founders

“I think you could do that in the eighties or nineties and be a great venture capitalist. It's very rare these days. So first of all, being a founder is a big advantage.”

“You also have the problem that in the hedge fund world, A lot of firms are a hundred percent owned by one person, and that compounds it so you get culture where there isn't enough challenge, there isn't enough, not enough people willing to contradict. The foun…”

“The best founders, I think, just know like all three financial statements and can talk really intelligently about how their business needs to scale and what capital is required to scale their business.”

“The secondary market has picked up, and there are several groups, some of them with decent, good reputations, who will buy shares outright, and that's a simple transaction to get your head around. However, the tax implications can be pretty significant. The co…”

“If a founder was to spend the majority of their time trying to chase investment rather than improving their business, I think that is a crime. It's often, by the way, the same people who expect that every next round is going to be an up round, despite not meet…”

“There are a lot of young people within those venture firms that have never experienced a down market, and certainly young founders that have never experienced inflation, rising interest rates, inability to raise capital, etc. So I think there's some painful le…”

“The biggest mistake is hire the professional above the founder. I kind of feel like in China, in this kind of dynamic, competitive environment, you need the founder to run the company. If the founder is not running the company, if the founder has some shortcom…”

“If you're the lieutenant, number two guy is not very good, that typically says the founder is not capable enough. In that case, you can almost decide to just pass.”

“But there are people that can reinvent themselves every six months, which is what you need to do if you're going to be a success in an entrepreneurial company from a whiteboard. What you have to do for that first six months is very different than the next.”

“That is the number one thing to focus on, is to really get to know someone, get to know people that have worked with them, and I've had folks that I've put money behind that they couldn't get any of their former co-workers to invest behind them. Pretty big red…”

“A private equity firm or a growth equity firm coming into a series C or D sitting at the top of the caps table with liquidity preferences and all these downside protections, and they're ultimately earning more than the founders at exit. To me, it seems like th…”

“Founders right now face 20% dilution on average through the seed round and greater than 50% after the series B.”

“Private equity puts a timeframe on the investment and the founder and puts a real noose above their neck if it's not seen as a real partnership.”

“There's founders and there's CEOs. In rare occasions, the founder can be the CEO. And obviously when that works, I think it works most beautifully.”

“We'll write checks off the balance sheet for early stage stuff to get relationships with the founders to learn more about spaces because we can offer the founders access to NBC host or Bloomberg's top bureau chiefs or stuff like that. We'll always get a little…”

“I think these founders themselves have been underserved in terms of advice. Their companies have been well served, but I think the founders themselves know how to think about wealth diversification, and deployment of capital, and philanthropy, and all the issu…”

“If they couldn't empathize with the host, how can I be helpful? Then it just shows somebody who is not equipped to build a startup because a startup is constantly about empathizing with your customer and your user, and then showing how can I make it easier for…”

“There is no doubt sharing space with people and breaking bread reveals a lot about who they are. What drives them? And you can't really back somebody until you know their ambition and what's on their personal scorecard.”

“Every time a founder is considering taking money from a venture capitalist, there is the same process they should use when they're considering hiring an employee to whom they're going to give stock options. Every single time you're making the calculus is the a…”

“When you spoke with them, even as the company was in its earliest days, they spoke with the voice of the inevitability of the growth and success of the company. And they weren't selling you. It wasn't that their heart rate rose, and they were trying to convinc…”

“Most founders tend to be really great at one or two things, and they leverage that strength, and they know that strength, and they build a team of people around them who have different strengths. That ultimately creates a much higher performing team, that a te…”

“Boutiques are not designed to outlast their founder. The investment offering rarely passes on to the next generation.”

“If we have an extended period of underperformance, it's going to lead to fatigue on behalf of not only the founder, who has accumulated a great deal of wealth in this organization, and may be tempted to fold and say, you know what, I've made my money. I'd love…”

“There's one study that found that about half of founders are replaced by VC firms who've invested in the company by the time they reach the third round of financing, and that's 75% of founders have been replaced by the time a company IPOs.”

“People tend to misremember how it really happened. Even the founders, they tend to remember knowing things they didn't really know at the time.”

“Here's the other thing I've learned is that startups, even the founders, have an incentive to tell the story differently after the fact, because in the early days, they're trying to appeal to the misfits and the early believers who believe as they do. In the l…”

“The most important thing for succession to be handled well is having founders who along the way share more than they should.”

“There was a great profile written about the A-sixteen Z infra team, and that team is just phenomenal, well-liked by founders, and I wouldn't want to go heads up with them to lead a seed deal.”

“If my founder doesn't have empathy or doesn't have feelings about this termination, they probably shouldn't be a leader anymore.”

“Never once in my multi-decade career of hiring and firing people and supporting founders and entrepreneurs and builders has anyone ever come to me and said, I regret letting that person go. What they do say 10 out of 10 times is, oh my god, I should have done …”