venture capital
also referred to as: vc · vcs · venture capital industry
22 statements across 15 episodes · 0 bullish · 13 bearish · 7 people on the record · first statement Oct 11, 2022 by Alex Lieberman · across every show →
Everything said about venture capital, oldest first
Oct 11, 2022
Alex Lieberman: Pitch deck design shouldn't stand out in either direction
“My view on slides when you're pitching an investor is it's a lot like a job interview. You don't want to stand out in either direction. You don't want to be the person that shows up like a schlep with, you know baggy pants and a belt that's off centered.”
Oct 11, 2022
Pujie: Early-stage startups should admit they are not yet defensible
“No business starts being defensible. And I think it's important for entrepreneurs pitching when a VC goes, oh, how do you make this defensible? You go, well, today it's not defensible. If it was, how the hell would I be starting it?”
Jan 24, 2023 neutral
Feb 28, 2023 negative
Mar 7, 2023 negative
Mar 7, 2023
Mar 23, 2023
Lieberman built Morning Brew largely without venture capital funding
“Because if you think about our story, it was one of raising very little money for Morning Brew for starting this media business, not going the venture capital route, and doing anything and everything to push the business forward.”
Apr 11, 2023 negative
Lieberman: Standard VC logic only leads to building B2B enterprise SaaS
“The way that I've always thought about it is if you were to build businesses as dictated by the way that VCs are taught to think, you would just permanently build enterprise level B to B SaaS businesses over and over and over. That may be right for some people…”
Apr 11, 2023 negative
Pujji: Mid-career VCs mistakenly apply rigid expected-value frameworks to all founders
“The middle ones in my experience, you know, it's sort of the hammer and a nail thing, right? It's like, if you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So everything they look at us through the expected value of how big could this be? If I put a dollar in, w…”
Oct 9, 2023 bearish
Lieberman: DTC startups will fail if they raise excessive venture capital
“I give it a seven out of 10 if this business stays lean and it raises as little venture capital money as possible. I'll give it a two out of 10 if it raises a shit ton of venture capital money in the early years. And the reason I say that is, you know, we have…”
Nov 15, 2023 negative
Dec 4, 2023 negative
Dec 20, 2023 negative
Fried: Bootstrapping is superior to venture capital for most software businesses
“Software businesses that have, you know, basically humans and Some tech, which is cheap, either in the cloud or, you know, people just need a few laptops here and there. And there's not much that you need to get going and building a software business or tech b…”
Dec 20, 2023 negative
Dec 20, 2023 negative
Fried: Venture capital forces low-overhead tech startups into a single exit path
“I think a lot of tech companies act as if they are companies with huge capital expenditures, and they're not, and they put themselves in a hole. Because now they're beholden to someone else on someone else's time frame. They have to become a certain kind of co…”
Jan 19, 2024
Lieberman: VC milestones force early founders to prioritize growth over profitability
“The way you get to a Series A is by hitting certain growth metrics, and so The idea of profitability and how judicious are you with your capital becomes a second priority, and that's largely because of the incentive system that is created in the venture capita…”
Jan 22, 2024 negative
Feb 14, 2024
Feb 14, 2024 neutral
Apr 28, 2025 bearish
Khosla partner Nikunj Kothari calls seedstrapping limits extremely short-sighted
“He basically said businesses that should be venture backed will always have an incentive to raise more and grow faster. He said, my hot take is that all of these amount raised and team size proclamations are extremely short sighted.”
May 28, 2025 neutral
May 28, 2025 negative
Lieberman says VCs prefer startup failure over moderate $200 million exits
“Because for them, they either want a billion dollar valuation, or they don't necessarily care. Like, they'd rather become a zero, versus us Be a two hundred million dollar company, it's life changing for the founders, but it doesn't do anything for the fund.”