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Venture capital is facing the death of the middle
“But there is this kind of death of the middle that happens to a lot of asset classes in general. And Venture Capital, it was a tiny, tiny asset class at the beginning. Right now, it's gotten bigger. But it's really more of the end state of a lot of these companies is huge.”
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Tech companies stay private longer increasing capital needs
“Series D didn't exist in like 1992, right? It's like that was an IPO. Like companies would go public. I think Amazon went public at like a $600 million market cap or something. Like that was the norm. There was no Series I, Series K, Series W. You would just go public.”
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Winning requires being a generalist or a specialist
“My view is most asset classes, you either have to be a large generalist or a small specialist. And the hard thing is to be like a midsize generalist because then you're largely going to lose to like the big generalists or the small specialists. So like, you know, Ribbit, as an example, like they really focus on fintech.”
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Venture capital is primarily a sales job
“The entire job of Venture Capital is to find, pick and win investments. If they're good investments, the winning is very, very hard. And the winning therefore goes to the person that is like the best, like you have to sell. Like this is a sales job.”
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Startups must acquire distribution before incumbents innovate
“I actually think to one of Alex's statements every single day. It's taught me so much. And it's very simple. Will the startup acquire distribution before the incumbent acquires innovation? I have Alex to thank for that and it always sticks with me.”