The Wisdom Wall
9 quotable lessons, heuristics and mental models. Every one is playable at the moment it was said. No fortune cookies allowed.
“now we're at this prisoner's dilemma where it would be theoretically a great time for everyone to lean in if other people backed out because then prices would depress, but everyone's staying in. And so it's actually leading to prices staying elevated”
“That said, it does seem pretty uncorrelated what's going on at like a high level macro with the early stage funding environment.”
“I'm not sure it's totally, uh, socially acceptable, at least for the institutional funds to do it. I think it's far easier if you're an angel, people are a little bit more understanding of that”
“So if you're a private equity firm, if you're Apollo, or Blackstone, or BlackRock, or whoever it is, right, and you're this big entity, um, the people within your firm can't, can't really leave and compete with you, because there's so much institutional infrastructure around, one, the quantum of dollars that you…”
“In venture, it's so beholden, I think, at least to individuals and individuals can walk out the door and they can go raise a 102 103 104 hundred million dollars. And like, effectively compete with you in some way, shape or form.”
“what I've realized is like price very rarely within some zone has, has mattered. And when I find myself iterating a little too much on, um, on like, oh, I'll do it at this price versus that price. It probably says something about what I think the ultimate outcome for the business Can be.”
“if you leave a, uh, a firm, then they don't let you back in the next fund. Like you don't get the cherry pick. Okay. I'm going to be a part of this vintage, uh, but not that vintage for the most part with the blue chip names.”
“this is a common phenomenon at the, not the end, but at the peak of a lot of cycles is you end up with a lot of these SPVs getting Formed in a meaningful way. And you end up with managers trying to get, uh, write bigger checks for rounds than their funds can actually hold.”
“It feels like we've rotated a little bit more back to like, who is my individual board member? Who is going to be on the ground with me day to day? Like I'm going to solve for that person rather than the soul, like just the brain past a certain point, right? Uh, like obviously you must be this call to ride the ride…”