Founders take on many different types of risk when creating a business. Subsequently, investors constantly put founders and their businesses under scrutiny using risk as a benchmark. In broad terms, in my experience, they largely fall under two categories: execution risk and market risk.
Some Background
Contrary to popular belief, VCs are some of the most risk-averse people that I know. As an investor, the two goals are to:
- Take calculated bets, via an investment thesis and diligence;
- And de-risk each investment as much as possible.
From private equity to growth equity to venture capital, more and more investors are writing ‘discovery checks.’ Typically, funds write checks that are 2-4% of their fund size. For example, $100M fund usually write $2-4M initial checks. Yet, more and more investors are writing increasingly smaller check sizes (0.1-0.5% fund size). In the $100M fund example, that’s $100-500K checks. This result is a function of FOMO (fear of missing out), as well as a proving grounds for founders before the fund’s partners put in their core dollar. Admittedly, this upstream effect does lead to:
- Less diligence before checks are written (closing within 48-72 hours on the extreme end, and inevitably, more buyer’s remorse);
- Less bandwidth allotted per portfolio startup (even less for startups given discovery checks);
- And, inflated rounds (and therefore, inflated startup valuations).
The Risks
The risks for a startup investor are fairly obvious, and so are the rewards. Effectively, an early-stage investor is betting millions of dollars on a stranger’s claim. But not all risks are the same.
In the eyes of a VC, an execution risk is categorically less risky than a market risk. Furthermore, even within the category of execution, a product risk is usually less risky than a team risk.
Execution Risk
Why are more and more early-stage investors defaulting to enterprise over consumer startups?
Two reasons.
- Enterprise startups often run on a SaaS (software-as-service) subscription business model. There will always be recurring revenue, assuming the product makes sense. For an investor, that’s foreseeable ROI.
- It’s an execution risk, not a market risk. Often times, an enterprise tech startup is the culmination of existing frustrations prevalent in the respective industry already. And therefore, have reasonably stable distribution channels and go-to-market strategies.
Eric Feng, formerly at Kleiner Perkins, now at Facebook, used Y Combinator’s data set at the end of last year to illustrate the consumer-to-enterprise shift.
Using discovery checks, and playing pre-core business, VCs can evaluate team risk. Between the discovery check and their usual ‘core checks’, VCs can also test their initial hypotheses on their founders.
As a startup grows, especially after realizing product-market fit, market risk becomes more of a product risk. Best illustrated by market share, product risk is when a product fails to meet the expectations of their (target) customers. It can be evaluated via a permutation of key metrics, like unit economics, NPS, retention and churn rate. There is an element of technological risk early on in the startup lifecycle for deep tech ventures, but admittedly, it’s not a vertical I have my finger on the pulse for and can share insight into.
Given that VCs are either ex-operators or have seen a breadth of startup life-cycles, VCs can best use their experience to mitigate a startup’s execution risk.
Market Risk
Market risk requires a prediction of human/market behavior. And unfortunately, the vast majority of investors can predict about the constant evolution of human behavior as well as a founder can. What does that mean? Founders and VCs are walking hand-in-hand to gain market experience. It, quite excitingly, is an innovator’s Rubrik’s cube to solve.
Market risk is frequently attributed to consumer tech products. In an increasing proliferation of consumer startups, consumers have become more expensive to acquire and harder to retain. Distribution channels change frequently and are determined by political, economic, technological, and social trends.
In Closing
Every VC specializes in tackling a certain kind of risk. But founders must quickly adapt, prioritize, and tackle all the above risks at some point in the founding journey. As Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, famously said:
“An entrepreneur is someone who will jump off a cliff and assemble an airplane on the way down.”
Happy hunting!
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