The Wisdom Wall

“Yeah, the most common miracle that's quoted today is a data moat. People say, well, we'll generate tons of data, and then we'll be differentiated, and that, I think in genomics something like that could work, but outside of that, I actually think I've never seen a company pull that off in terms of a broader, you know,…”

“I think that, ah, the most successful companies in 95% of the cases are successful despite their investors. I shouldn't say despite. I should say irregardless.”

“Uh, I think the best way is to get an introduction through a founder, uh, that I already know, or somebody else that I already know, so that it's in network. I think if you can't find a way to do that, then you're probably not going to find a way to get customers, you're not going to find a way to get hires, you're not…”

“if you can get away with charging more, then it means that you have a product that people truly want, which means that you can grow faster in part because people truly want your product, and in part because the capital leverage that Mark talks about is actually crucial. In other words, and he makes this point, I think,…”

“people tend to discount, uh, growth off of small bases, even though the growth is compounding. So if you're growing organically, 20% a month, even if you're going from a hundred to a 120 users, That is a real sign of product market fit that a lot of people tend to ignore or not believe because they're like, oh, the…”

“I think it's possible that in today's environment where capital is really loose, people actually wait too long to pivot or to shut down because they can keep raising more money. And I actually think that's a bad thing because it's locking up great people at the height of their creative point in their lives and…”

“So I think every startup needs at least one miracle to succeed, because if it was obvious that it was going to work, everybody would already be doing it, and so you wouldn't have an opportunity. So in some sense, startups only have opportunities in markets that are non-obvious, which means they have to overcome some…”

“You know, I think if it's a very technical product, uh, it's often better to have the technologist in charge. So say that you had, um, a business person and a technologist, because if it's two technologists, I don't know how to differentiate between, you know, uh, who they, maybe somebody who's a little bit better at…”

“In general, you'll find that most investors are fear driven versus ambition driven. They're kind of scared of missing something versus really excited and believe vigorously in something. And so high conviction investors are actually very valuable in my opinion.”

“And I think one of the big fallacies in Silicon Valley is everybody thinks that they're Amazon and they basically say every business model should be Amazon's, which is I'm going to charge as low of a price as possible so I can get as much market share as possible. And actually it's possible that you'd get to more…”

“I've never invested in an ed tech company, and again, I think the social impact is massive. I just think it's very hard to succeed, in part because there's nobody who, um, is able or willing to pay in the US, uh, for the product.”

“In general, if you want to do best from a career perspective, and you didn't join in the very, very early days, the best time to join is when a company is probably on the order of 40, 50 people, and is worth, you know, somewhere between fifty and five hundred million dollars, as long as it can turn into a 10, twenty…”

“The typical thing that, uh, founder will do, um, especially if they're a more technical founder, is they'll say, the way I'm gonna win is by making this cheaper than anybody else, which actually tends to be a really bad strategy, unless you're truly just going for scale.”

“Um, I think most angels actually care too little about valuation. And so often, um, if you actually look at the return, say you do 10 investments, and I'm making up a number just to make it a round number, a 100,000 each, and nine of them go under and one works, um, and that one ends up at a two hundred million dollar…”

“I think a great team is a very positive signal. I think a bad team, depending on context, may actually be a neutral signal.”

“I think in general, when you help companies, it comes, it goes, and spikes, versus it's sustained throughout. If you're sustainably having to interfere or help with a company every day, then there's either something wrong with that company or with the founders, and so I think the best founders need helps in these…”

“Well, there, there's two types of, ah, co-founder conflicts, resolvable and unresolvable. Ah, I'd say, If it starts very early, usually it's unresolvable and somebody's gonna have to leave. If it starts late, usually there's a reason and you can fix it.”

“I think there was a real shift when, ah, Mark Zuckerberg hired Sheryl Sandberg as COO into people saying that founders can keep going. Because what happened in the nineties was, um, Founders were quickly replaced by professional CEOs if they raised any venture capital, because often the venture capitalists would take…”

“if your product is broken and people are still using it very actively, or you have high retention on a broken product, that's a clear sign of product market fit. When Twitter was constantly going down in the farewell days, and yet nobody moved off of Twitter, that was a sign of just raw market, uh, adoption.”

“And I think the way you should think about your startup from a hiring perspective is it's almost like a light, a life raft. You know, your boat is sinking and you're on this little raft and there's five spots. And who are in those five spots? And if the people on the raft aren't the five people that you should have on…”

“The other thing I've seen some people do, which I think actually helps a lot, is from day one they focus on the velocity of the team, and so they maybe focus on the build environment early, and making it so that anybody can run a full instance of the product with a single line of code just to set it up, right? There…”

“the one thing I would advocate is being willing to restart completely. Because typically when people pivot, they pivot within the same market versus across markets. And if you're in a bad market, that means you're going to die, because you're just going to go on to the next thing. You say, hey, we have all the sunk…”

“I think the most important thing is to resolve it, even if you get it wrong, because you can always correct the wrong thing, but at least you have somebody in charge. I think a lot of, uh, founding teams end up with a lot of fights that then slow down the company dramatically if they don't have, uh, somebody clearly in…”

“you should diligence them and ask the founders where either things didn't go well or where there was some issue over time or whatever it is. And that's more likely to reveal the truth about an investor than asking in a situation where everything worked.”

“Uh, in general, I think you hear the news about these fundraisers that happen in a week, and you think every fundraise is going to take a week, but if you're actually being thoughtful on your side as well, it should take a couple months, uh, because otherwise you're not getting to know the people that you're…”

“So say that somebody exits their company for a billion dollars, and then they start another company, and in no rounds do they take their prior investors. That's usually a sign. And so I would call up that person.”

“especially technology-driven companies tend to really underprice their product under the belief that if they price it really low, it'll get them more market share more rapidly, and therefore they'll win the market, when in reality they've never run the experiment, and it's really easy to, to draw prices.”

“and so I thought that was just a brilliant, uh, onboarding tool that perhaps any Um, executive joining a high growth company or any manager joining a high growth company should issue so that people just understand this is the fastest, best way to interact with me and just, you know, ramp up on, on how to be effective…”

“there's an old saying that people either hire well or fire well, and you, if you at least do one of those, then you can build a really good organization. Um, you know, fundamentally, most companies are kind of bad at both, and that really ends up biting them, because they're just desperate to get people in, instead of…”

“some of the worst investments I've made We're two really smart people with a PowerPoint deck, and I was like, oh my gosh, their vision, and they're so articulate, and they're so smart, and it never tends to work.”

“if you're a SaaS company and you have major brands finding and using you organically and paying for your product, uh, that's a sign of product market fit.”

“the top section should be, uh, what are your asks from your investors? Or investors and advisors, or whoever you're sending it to. So, um, it's very clear immediately how they can help. So if they don't read anything else, if they just open the email, they'll see that, and you'll actually get a lot of responses to…”