A smart venture investor (Jon Soberg) once told me that venture capital is just recruitment with a better business model. The story Justin Pryor weaves on a16z's logic for backing Instagram, Okta and Slack underline the wisdom of that perspective: in the early stage, it's all about the founders, so when an investor sees conviction and superpowers, the checks come out. And one more thing: it is often said that other founders are a superior source of dealflow, as they are on the field sharing a vision of the future and the builders creating it...that's a key piece of validation. https://lnkd.in/gZXC58vP
Gary Phelan
7mo
It is is like spotting an amazing salsa dancer on the dancefloor. You just have to take the risk of rejection to ask them out to dance all night on the dancefloor, and even queue up behind all the others surrounding them, for just one dance.
Leslie De Jesus
7mo
Words of wisdom. I still remember your lecture on FI about the super powers of co-founders. Thanks for sharing.
Hector Noel Cora
7mo
Excellent description!
Justin Pryor
7mo
Thanks for sharing, Marcos!
Senior Client Solutions Associate at Wordbrew
7moYou make a great point about founders as a superior source of dealflow. Perhaps in my post you read the quote from a16z's Martin Casado on how all of his deal flow and insights come from the founder network. He once said, “The founder network is just more intuitive and smarter and more prescient than any other network, and by that, if smart founders are going to do something, there's probably something interesting there. I don't care if VCs think it's interesting, I don't care if analysts think it's interesting, and I don't care if Twitter thinks it's interesting, I care if smart founders think it's interesting. I look to see where founders are going, and if there are a few really smart ones looking at an area, then I get very interested in the area.” I thought this was a really interesting insight from him and one all investors should model.