Bloom: Mid-tier generalist VCs are a wasteland lacking clear value props
Sahil Bloom · Sahil Bloom – Creativity, Investing, and Engineered Serendipity (Capital Allocators, EP.249) · May 9, 2022 · at 48:21
Sahil Bloom outlines his core thesis for raising SRB Ventures, arguing that mid-tier venture firms lack differentiation compared to top brands or creator-led micro-funds.
0:00 / 0:32exact quote · 32.9s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“The venture landscape had fundamentally changed. You were having this disruption where a barbell had formed, where on one end of that barbell, you have the Sequoia, Benchmark, Andreessen, Tiger Global, these like big name cache firms who, when they write a check into you, you're kind of stamped as like, this company has raised money from one of the big guys. They're going to go off and they're going to be off to the races. And then you had this vast wasteland of mid-tier VCs who Didn't have a clear value prop or reason for being.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Sahil Bloom
Bloom: Private Equity Alpha Comes from Relationships, Not Spreadsheet Analysis
“The reality was alpha was being generated on the ground. Interacting with people, building relationships where they wanted to sell to you at a lower price rather than someone else at a higher price because they liked you.”
Bloom: Financial Experts Use Jargon Because Obfuscation Is a Profitable Business Model
“What I saw was this bifurcation, where on one side you had experts, quote unquote, who pride themselves on talking over normal people's heads. On using jargon, on using acronyms, on sounding really smart, and a lot of that has been built up because it's a good…”
Bloom: Very few markets are true winner-take-all outside consumer social
“Most markets don't have winner take all either. There's going to be a few people. Consumer social has been one of the areas where there's been real winner take all. Like Facebook existing meant that MySpace was not going to exist, but very few markets really h…”
Bloom: Market Growth Trumps Business Quality in Private Equity
“From an investing standpoint, I would say one of the biggest realizations I had was that it is very, very difficult to fight a bad market. And what I mean by that is you can invest in the best business in a shitty declining market. And really have a tough time…”
Bloom: Informal personal board of 5–15 advisors beats traditional single-mentor models
“I think in the traditional sense of the word, what it meant was you had one person who you had a fixed meeting cadence with, and you spent this number of minutes once a month with this person, you'd get together with them, and you'd talk about your set of Sche…”
Bloom: Senior leaders value thoughtful handwritten notes over $10K luxury gifts
“Those type of people, by the way, they get people that send them 10,000 dollar bottles of wine. They get the Dom Perignon champagne sent to them all the time, the beautiful gift boxes, whatever. But you'd be surprised, because a book with a handwritten note, s…”