Either VCs can identify a very specific, unassailable issue of specific risk they don’t believe the return is there for, or they’re just being lazy.
You should never let a VC off easy by letting them lazily paint a whole industry as a terrible place to invest. For everyone who’s ever said that travel sucks, music sucks, or e-commerce sucks there’s an Airbnb, Spotify, or Shein that has bucked the trend—and isn’t that what VCs are looking for? Outliers?
It is completely natural to assume that the other person loses interest in the one thing you can’t control. You’d literally have to be the lowest ego, most self-aware person in the entire world to think, “You know, objectively, I’ll bet my growth isn’t really in the top 5% of companies that this partner at a highly visible firm is seeing. I’ll bet that’s why they’ve lost interest.”
I also think the language of VC is highly confusing.
Investors say things like, “We’d be interested in writing a $500k check.”
Weirdly, what they really mean is, “If we were interested, we’d be interested in writing a $500k check.”
Everyone starts their fundraising the same way:
1) Open a shared Google Sheet.
2) List all the VCs you've ever heard of.
3) Ask a bunch of people who they know.
4) Find out very quickly this isn't very effective.
Making sure that the next generation of investors is far more representative of the population at large than the current one is really important to me--but that won't happen unless we support the handful of folks that are already here, and do everything we can to make them successful.
I realized that if I really want to maintain a relationship with my audience on my terms, I was better off doing it on my own site that I pay for—one that no one could attempt to monetize besides me.
These days, you’ll find me and my writing right back at ThisisGoingtoBeBig.com—updated with a new look and a little more information about what I’m up to. You won’t need to re-subscribe. I’ll move everyone over from Substack for my next post.
The feedback from our Pre-Series A conference, our fourth in person and sixth overall, was fantastic on both sides—and while we learn new things each time we do it, I wanted to take a step back to talk about some of the event strategies and insights that underpin how we like to put these gatherings together.
Sometime in the next few weeks, I’ll complete my next investment. It will be the 105th deal out of Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, the firm I started back in September 2012, and it will be the last deal I’ll be making out of my third fund.
It will also be my last venture capital deal.
The venture asset class seems to have already decided that AI is the next great investment opportunity, but I’m not so sure it’s going to disrupt business and create the across-the-board wealth that has been predicted.
