”
Polovets: Most successful startups originate from non-hot batches
“Most of that, like most of the hot companies end up coming from the not hot batch, right?”
Polovets: Humba Ventures paused defense investing due to inflated valuations
“We invested in defense a lot three, four years ago, and then we kept looking, we're basically paused for a year and a half or two, because after the Ukraine and Israel thing, you know, prices just went up like two, three, four times, but the company fundamenta…”
Polovets: Most of Humba's 10-12 unicorns lacked multi-stage seed leads
“I think we've invested in like 10 or 12 unicorns roughly. Maybe like a third of those or quarter of those had a series A investor at seed.”
Polovets: Founders with prior unicorn exits are never non-consensus
“I'm not sure an ex-unicorn founder would ever be, not consensus really.”
Polovets: Ownership and entry valuation don't matter for top-performing startups
“Like if you're in like the best company of the year, I don't think like, I don't think ownership matters that much. I don't think like the price matters that much.”
Polovets: Many of my top returns came from non-consensus investments
“I would say like for me, and maybe we invest like a tick earlier more like towards pre-seed and seed, but for me, a lot of my best investments have been more on the non-consensus side.”
Polovets: Return multiples fall significantly after startups establish proof points
“Once they get good, the valuation skyrocket so fast that like you could still get good multiples, but they're just much lower than it, you know, early stages.”
Polovets: E-commerce valuations swung wildly year-to-year despite stable business fundamentals
“E-commerce didn't, I think the fundamentals didn't change that much year to year, but like the valuations and the like appetite for investing and maybe starting companies changed a lot year to year.”
Polovets: VC expansion makes market efficient for non-consensus startups
“For non-consensus companies, it's getting more efficient because the more investors there are, the more likely you are to find at least one or two that like what you're doing.”
Polovets: Six to eight of his top ten investments struggled raising seed
“I think at least on my side, for a lot of the precedes and seeds I've done, I went back, I think over my top like 10 investments, maybe six or seven or eight took them months to raise a seed round.”
Polovets: Deep tech startups rarely have functional products by Series A
“At seed, it's very rare to see like, oh, there's an asset that's going to be working here at the series A. Cause usually the asset's still going to be like being developed at the series A or maybe series B.”
Polovets: In a consensus VC market, cost of capital dictates winners
“In a purely consensus world, like it all just comes down to the cost of capital. Right. And so if my LPs want five X and yours want two X, you could pay two and a half times higher prices and the company's not better. It's just like, oh, like your cost of capi…”
Polovets: Multi-stage VCs win repeat founders by pricing seed higher
“Where if it is a founder that previously built a business that exited for a hundred million and they're like in the space that they know super well, that's gonna get done at like 40 instead of 20 or 80 instead of 20 post. And chances are it's gonna be a multis…”