The Wisdom Wall

“When VCs hear black, they automatically think small. Every time.”

“Don't ask the investors for references to founders. Go to their portfolio list on their website and find a company that's no longer in existence. And reach out to that founder on LinkedIn. A founder of a failed company is going to give you a lot more information on an investor than a founder of a company that's doing…”

“the process you develop is only gonna come from somebody who's not in the beer industry. Like, somebody in the beer industry who wouldn't even ever think to try what you did to create what you did, because it doesn't, it probably doesn't make sense to them.”

“People tend to over index on the, the bombastic founder and less on the more measured. And sometimes the more measured founder is the one who's going to be the better operator.”

“The reason is the D to C side is just the marketing. So if you get rid of the DTC brand, you've now taken away your largest marketing tool for the industry.”

“It can be really, really tough for a new brand to break in, but even more so, it becomes really tough for a new brand to scale. Like, I've seen companies get two million, two million in revenue, 3.5, it starts to plateau. And then it seems like there becomes a different game to play.”

“We have seen massive companies build, come out of labs, start in government, and then over time transition, and the technologies that come from government are usually very transformative and usually really big companies.”

“Figuring out how to grow is a problem money solves. A lot of founders we see have other problems that money doesn't solve that we're trying to get to. When you got a founder where their only problem is I need money to solve this problem. That is something that VCs are really good at.”

“Most ed tech companies fall apart because they run out of capital before they can figure out the sales cycle to be sustainable.”