venture capital

“I think that's actually the right end state for a vast majority of our industry. I think, like, 90 something plus percent of our industry should work that way. But I think for, like, the 10 to 15 best founders each year, that's precisely the wrong way to work.”

“Two things are allowed to be true at the same time, which is our space has too much capital and it's allowed to be, and it's actually less competitive for great companies.”

“There are people and firms taking action that change the state of the field. And I think they're all acting reasonably and in their best interest. The aggregate effect may not be positive for the world, but I don't, I'm not ascribing malintent or anything to a…”

“You know, they've slowly increased their participation in venture from anywhere from like five to seven percent up to 10 to 15. And then it can be as big as half of their private equity commitment. So VC alongside private equity, some have private equity a lot…”

“The system as it exists today promotes less liquidity, less traditional high quality company building and way higher burn rates. And that's just not a great combination from my perspective and it's all self-reinforcing. So all of the components that I listed, …”

“If we move to a world where, you know, the answer to getting the everyday consumer into high growth tech is to put their, you know, endowments, for one case, IRAs into, you know, these venture funds that are charging two and 20. I just think there's more obfus…”

“You could study it like mathematically and it hasn't been a great place for returns. And you could look at, you know, there was a massive amount of venture capital put into solar. 1520 years ago, and it didn't work.”

“I think there was a, there still might be a lot of pain to be felt from some of the investments made during that period of time. And there hasn't really, hasn't been a day of reckoning. And a lot of investors have jumped on the AI bandwagon”

“The entire venture industry in 1994 raised four billion dollars.”

“The VCs who I believe are the most successful VCs and have had the most, you know, storied careers tend to be the people that take every single introduction I send them, and then the VCs who are still building their careers and I send them deals are like, oh, …”

“Venture is the only asset class where historical results is somewhat indicative of future performance, and you can actually somewhat forecast how a venture capital firm will do over time based on how they've done historically”

“You probably have about a dozen, maybe 15 places you can write checks that large in venture capital today.”

“When those firms are competing for a hyper-competitive financing, it tends to be the same one, two, or three partners who tends to do most of the selling and closing for those deals to bring those deals home, and very few venture capital firms have more than o…”

“You have the four, five, six top venture capital firms in the world that tend to have exposure to every power law company, any generational company, any given vintage, and then more often than not, you'll see the same firms that finance those companies earlier…”

“If you look at generational firms, Risk appetite is probably the biggest challenge that it goes down. And some, once in a while they get a wacky successful investor who just re-energizes the firm's risk tolerance and it goes back up again, but more often than …”

“Eight of 10, eight of 10, and seven of the eight are West Coast technology venture backed companies.”

“VCs are seeing massive AI productivity in all their companies. It's because their companies are full of these, you know, 23, 24, or, you know, even younger AI natives.”

“All these VCs are setting up these holding companies and, you know, we're going to use AI to make traditional businesses better. And, you know, they're really smart VCs and they're great track records, but that's what private equity has been doing for 50 years…”

“It's similar to venture capital if every A round were a hundred million and there was just an A round. So it tends to be pretty much a single round too. Fund the construction. You do get sequels and other things you have option rights too. But that would be th…”

“So you need an investing team of like four or five people, but you have to, you can't address the whole technology market with five people. So you have to have multiple teams.”

“The hamster wheel of VC doesn't actually allow us to be long-term. Because if you are having to spend a lot of money for employees and you're burning a rate of you have to raise every, like, year, year and a half, you end up optimizing for that next fundraise.”

“The low competition thing typically would be associated with lower valuations, but I think that's trying to find value deals in venture is dumb idea. It's not the right plan.”

“And in fact, you should just concentrate into the fewest number of companies possible and don't dilute your average returns by indexing.”

“And so if there's a trend inherently, you have many companies going after the same trend, you're going to have new entrance. It's become a thing. It's not about one company. It's about the theme. And if there's a theme, that's not about one company, then it's …”

“All that ultimately matters is a few companies per vintage, and you just have to be into those. And so certainly as a VC, much more than even private equity or hedge funds, as a VC, you don't actually have to work that hard meeting everybody. You can dive in a…”

“It's very difficult for those companies to get funding because the story is, well, okay, fine. You grew 200% last year, but you know, you're only on an absolute terms. You're only at eight million of revenue and you're seven years in. Whereas I think literally…”

“Like I've been shocked at sort of how hostile Insider bridge rounds really are. I think this is like an under-discussed part of venture. Just they have like, you know, three ex liquidation preferences or warrants or ratchets or other things.”

“Recently, relatively recently, in the last few years because outcomes have gotten so much bigger and these markets are bigger and everything else, The circle of high cash on cash multiple opportunities is bigger than just early stage. And it's not so, so big t…”