Conversation

SBF
@SBF_FTX
Replying to
@SBF_FTX
3) What it means, roughly, is VCs seeing themselves as helping and supporting the companies, not running them; and terms/etc. starting to reflect that.
1
36
SBF
@SBF_FTX
4) I'm not sure why it happened, but I have some guesses. What are the biggest US companies today? AAPL, MSFT, GOOG, FB, TSLA.
1
25
SBF
@SBF_FTX
5) I think VCs have looked at those companies and tried to back-out what went well for them. And one thing that they have in common is that for the most part the companies managed to drive their own success. With a ton of support from others! But ultimately the team mattered.
1
33
SBF
@SBF_FTX
6) (I re-watched The Social Network recently. There were a lot of issues with the movie--its highest duty was to a tell a juicy story, not to tell the truth! But I think it did reflect _some_ things well, and I think that the Zuckerberg/Parker/Thiel/VC dynamic is one of them.)
1
45
SBF
@SBF_FTX
7) I think it's tempting to have the takeaway "you should let companies run themselves", and I think that's probably not quite right. More what I'd say is: If a company is run really well, you should let it run itself. If not, then intervening makes more sense.
1
44
SBF
@SBF_FTX
9) Another thing I've noticed: it can be _really_ bad to hamstring a company, _unless_ you really know what you're doing. There are exceptions to this! Acquisitions can cut off some options, but they create a ton more.
1
19
SBF
@SBF_FTX
10) But it's often bad for a company to sell too much of its equity. Because at some point, it just doesn't have enough left for its employees. At some point the incentives don't work, and the team is working for a passive investor. And that makes motivation *really* hard.
1
54
SBF
@SBF_FTX
11) The final thing, I think, is maintaining a great relationship between the team and their investors. Without that, investments tend to be negative sum. The biggest piece of this: do you believe in each other?
2
25
SBF
@SBF_FTX
12) Does the team believe that the VC will fight for them? Does the VC believe that the team will do well? It's fine to have to do diligence on this! But once you _have_ gotten to that point, you have to have some trust, or there's no point in investing.
1
28
SBF
@SBF_FTX
Replying to
@SBF_FTX
14) And finally: A lot of the things up a lot are not things that I was a fan of. Many have done well anyway. Some of that is luck, but some isn't. And it's made me wonder why I thought about them wrong.
9
84