I was grabbing lunch with my buddy Rahul the other day. And we were talking about how frickin’ tough it was for us to become proficient at our respective sport. Tennis for him. Swimming for me. On one hand, both of us wish it were easier. That he could pick up the racket for the first time, and win matches without breaking a sweat. That I could execute a perfect dive and a sub-20-second 50-sprint with just six months of practice. But the truth is neither of us could. We had select teammates who could though.
I remember one teammate who was two years older than I was. 14 to be exact. He swam with us for two months with no formal training prior, then went to his first competition. Broke 30 seconds for 50-yard freestyle in that very first race. A few months later, broke 25-seconds. In his first year, he never lost a sprint. It got to a point that while the rest of us were swimming six days a week. 2-4 hours a day. He swam with us twice, at best thrice a week. And he still won.
Was I envious? Hell ya. No doubt about it.
It wasn’t till later that year, where he was competing in meets a step above Junior Olympics — Far Western to be specific — that he lost his first race. Then at the next one again. Then again. And the guy broke. He took his anger out on the rest of us. Beat some folks up as well. Just, give or take, 18 months after he had started, he quit. I never saw him again.
Had he stuck with the sport, I’m confident he would have been one of the best. Some people do have the genetic disposition to do well in a certain craft. They won the genetic lottery. And I’m really happy for them. If you do have it, you should definitely lean into it. Why waste the free bingo tile you’ve been given?
Circling back from earlier… on the other hand, Rahul and I are both glad it took a shitload of effort to actually win for the first time. And even more the second time. Then the third. Which by the way, really fucking sucked. I once beat the shit out of a wall in my parents’ home with my bare knuckles ’cause I was so frustrated at plateauing. Much to my parents’ horror.
But it made us better people. We are the sum of all our mistakes. The sum of all our blood, sweat and tears.
The last few months I’ve been lucky to be a part of conversations about the intersection of AI and investing. So many funds we see have built out AI screening tools, automated email management, and memo creation. Some LPs too. The latter is few and far in between. And there were multiple discussions from senior LPs and GPs that they became the investor they were today because they did the work of putting together the memos and hunting down references and details. That they made mistakes, but learned quickly why certain mistakes were worse than others. Some miscalculations were more egregious than others. That they were scolded. Some fired. The younger generation may not have the same scrutiny. And with AI, they might not fully understand why they need to do certain things other than tell AI to put together a memo.
Similarly, so many companies are building things incredibly quickly. Vibe coded overnight. They’re getting to distribution faster than any other era of innovation. It’s not uncommon we’re seeing solid 7-figure revenues in year one of the company. Annual curiosity revenue from corporates is real. Likely temporary, but real. And it’s created a generation of puffed chests. Founders and investors, not prepared for the soon-to-come rude awakening.
As first-check investors, we bet on the human being. We bet on not only the individual’s vision, but all the baggage and wherewithal that comes with it. We bet on the individual’s ability to endure. Because unless we see a mass market of overnight acqui-hires for companies younger than three years, our returns are generated in years 9-15. The long term. And shit will hit the fan.
AI is amazing in so many ways. But it has made it harder to underwrite willpower.
I’m not a religious person. But a line I really like from my friends who are Christian in faith is, “Don’t pray for an easy life. Pray for the strength and courage to overcome a hard life.”
Years ago, a friend of mine told me that famous people live one of two lives. A life to envy. Or a life to respect. A life to envy is one where that individual gets things handed to them on a silver platter. They got everything in life they asked for. Rich kids with rich parents oftentimes. A lot of people would love to have lived that person’s life. A life to respect is one where the individual goes through trials by fire and eventually came out on top. They’re riddled with scars. And while many people would want to be in that person’s shoes today, they wouldn’t want to have lived the life that individual lived.
As investors, we bias towards people who have gone through the latter or is capable of going through the latter.
Stay up to date with the weekly cup of cognitive adventures inside venture capital and startups, as well as cataloging the history of tomorrow through the bookmarks of yesterday!
The views expressed on this blogpost are for informational purposes only. None of the views expressed herein constitute legal, investment, business, or tax advice. Any allusions or references to funds or companies are for illustrative purposes only, and should not be relied upon as investment recommendations. Consult a professional investment advisor prior to making any investment decisions.
The title says it all. I’m four seasons in and I’m fortunate to have learned from some of the best and most thoughtful individuals in the LP industry. I often joke with friends that Superclusters allows me to ask dumb questions to smart people. But there’s quite a bit of truth there as well. I look back in Season 1, and I’m proud to see the evolution of my questions as well.
There was a piece back in 2022 where Johns Hopkins’ Jeff Hooke said that “75% of funds insist they are in the top quartile.” To my anecdotal knowledge, that seems to hold. I might say 75% of angel investors starting their first funds say they’re top quartile. And 90% of Fund IIs say their Fund Is are top quartile. So the big looming question as an LP is how do you know which are and which aren’t.
And if we were all being honest with each other, the first five years of returns and IRRs really aren’t indicative of the fund’s actual performance. In fact, Stepstone had a recent piece that illustrated fewer than 50% of top-quartile funds at Year 5 stay there by Year 10. 30% fall to second quartile. 13% slip to third. 9% fall from grace to the bottom quartile. But only 3.7% of bottom-quartile funds make it to the top quartile after its 10-year run (on a net TVPI basis).
I’ve enjoyed every single podcast episode I’ve recorded to date. And all the offline conversations that I’ve had because of the podcast itself. Nevertheless, it’s always fascinating when I learn something for the first time on the podcast while we’re recording. Excluding the longer lessons some of our guests have shared (I’m looking at you Evan, Charlotte, and much much more), below are the many Twitter-worthy (not calling it X) soundbites that have come up in the podcast so far.
“Entrepreneurship is like a gas. It’s hottest when it’s compressed.” — Chris Douvos
“I’m looking for well-rounded holes that are made up of jagged pieces that fit together nicely.” — Chris Douvos
“If you provide me exposure to the exact same pool of startups [as] another GP of mine, then unfortunately, you don’t have proprietary deal flow for me. You don’t enhance my network diversification.” — Jamie Rhode
“Sell when you can, not when you have to.” — Howard Lindzon
“When you think about investing in any fund, you’re really looking at three main components. It’s sourcing ability. Are you seeing the deals that fit within whatever business model you’re executing on? Do you have some acumen for picking? And then, the third is: what is your ability to win? Have you proven your ability to win, get into really interesting deals that might’ve been either oversubscribed or hard to get into? Were you able to do your pro rata into the next round because you added value? And we also look through the lens of: Does this person have some asymmetric edge on at least two of those three things?” — Samir Kaji
“85% of returns flow to 5% of the funds, and that those 5% of the funds are very sticky. So we call that the ‘Champions League Effect.’” — Jaap Vriesendorp
“The truth of the matter, when we look at the data, is that entry points matter much less than the exit points. Because venture is about outliers and outliers are created through IPOs, the exit window matters a lot. And to create a big enough exit window to let every vintage that we create in the fund of funds world to be a good vintage, we invest [in] pre-seed and seed funds – that invest in companies that need to go to the stock market maybe in 7-8 years. Then Series A and Series B equal ‘early stage.’ And everything later than that, we call ‘growth.’” — Jaap Vriesendorp
“[When] you’re generally looking at four to five hundred distinct companies, 10% of those companies generally drive most of the returns. You want to make sure that the company that drives the returns you are invested in with the manager where you size it appropriately relative to your overall fund of funds. So when we double click on our funds, the top 10 portfolio companies – not the funds, but portfolio companies, return sometimes multiples of our fund of funds.” — Aram Verdiyan
“If you’re overly concentrated, you better be damn good at your job ‘cause you just raised the bar too high.” — Beezer Clarkson
“[David Marquardt] said, ‘You know what? You’re a well-trained institutional investor. And your decision was precisely right and exactly wrong.’ And sometimes that happens. In this business, sometimes good decisions have bad outcomes and bad decisions have good outcomes.” — Chris Douvos
“Miller Motorcars doesn’t accept relative performance for least payments on your Lamborghini.” — Chris Douvos
“The biggest leverage on time you can get is identifying which questions are the need-to-haves versus nice-to-haves and knowing when enough work is enough.” — John Felix
“In venture, we don’t look at IRR at all because manipulating IRR is far too easy with the timing of capital calls, credit lines, and various other levers that can be pulled by the GP.” — Evan Finkel
“The average length of a VC fund is double that of a typical American marriage. So VC splits – divorce – is much more likely than getting hit by a bus.” — Raida Daouk
“Historically, if you look at the last 10 years of data, it would suggest that multiple [of the premium of a late stage valuation to seed stage valuation] should cover around 20-25 times. […] In 2021, that number hit 42 times. […] Last year, that number was around eight.” — Rick Zullo (circa 2024)
“The job and the role that goes most unseen by LPs and everybody outside of the firm is the role of the culture keeper.” — Ben Choi
“You can map out what your ideal process is, but it’s actually the depth of discussion that the internal team has with one another. […] You have to define what your vision for the firm is years out, in order to make sure that you’re setting those people up for success and that they have a runway and a growth path and that they feel empowered and they feel like they’re learning and they’re contributing as part of the brand. And so much of what happens there, it does tie back to culture […] There’s this amazing, amazing commercial that Michael Phelps did, […] and the tagline behind it was ‘It’s what you do in the dark that puts you in the light.’” — Lisa Cawley
“In venture, LPs are looking for GPs with loaded dice.” — Ben Choi
“If I hire someone, I don’t really want to hire right out of school. I want to hire someone with a little bit of professional experience. And I want someone who’s been yelled at. […] I don’t want to have to triple check work. I want to be able to build trust. Going and getting that professional experience somewhere, even if it’s at a startup or venture firm. Having someone have oversight on you and [push] you to do excellent work and [help] you understand why it matters… High quality output can help you gain so much trust.” — Jaclyn Freeman Hester
“LPs watch the movie, but don’t read the book.” — Ben Choi
“If it’s not documented, it’s not done.” — Lisa Cawley
“If somebody is so good that they can raise their own fund, that’s exactly who you want in your partnership. You want your partnership of equals that decide to get together, not just are so grateful to have a chance to be here, but they’re not that great.” — Ben Choi
“When you bring people in as partners, being generous around compensating them from funds they did not build can help create alignment because they’re not sitting there getting rich off of something that started five years ago and exits in ten years. So they’re kind of on an island because everybody else is in a different economic position and that can be very isolating.” — Jaclyn Freeman Hester
“Neutral references are worse than negative references.” — Kelli Fontaine
“Everybody uses year benchmarking, but that’s not the appropriate way to measure. We have one fund manager that takes five years to commit the capital to do initial investments versus a manager that does it all in a year. You’re gonna look very, very different. Ten years from now, 15 years from now, then you can start benchmarking against each other from that vintage.” — Kelli Fontaine
“We are not in the Monte Carlo simulation game at all; we’re basically an excel spreadsheet.” — Jeff Rinvelt
“A lot of those skills [to be a fund manager] are already baked in. The one that wasn’t baked in for a lot of these firms was the exit manager – the ones that help you sell. […] If you don’t have it, there should be somebody that it’s their job to look at exits. ” — Jeff Rinvelt
“Getting an LP is like pulling a weight with a string of thread. If you pull too hard, the string snaps. If you don’t pull hard enough, you don’t pull the weight at all. It’s this very careful balancing act of moving people along in a process.” — Dan Stolar
“Going to see accounts before budgets are set helps get your brand and your story in the mind of the budget setter. In the case of the US, budgets are set in January and July, depending on the fiscal year. In the case of Japan, budgets are set at the end of March, early April. To get into the budget for Tokyo, you gotta be working with the client in the fall to get them ready to do it for the next fiscal year. [For] Korea, the budgets are set in January, but they don’t really get executed on till the first of April. So there’s time in there where you can work on those things. The same thing is true with Europe. A lot of budgets are mid-year. So you develop some understanding of patterns. You need to give yourself, for better or worse if you’re raising money, two to three years of relationship-building with clients.” — David York
“Many pension plans, especially in America, put blinders on. ‘Don’t tell me what I’m paying my external managers. I really want to focus and make sure we’re not overpaying our internal people.’ And so then it becomes, you can’t ignore the external fees because the internal costs and external fees are related. If you pay great people internally, you can push back on the external fees. If you don’t pay great people internally, then you’re a price taker.” — Ashby Monk
“You need to realize that when the managers tell you that it’s only the net returns that matter. They’re really hoping you’ll just accept that as a logic that’s sound. What they’re hoping you don’t question them on is the difference between your gross return and your net return is an investment in their organization. And that is a capability that will compound in its value over time. And then they will wield that back against you and extract more fees from you, which is why the alternative investment industry in the world today is where most of the profits in the investment industry are captured and captured by GPs.” — Ashby Monk
“I often tell pensions you should pay people at the 49th percentile. So, just a bit less than average. So that the people going and working there also share the mission. They love the mission ‘cause that actually is, in my experience, the magic of the culture in these organizations that you don’t want to lose.” — Ashby Monk
“The thing about working with self-motivated people and driven people, on their worst day, they are pushing themselves very hard and your job is to reduce the stress in that conversation.” — Nakul Mandan
“I only put the regenerative part of a wealth pool into venture. […] That number – how much money you are putting into venture capital per year largely dictates which game you’re playing.” — Jay Rongjie Wang
“When investing in funds, you are investing in a blind pool of human potential.” — Adam Marchick
Stay up to date with the weekly cup of cognitive adventures inside venture capital and startups, as well as cataloging the history of tomorrow through the bookmarks of yesterday!
The views expressed on this blogpost are for informational purposes only. None of the views expressed herein constitute legal, investment, business, or tax advice. Any allusions or references to funds or companies are for illustrative purposes only, and should not be relied upon as investment recommendations. Consult a professional investment advisor prior to making any investment decisions.
Recently, I’ve had a lot of conversations with LPs and GPs on excellence. Can someone who has never seen and experienced excellence capable of recognizing it? The context here is that we’re seeing a lot of emerging managers come out of the woodwork. Many of which don’t come from the same classically celebrated institutions that the world is used to seeing. And even if they were, they were in a much later vintage. For instance, a Google employee who joined in 2024 is very different from a Google employee in 2003.
And there seem to be two schools of thought:
No. Only someone who is fortunate enough to be around excellent people in an excellent environment can recognize excellence in others. Because they know just how much one needs to do to get there. Excellence recognizes excellence. So there’s this defaulting to logos and brands that are known concentrations of excellence. Unicorns. Top institutions. Olympians. Delta Force. Green Beret. Three Michelin-starred restaurants.
Yes. But someone must constantly stretch their own definition of excellence and reset their standards each time they experience something more than their most excellent. The rose growing in concrete. The rate of iteration and growth matters for more. Or as Aram Verdiyan onceput it to me, “distance travelled.”
Quite possibly, a chicken and egg problem. Do excellent environments come first or people who are born excellent and subsequently create the environment around themselves?
It’s a question many investors try to answer. The lowest hanging fruit is the outsourcing of excellence recognition to know excellent institutions and known excellent investors. The ex-Sequoia spinout. Ex-KKR. Ex-Palantir. First engineer at Uber. Or hell, they’re backed by Benchmark. Or anchored by PRINCO.
It’s lazy thinking. The same is true for VC investors and LP investors. As emerging manager LPs (and pre-seed investors), we’re paid to do the work. Not paid to have others do the work for us. We’re paid to understand the first principles of excellent environments. To dig where no others are willing to dig.
To use an extreme example, a basketball court can make Kobe Bryant an A-player, but Thomas Keller look like a C-player. Similarly, a kitchen will make Thomas Keller an A-player, but Ariana Huffington a C-player. Environments matter.
When assessing environments and doing references, that’s something that you need to be aware of. What does the underlying environment need to have to make the person you’re diligencing an A-player? Is the game they have willingly chosen to play and knowledgeable enough to play have the optimal environment that will allow them to be an A-player? Is the institution they’re building themselves conducive to elicit the A out of the individual?
Ideally, is there evidence prior to the founding of their own firm that has allowed this player to shine? Why or why not?
Did they have a manager that pushed them to excel? Was there a culture that allowed them to shine? Were they given the trust and resources to thrive?
References
And so, that leads us to references. I want to preface with two comments first.
One, as an investor, you will NEVER get to 100% conviction on an investment. It’s one of the few superlatives I ever use. Yes, you will never. Unless you are the person themselves, you will never understand 100% about a person. And naturally, you will never get to 100% conviction because there will always be an asymmetry of information.
Two, so… your goal should not be to get to total symmetry of information, nor 100% conviction. Instead, your goal is to understand enough about an opportunity so that you can sufficiently de-risk the portfolio. What that means is that when you meet a fund manager (or a founder, for that matter) across 1-2 meetings, you write down all the risk factors you can think of about the investment. You can call it elephants in the room, or red or yellow flags. Tomato. Tomahto.
Then, rank them all. Yes, every single one. From most important to least important. Then, somewhere on that list — and yes, this is deeply subjective — you draw a line. A line that defines your comfort level with an investment. The minimum number of risks you can tolerate before making an investment decision. For some, say those investing in early stage venture or in Fund I or II managers, that minimum number will be pretty high. For others, those whose job is to stay rich, not get rich, that minimum tolerance will be quite low. And that’s okay.
There’s a great line my partner once told me. You like, because; you love, despite. In many ways, the art of investing in a risky asset class is understanding your tolerance. What are you willing to love, despite?
The purpose of diligence, thereinafter, is to de-risk as many of your outstanding questions till you are ready to pull the trigger.
In regards to references, before you go further in this blogpost, I would highly recommend Graham Duncan’s essay “What’s going on here, with this human?” My buddy, Sam, also a brilliant investor, was the person who first shared it with me. And I’m a firm believer that this essay should be in everyone’s reference starter pack. Whether you’re an LP diligencing GPs. Or a VC doing references on founders. Or a hiring manager looking to hire your next team member.
Okay, let’s get numbers out of the way. Depending on the volume of investments you have to make, the numbers will vary. The general consensus is that one or two is too little, especially if it’s a senior hire or a major investment. Kelli Fontaine’s40 reference calls may also be on the more extreme side of things. Anecdotally, it seems most investors I know make between five and ten reference calls. Again, not a hard nor fast rule.
That said, there is often no incentive for someone to tell a stranger bad things about someone who supported them for a long time. It’s why most LPs fail to get honest references because they haven’t established rapport and trust with a founder over time. Oftentimes, even in the moment. So, the general rule of thumb is that you need to keep making reference calls until you get a dissenting opinion. Sometimes, that’s the third call. Other times, is the 23rd call. If you’ve done all the reference calls, and you still haven’t heard from others why you shouldn’t invest, then you haven’t done enough (or done it right).
A self-proclaimed coffee snob once told me the best coffee shops are rated three out of five stars. “Barely any 2-4 stars. But a lot of 5-stars and a lot of 1-stars. The latter complaining about the baristas or owner being mean.” I’m not sure it’s the best analogy, but the way I think about references is I’m trying to get to the ultimate 3-star review. One that can highlight all the things that make that person great, but also understand the risks, the in’s and out’s, of working with said person.
For me, great references require trust and delivery.
Establishing trust and rapport. What you share with me will never find its way back to the person I am calling about.
Is the reference themselves legit? Is this person the best in the world at what they do?
How well does this reference know said person? Have they seen this person at both their highs and lows? At their best and at their worst.
The finer details, the possible risks, and how have they mitigated them in the past.
I will also note that off-list references are usually much more powerful than on-list references. Especially if they don’t know you’re doing diligence on the person you’re doing diligence on. But on-list references are useful to understand who the GP keeps around themselves. After all, you are the average of the people you hang out with most. As the one doing the reference checks, I try to get to a quick answer of whether I think the reference themselves is world-class or not.
While I don’t necessarily have a template or a default list of questions I ask every reference, I do have a few that I love revisiting to set the stage.
Also, the paradox of sharing the questions I ask is simply that I may never be able to use these questions again in the future. That said, references are defined by the follow-up questions. Rarely, if ever, on the initial question. There’s only so much you can glean from the pre-rehearsed version.
So, in good faith, here are a few:
Does the reference know them well?
If I told you this person was [X], how surprised would you be? Now there are two scenarios with what I say in [X]. The first is I pick a career that is the obvious “next step” if I were to only look at the resume. Oftentimes, if a person’s been an engineer their entire life, the next step would be being an engineering executive, rather than starting a fund. So, I often discount those who wouldn’t find it surprising. Those that say it is surprising, I ask why. The second scenario is where I pick a job that based on what I know about the GP in conversations is one I think best suits their skillset (that’s not running their own fund), and see how people react. The rationale as to why it’s surprising or not, again, is what’s interesting, not the initial “surprising/not surprising” answer itself.
If you were invited to this person’s wedding, which table do you think you’d be sitting at?
Have you ever met their spouse? How would you describe their spouse?
Understanding their strengths and weaknesses
Who’s the best person in the world at X? Pick a strength that you think the person you’re doing a reference on has. See what the reference says. Ask why the person they thought of first is the best person in the world at it. If the reference doesn’t mention the GP I’m diligencing, then I stop to consider why.
What are three adjectives you would use to describe your sibling? I’ve written about my rationale for this question before, so I won’t elaborate too much here. Simply, that when most people describe someone else, they describe the other person comparatively to themselves. If I say Sarah is smart, I believe Sarah is smarter than I am. Or… if I say Billy is curious, I believe Billy is more curious than I am.
If I said that this person joined a new company, knowing nothing about this new company, what would your first reaction be?
Congratulate this person on joining!
Do a quick Google or LinkedIn search about the company.
As an angel, consider investing in the company (again, knowing nothing else)
How would you rate this person with regards to X, out of 10? What would get this person to a 10? Out of curiosity, who’s a 10 in your mind?
If you were to hire someone under this person, what qualities would you look for?
If you were to reach out to this person, what do you typically reach out about?
I hate surprises. Is there something I should know now about this person so that I won’t be surprised later?
Stay up to date with the weekly cup of cognitive adventures inside venture capital and startups, as well as cataloging the history of tomorrow through the bookmarks of yesterday!
The views expressed on this blogpost are for informational purposes only. None of the views expressed herein constitute legal, investment, business, or tax advice. Any allusions or references to funds or companies are for illustrative purposes only, and should not be relied upon as investment recommendations. Consult a professional investment advisor prior to making any investment decisions.
Last week, I was chatting with Maya from Spice Capital. And in part of our conversation, she said that the advice she gives to folks looking to break into VC is that they should study late-stage founders, so that they know what excellence and quality looks like.
And I wholeheartedly agree. To get a bit more surgical, for anyone looking to break into VC, study founders who’ve gotten to at least a Series C round. And not only that, if you can, reach out to founders who’ve hit at least Series C, with 8- to 9-figure ARR from EACH set of vintage years. From the bull run of 2020-2021 to the growth periods of 2012-2019 to the GFC to the dot com boom and crash.
If you were to only take one vintage, you have a skewed view of what “great” looks like. But to sample across the eras allows you to pattern match with a greater and less-biased sample size. And instead of focusing on what changed in each era, focus on what hasn’t changed.
To the average person who’s looking to break into VC without a network, aka 99.9% of the world, myself and Maya included when we first did, cold emails and coffee chat asks will only get you so far. In fact, more often than not, you’ll either be ghosted or rejected. So, get creative.
If it helps, here are some ideas that may kindle the fire:
Start a podcast. I don’t care if you only have an audience of one. Start it. At some point it’ll grow. But giving people a platform to share their advice is better than having one isolated conversation. After all, that’s how Harry Stebbings started.
Or a newsletter or a blog. Vis a vis, Lenny Rachitsky or Packy McCormick. Hell, even a book, like Paige Doherty did. Although the last of which is a lot more work, but tends to be have more evergreen content.
Get into investment banking or tech/management consulting. This isn’t new. But if you get the chance to work with pre-IPO companies and take them public, there is immense value in seeing excellence in play.
Host events. While I personally like intimate dinners, there is also value from hosting large networking events, fireside chats, and panels. Like Maya, or Jonathan Chang, or David Ongchoco.
I reread PG’s blogpost on the cities and ambition recently thanks to a good friend of mine down in San Diego. And in it, there’s a specific phrase that caught my eye, “the quality of eavesdropping.” A phrase that has since worked its way into my own rotation. If I were to tie the above examples thematically together, it’s that the quality of eavesdropping is really high. At events, and in consulting, you’re around the buzz of talent. And the jazz of inspiration. When tuning into a podcast, one is often multitasking. Driving, exercising, walking, cooking, you name it. And one might say it is one of the best forms of passive learning out there.
Meriam Webster defines eavesdropping as the act of secretly listening to something private. George Loewenstein says one of the triggers to curiosity is access to information known to others. Private information, in other words, information with an element of exclusivity, fits just that. And as such, while doing the above is useful and helpful to you, it is just as helpful to everyone else. To a busy individual, that just might make her attendance worth it.
All that said, know that if you forever look to lagging indicators of success, you will always be one step behind. If not more. As long as you are tracking successful founders, their companies and their key talent (early employees or key executives), there will be others who will out-execute you. Their networks are larger. And stronger. Especially in that regard.
As someone young, or someone new to an industry, your best bet is to take market risk, not execution risk. Another perspective that both Maya and I share. Betting on new markets mean you are starting off at the same start line as everyone else is. If you can’t get home field advantage, play in a field no one’s played in before.
So after doing the above, and learning from the best, draw your conclusions. And graduate to a new market. But also, beware of the potholes pattern recognition creates.
If it may help, at least for me, it’s useful to remember that excellence is everywhere. And someone who is both ambitious and has a track record for fulfilling promises, is bound to go far. For the latter, it’s especially important to fulfill promises to oneself. The more impossible it is to that individual at that point in time, the better. Whether it was to be an Olympian, or asking their high school crush to prom. Or as Aram Verdiyan calls it “distance travelled.“
Stay up to date with the weekly cup of cognitive adventures inside venture capital and startups, as well as cataloging the history of tomorrow through the bookmarks of yesterday!
The views expressed on this blogpost are for informational purposes only. None of the views expressed herein constitute legal, investment, business, or tax advice. Any allusions or references to funds or companies are for illustrative purposes only, and should not be relied upon as investment recommendations. Consult a professional investment advisor prior to making any investment decisions.
Aram Verdiyan is a Partner at Accolade. Previously, he worked on the investment team at Andreessen Horowitz. Before that, Aram worked in BD, sales and marketing at Aviatrix, a cloud native enterprise software company. Aram worked at Accolade from 2012 to 2015 as a Senior Investment Associate and at Deloitte Consulting LLP. He holds an M.B.A from the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) and a B.S. from the George Washington University.
[00:00] Intro [02:36] How did Pejman Nozad influence the way Aram thinks about people [04:06] Aram’s ‘distance traveled’ [05:45] What did imposter syndrome look like in Aram’s life? [06:36] How Aram cold emailed his way into Accolade Partners [09:03] The first case study Aram did at Accolade [10:10] When track record is NOT just TVPI, DPI, or IRR [15:05] The case for concentrated fund of funds’ portfolio construction [22:42] Telltale signs of “great” deal flow [26:32] When does due diligence start for prospective funds for Accolade? [27:50] Primary sources of data for Accolade [29:00] The variables that impact fund of funds’ team size [30:24] How many fund investments should each individual FoF partner have? [35:13] The case for consistent check sizes [36:20] The common mistake GPs make when it comes to LP concentration limits [41:27] How Accolade started investing in blockchain funds [44:52] Blockchain engineering talent as a function of bear markets [47:15] Time horizons for blockchain funds [50:38] Luck vs skill [53:41] Aram’s early fundraising days at Accolade [57:38] Thank you to Alchemist Accelerator for sponsoring! [1:00:14] If you enjoyed the episode, drop us a like, comment or share!
“[When] you’re generally looking at four to five hundred distinct companies, 10% of those companies generally drive most of the returns. You want to make sure that the company that drives the returns you are invested in with the manager where you size it appropriately relative to your overall fund of funds. So when we double click on our funds, the top 10 portfolio companies – not the funds, but portfolio companies, return sometimes multiples of our fund of funds.” – Aram Verdiyan
“We don’t have varying levels of conviction.” – Aram Verdiyan
