The venture industry evolves at high velocity, and more so now than ever before. It’s dangerous not to maintain some level of introspection. Our point of view is constantly changing as we collect data points and keep a steep learning curve. I’ll note just a few things that we’ve learned over the years.
Early on, I focused too much on securing competitive entry prices and even passed on opportunities we may have had conviction in because of price. This mindset works for certain fund strategies, but it’s hard to maintain that mindset when building a firm, growing a brand, and increasing fund sizes over decades. Not only is it dangerous in the sense that you can lose out on generational companies because of a strict valuation rule, but you’re also choosing a reputation that can deflect quality entrepreneurs.
You're balancing what you want to be known for, the deals you get into, and how that makes you look publicly. You’re balancing the FOMO risk, the echo chamber, and the excitement of investing in a company for LPs. There are many traps at play, and it’s easy to fall for them.
It’s a small industry, so it’s easy for a band of tourists, identity seekers, and self-gainers to impose their influence on founders, LPs, and investors.
The north star is always to make the most money for LPs, which can sometimes be misaligned with the choices to building the firm.
We avoid the trap of investing in a company because it looks sexy. Stay true to having conviction in founders, trusting your gut while also trusting the data.
There are opportunities where it makes sense to pay higher prices. If you have more conviction in something that costs three times as much, but you believe the outcome is greater or has a higher chance, then you should be investing in that company.
You'd be doing a disservice to your investors because you're stuck in a certain range or guardrails. LPs are entrusting the manager to make sound investment decisions, which should be judged over time, not at the instance of the investment.
Early on in your investing journey, everything sounds amazing. Every company looks great and is exciting.
Over time, you continue to change the bar for what's good and bad, not becoming cynical but becoming more realistic. I think we keep changing that and increasing the quality of the pipeline. Knowing that what gives us a job is how good our brand is, our sourcing, and the founders that we're bringing in.
As you continue to increase the quality and size of the pipeline, you have a higher chance of plucking a successful founder and achieving a big outcome.
A message to my younger self: Understand when someone is trying to sell you. Investing in hardcore salespeople can be very dangerous and risky. You have to exercise a lot of caution when investing in younger founders, because there's a lot more risk involved.
Resilience is the greatest driver of venture returns, but the thing that could kill companies is a lack of integrity in entrepreneurs.
We’ve really doubled down on understanding if we can trust somebody. What’s their integrity? Their character? How can we find the founders with the most resilience and integrity? That’s what we've spent more time thinking about recently.
We don’t fall for the trap of ‘this market isn't big enough.’ We have a more open-minded point of view: we're talking to a very good entrepreneur who has a great idea, who knows the market better than anyone, and who's got solid founder-market fit.
Yes, the first wedge isn't very big, but maybe do an exercise with the entrepreneur to understand how they unlock this to become a multi-billion-dollar company, rather than just saying no immediately when the TAM isn't billion-plus.
I used to believe that aggressive founders who moved fast and broke things would win, but there is more to it. Yes, this works to a degree, but this alone can mask some red flags. It’s about balancing thoughtfulness and speed. Leaning too hard on either side can kill companies.
A lot of salespeople are just go, go, go. They're not going layers deep, but the flip side is overthinking and striving for perfection when you need to get your product out in the wild. The tortoise doesn’t always win the race.
We’re doing our best to toe the line between writing a first check and getting it early, while also balancing the desire to see what founders can do without needing capital over the next few weeks.
We’re trying to meet somebody when they're still tinkering with an idea, so we can see the execution velocity they have, because that's one of the most important things in building a company.
We used to spend a lot of time in the pre-product and idea stage, but the times have changed. There is no excuse to wait to start building before asking investors to have conviction. The R&D time is nearly zero with prompt engineering.
We have fallen into the trap of getting overly excited about an opportunity because of its valuation, which usually does not pan out. There are certain biases you always have to set aside, stripping the opportunity down to what’s important– team, team, team.
Investors must stay true to going through the mental models of investing. We try hard to remove bias from investments: pedigree bias, industry bias, recency bias, and staying true. There are so many factors that make an entrepreneur successful, and if they're missing too many, we cannot do the deal. The trap is when one is really strong and clouds one's judgment for what is not.
We’ve learned to be ruthless around our mental models. We don’t make exceptions for certain things, like teams that don't have the technical talent or skill sets to execute quickly.
TL;DR
Don't let valuation guardrails make you miss generational companies — pay up when conviction is high
Early on, everything looks exciting. Over time, raise the bar and be realistic, not cynical
Integrity and resilience in founders matter more than sales ability or pedigree
Don't dismiss small TAMs — work with founders to map the path to a billion-dollar outcome
Speed matters, but balance it with thoughtfulness. Pure "move fast" energy can mask red flags
Prioritize founder-market fit and trust your gut, but strip out pedigree, recency, and industry bias
Watch for salespeople disguised as founders — conviction and character run deeper than pitch
The best signal is watching how fast someone executes before they have capital
Team, team, team — one standout trait doesn't compensate for critical gaps elsewhere
Your brand and pipeline quality are what generate returns. Invest in both relentlessly
How have your investing opinions changed?
