The Wisdom Wall

“I've seen so many businesses get crushed under the weight of, like, raising VC too early, right? And businesses that would otherwise be really healthy, um, big businesses that just kind of never got their start because investors were expecting 300% growth year on year when that was just unrealistic. It was just…”

“I just fundamentally believe that the biggest companies in consumer tech are horizontal user-generated content platforms.”

“Um, you know, I think the only way to make money in VC is, um, to take a non-consensus view that turns out to be right.”

“once you sell a part of your company, you're kind of on the hook to sell the whole company.”

“Just at a high level, I think more than product innovation, more than technology innovation, business model innovation is like the true value creator in like in tech, right? And, and, and in, in business more generally.”

“to be a true billion dollar direct consumer brand, like the brand has to resonate and brand isn't one of those things you can necessarily iterate on. I don't believe, like, I think The consumer thinks what they think of you, and I think you can evolve a brand and build on it, but you can't, it's not software where…”

“I think what, what we often see is in beverages and food, you get kind of these halo, you know, hero stories that kind of bring up an entire category, right? So like, I think the coconut water category is a really interesting one where like, you know, you couldn't, you couldn't study the category and say, oh, this…”

“And I think, you know, when we talk about margins and distribution, like, their distribution innovation was, we're going to forget about the shelf space, and we're going to go straight to You know, next to the cash register. And so the, the, the innovation there was, you know, the sales team is not, you know, going in…”

“I don't actually think it is clear that you can go direct to consumer. Like I think that happens in some cases when brands have leverage. I think when brands don't have leverage or when they're just starting out, it's kind of The, the, the retailers, I think, dictate a little bit more.”

“Almost all of our successful portfolio companies have started with a really deep founder pain point, a really personal founder pain point. And, and that doesn't guarantee success, but I think it's kind of a necessary condition, right?”

“It always, it always worries me as an outside investor to come in on a seed extension where The first question I'm asking is, why aren't insiders doing this?”

“I, I think having a point of a differentiated point of view on how to get the product to the consumer, like is the thing that matters here. Cause I think you've, you do actually do have a pretty innovative product. I just worry that you kind of get lost in the noise and really don't penetrate the market. Um, in the,…”

“Look, I think you can build billion dollar businesses as category definers in, in kind of the beverage category.”

“And that's where I think it becomes really defensible and really valuable is if we can, if we can say to the 1000th customer, you benefit from the 999 other customers that already signed on.”

“Like there's so many more dimensions to making an investment decision other than, um, you know, are we going to hit these short term metrics, which by the way, I've been a founder. There are ways to game that anyway.”