Dixon: Great startup founders anticipate and traverse an 'idea maze'
Chris Dixon · #5 Chris Dixon: The State of Venture Capital · Nov 13, 2015 · at 32:25
Chris Dixon, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, explains his mental model for evaluating startup founders to Shane Parrish.
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“We have this concept we call the idea maze and the idea maze is the, is sort of the idea that That the startup ideas aren't really just kind of a static thing. It's kind of like, you know, you see the TV or the movies and they have the way they kind of, you know, have these, you know, someone has this epiphany and they, I imagine that it'll be like a, you know, a intermittent windshield wiper or something, you know, in reality it's much more of kind of a maze, meaning like, You know, you sort of imagine how the product might work, but then you imagine if the world responds in a certain way or the technology changes in a certain way, here's how I'll adapt. And you sort of imagine yourself traversing through a maze. And at various points in the maze, there might be a dead end, or there might be a trap, or there might be a prize, or something like this. And you don't really know how the maze is going to turn out when you first start, but really obsessed founders will have thought through all the possibilities.”
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