Former General Catalyst chief development officer John Kim explains why pitching pure financial returns fails to motivate institutional limited partners.
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Kim: VCs who pledged against weapons in 2019 now lead defense
“You can go back at 2019, and the vast majority of venture capital firms say, we will never invest in weapons. This is the hottest area right now. The same people who said they would never invest in weapons are actually now leading the weapons charge.”
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Kim: Funds generally tap out at twice their first close amount
“If your first close is a billion dollars, you tend to tap out at two billion. Because your first close almost always is your hard re-elect number. That has been my experience.”
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Kim: Investors are not risk-loving, they rationalize risk away
“I don't really think there's such thing as risk loving, risk aversion. I think that there are only people who actually Perceive there's no risk. I think that no one actually really invests with a lot of risk. I think that, that people actually convince themsel…”
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Kim: Friends and family capital is the most expensive money
“I think the most expensive money is borrowing money from your friends, because if you don't give the money back, your friendship is not the same anymore, but they trust you, and they want to see you do well, and their desire minus fear, which is, we talked abo…”
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Kim: Investment committees never make contrarian bets by default
“I have never seen a committee, a consensus decision-making process, make a contrarian bet, unless the group is designed to make contrarian bets.”
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Kim: Scaling VC funds must accept losing early contrarian LPs
“You have to have the courage, then, To lose the people who actually were the people who invest with you because you were contrarian. In other words, you have to have the courage to get past the innovator's dilemma. And so, if there's a set of folks, high net w…”