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Aaron Harris
@harris
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It turns out that a 10x product with a multibillion dollar valuation can still be garbage.
Which means there's another 10x turn available.
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Yield Curve * Generative AI = VC markets are back.
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I know startups are over and all - but currently talking to the founders of three wildly different companies setting daily, weekly, and monthly records...day after day.
Turns out you just need to find the right founders. They'll win regardless of the market.
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Not sure what's more confusing for founders, a VC fund where everyone is a "partner" or where everyone is an "investor"
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The riskiest bets in startups are those on category creation.
They're also the bets most worth making.
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I'm confused by the whole "AI is the new Web3" narrative, as if one interesting technology has to die for another to work out.
The foundational strength of startups is that progress is positive sum. When new products work, the possibilities keep growing.
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The biggest risk in VC isn't fraud, it's over-learning from past mistakes.
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I wrote about how VCs think about investment risk, which should inform how founders talk about it.
Quote Tweet
The biggest red flag for an early-stage startup may be the absence of red flags. What’s important is learning how to handle them, not hiding them, @harris writes in The Information Opinion.
theinformation.com/articles/red-f
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There must be a german word for: "The moment in life when a founder suddenly realizes that, for the first time, he is older than the VC making the decision."
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Quote Tweet
Excited to publicly share our newest round of funding. Grateful for the partnership of such incredible heavy-hitting climate investors and cannot wait for what is to come in 2023. We're hiring for many roles and need to grow our team to hit our carbon removal goals! twitter.com/living_carbon/…
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Bad things to put in a startup deck:
1. Annual metrics (vs. monthly, maybe quarterly)
2. "Our Customers Love Us"
3. Stock photography
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A good rule of thumb for investing:
Don't invest in things you don't understand.
Works for startups, options, life insurance products, interest rate swaps...etc.
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Biases of good founders:
Cleverness > IQ
Action > Analysis
Iteration > Perfection
Failure > Stasis
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A VC's job in 2023:
1. make content on twitter
2. make content on youtube
3. make content on linkedin
4. make content on reels? no tiktok! just make it!
5. comment on other content
6. refine content
7. invest
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Competitive moats are a whole lot less interesting than compounding advantages.
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In the next five years, seed companies that have 3+ years of runway will underperform seed companies with with less than 18 months.
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"Plays 4D chess" is shorthand for "radically overcomplicates simple things to disguise shortcomings"
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Looking forward to the breathless write ups on the company that announces the next exciting employee meeting policy:
all hands all the time
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New Year’s Resolution:
Don’t count your unicorns before they hatch.
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Predictions for fundraising in 2023:
1. Many startups will raise money and many will not.
2. VCs will chase some companies and ghost others.
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TIL that invested in 's Series A.
So now I understand why they're so cautious about releasing untested AI.
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Feeling bad for all the new VCs realizing that they're going to have to buy their own Arc'teryx gear to stay warm in this season of swag austerity.
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Do solo gps have their holiday parties sitting alone at omakase bars?
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Watching ChatGPT I'm reminded of the fact that viral products are nearly always a surprise.
That makes them hard to replicate, no matter how many pitch decks and growth experts might claim otherwise.
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There's plenty of bad news in the world.
But Germany building an LNG terminal in months instead of years is a demonstration of how fast humans can move, if given the right incentives and regulatory structure.
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Risk is a lot less fun when it's purely academic.
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I've found that the best founders only ask for advice when they're pretty sure of the answer.
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"If you don't have top metrics, why bother with VC money?" asks .
Good thing has those metrics.
That and more on #askingvcsformoney:
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In startups, it is ok to be wrong most of the time so long as:
1) You are not catastrophically wrong
2) The reward for being right is big enough
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Re: sharing your idea.
No big company is going to copy your idea when you build the 1st version.
Or when you get seed funded. Or at your A or your B.
They'll only copy you when you've demonstrated significant scale, at which point you can't hide.
So just share your idea.
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Generative AI might just save Venture Capital: blog.aaronkharris.com/generative-ai-
(originally published in The Information, more relevant now with ChatGPT last week and the Runway funding this week)
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