Here's an unpopular opinion that is probably actually unpopular: I don't think OpenAI's board was wrong
To clarify, they were wrong in *how* they did it--that was remarkably unprofessional and ended up destroying a lot of value--but they weren't wrong in *why* they did it (note that I'm an outsider, some of my assumptions may be wrong)
Oct 26, 2021 • 9 tweets • 1 min read
Sorry, I’m a little stuck on this sequoia announcement. Not because it’s especially interesting, but because my gut reaction is so opposite the reaction of the smart VCs talking about it
I mean, I guess you can say they’re revolutionizing venture capital or whatever, but VC has never really meant one thing, just like “hedge fund” has not
Oct 22, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Not to kick a dead horse, but this is exactly right. Was it a dumb idea? Nobody could know. Was it a dumb idea to spend that much to see if it was a dumb idea? Yes.
I don’t invest in ideas, because you *never* know, and I don’t invest in people, exactly. I invest in people who can run a strategic process to find the right idea in an uncertain world
Dec 22, 2019 • 22 tweets • 4 min read
That post I just referenced has an interesting backhanded compliment: “Does thinking that a VC’s blog post is really great mean I’m actually an idiot?”
A long time ago, @cshirky, who I sat on a Board with during the dot-com bubble referred anonymously to someone I assume was me as “the tallest dwarf” because he was surprised a professional investor could have an intelligent idea
Oct 31, 2019 • 13 tweets • 2 min read
Every new generation of venture investors since time immemorial has asked themselves “why don’t we forgo the all or nothing model in favor of consistent returns?” /1
That is, why not just invest in companies that will return 3x and not shoot for a mix of 10x and zero? /2
Oct 10, 2019 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
The thing about early-stage venture is that the exit environment and the entrance environment should have absolutely zero connection to each other...and yet they do
If you are investing in a founder-stage startup today, it won’t exit for some 7-10 years. So even if the IPO market is hot or the late-stage market is hot, that has nothing to do with you.
Jun 20, 2019 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
A taxonomy of moats.
Still not happy with this, but I think it’s better than the last one. Thanks for all the input...Thoughts on this one welcome!
I am particularly unhappy with the ‘sustainable competitive advantage’ piece...feels like this should be more important/have better explanations (and yes, I read 7 Powers since the last time.)
Feb 8, 2019 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
I'm subtweeting re power laws because I don't want it to look like I'm being combative. I've just thought about this *a lot* so I'm skeptical of "answers" but very very supportive of people working on it
1/ We *don't* know that venture returns follow a power law distribution. We don't have the data. It's far more likely they follow a lognormal distribution, but this is boring to talk, think, or write about
Jun 27, 2018 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
Deceleration is the wrong word for me. It may seem that way because I professionally care about one thing: startups. Not even progress, really, just the radical change brought about by a small group of people creating the future
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I'm not fool enough to think the comings and goings of startups makes a huge difference. Look at real GDP for the past ~150 years (log scale) (from visualizingeconomics.com/blog/2010/11/0…)
Apr 11, 2018 • 18 tweets • 4 min read
This time is not different
Life Magazine, May 20, 1966
Jan 31, 2018 • 7 tweets • 1 min read
When I started VC investing I thought my job was to take the biggest risks I could find. Twenty years later I think something entirely different /1
I don't want to take technology risk. R&D takes an unpredictable amount of time and no VC can fund an R&D project for an indeterminate period of time. The technology should already work when I invest /2
