The Ledger, every show

“There's certainly lots of otherwise good opportunities that have been polluted or dragged down by, you know, whatever soft bank showing up, and, you know, or any other number of people that, that we can name”

“Yes. And you know, and you can get away with it sometimes, just like I got away with it, with that early deal. If you can find, you know, other people's money on advantageous terms to sort of fund you through you know, the valley of death there you know, like,…”

“The adventure is a scale game. Like, I think it actually kind of runs quite the opposite, that excessive scale, you know, gets in the way of excellence. So, you know, you can be too small too, you know, don't get me wrong, and scale, scale has its benefits, bu…”

“There's this kind of safety in the herd thing, and I, a belief within, you know, firms and partners, and not incorrect, that if they're making the same mistake that everyone else in the industry is making, they probably won't be punished for it, because, you k…”

“Where we haven't been investing is the super capital intensive very, very high priced you know, sort of LLM development shops or other, you know, other sorts of similar projects.”

“I think for an asset gatherer, you know, there's sort of two business models in venture, you know, you can be in the assets under management game, or you can be in the generate best possible returns game.”

“Anytime you meet an investor that talks about the amount of capital they deploy per year, right, you know you're talking to, you know, an asset gatherer”

“When I'm getting really nervous about a price getting too high often actually what that also is, it's an indication that maybe my conviction is lacking. I don't have sufficient conviction around this investment, and so queasiness about price is actually a symp…”

“There's been so many new entrants that have pounded into venture that, you know, maybe aren't, you know, devoting that kind of company building craftsmanship to their projects, and they're really, you know, they're pursuing a spring and pray strategy or a capi…”

“That it's difficult to have all these different strategies cohabitate under one roof. They have different methodologies, You have to build the teams differently. You know, the investment decisions are made, you know, with very different criteria, and it's not …”

“In B to B technology which is where we focus deep understanding of what you're on the part of the founders. Of what they're attempting to disrupt is actually really important, but you need to have also, you know, that, that deep understanding, which is really …”

“I'd rather have been doing that in sales tech than, oh, here's a better CRM, you know, unplug Salesforce and plug in my CRM. You know, like to me, that's a fool's errand. You know, that's not happening.”

“The stampeded process, I think, you know, I don't, I just don't think the best companies Are built that way.”

“We invested seven million dollars at 35 post, right? Like, oh, 35 post for a company with, like, no revenue and no customers and blah, blah, blah. That's what we did.”

“Fund sizes are different. Outcome sizes are different. You know, so there's no, no real reason the 20% rule should make any sense”

“Yeah, no, and we've heard this before. We've, I mean, this type of statement has been made at multiple times, even just during, you know, the time that I've been in the business and it's been wrong every time.”

“Like, I devoted a substantial amount of my time to cleantech at one point you know, just because, and this was in like, 2006, 2007, 2008. And it was because, you know, no one else at the firm was spending any time on it, you know, I sort of felt like it was an…”

“I think over-reliance on quantitative metrics in investment decision-making. So the whole, and in early stage so the, I think the dependence upon this sort of suite of metrics as indicators of what, you know whether you should invest or not, you know, is it ha…”

“There's a lot of demand for unadulterated early stage venture capital, you know, being practiced by experienced people with a track record. And a lot of the very best people with those track records, you know, are within aircraft carriers now, and the LPs are …”

“The very best founders that I work with, the most talented, most capable, most sought after are also the ones where, you know, we have the highest bandwidth engagement.”

“You need to have just some glaring deficiency in the current approaches. And so you almost need to find, you know, founders that are like just pissed off.”

“You know, it's a double edged sword, right? So it can be very good in terms of building some credibility and some reputation. And that certainly was the case, you know, for me. And so it brought, You know, maybe sort of more relevant and interesting to founder…”

“Back to the late nineties, you know, there were people good venture capitalists that were like, you know what, you know, these valuations are just too high. I'm not investing in these internet companies, you know, it just doesn't make sense. And, you know, the…”

“And then you give that person both enough rope to hang themselves so that they're, you know, feeling tremendous accountability. You know, what will be called the sleepless night factor. But also guardrails that protect them from making, you know, really egregi…”

“Finding that opportunity, which is close enough to something that people understand, so it isn't just a complete lobotomy for the customer, right? You know, so that, so they have some grounding, but different enough so that it isn't just kind of an obvious nex…”

“I think the thematic focus and sort of only working in domains that you understand really well is an advantage. You know, you have I think better, better proximity to judge when, you know, when the architectural transition is, is, is likely to occur. You have …”

“It's incredibly difficult for a startup to do a second thing, you know, so, so any sort of notion about Oh, well, I'll do this first thing, and it's not that big an opportunity, but I'll be, then I'll be able to do this second thing. It's like, oh boy, you kno…”

“The willingness to spend was really actually concentrated, and at least now in a relatively small number of businesses, and I think the mistake was, like, I really wanted it to be true, like, and maybe, you know, because I would just love for the internet to b…”

“A low price is never a reason to do, to make an investment right, so there's no, no, No, no price, you know, that, that will, that is sufficient justification for something that is, you know, otherwise flawed.”

“I try and really listen closely to the management teams, you know, cause, cause they are so much closer to the action. And, you know, if you're talking about, should you sell a private company or not? Their recommendations need to be really discerned and close…”

“Well, the industry has scaled to the point where you know, just things like word of mouth and direct personal touch you know, are insufficient to reach the market, and even though I happen to prefer working that way but I just have to get over myself a little …”

“I think choosing expedience over, you know, the hard things that, that actually Contribute to long-term value. You know, there's sort of quick fixes and sort of feel-good measures that can take the edge off whatever is bothering you at a moment in time. But th…”

“I still hold a lot of our Facebook investment, you know, back from you know, the Excel days.”

“I've never sold a share of Snowflake, and, you know, I'm optimistic that that'll turn out to be a good decision.”