We are thesis driven to the core. We believe in what we believe in, for good or bad. And that is large networks of engaged users that have the power to disrupt big markets.
This seems like a trivial true-ism, and utterly useless as a strategic guide, yet he cites it as their core thesis.
I read the whole thing, and I'm still not sure he said anything concrete. There were lots of bits that seemed concrete [1], but on pausing and thinking about it for a moment, they all seemed to be of the variety "There's more blue than red, but don't forget there's some green there too."
ETA: I don't intend to crap on the linked article; I'm sincerely struggling with my intuition that there's very little light for all the heat in VC pronouncements. During my startup experience I continually heard sage bon mots like "it's a move-fast environment." Okay, how fast? Are there move-slow environments?
[1] Cletus' post above does a good job singling out statements that appear concrete but are either literally non-sensical, or just trivial a=a observations.
if you think of etsy, twitter, lending club, workmarket, pollenware, and kickstarter, you might struggle to understand why they all fit our investment thesis
it is because they are all networks that are large and growing and disrupt big markets (twitter - news, etsy - sale of artisinal goods, kickstarter - the studio model in entertainment, lending club - consumer lending, pollenware - working capital finance, workmarket - contingent labor)
I see how those examples fit the model of a community of engaged users that disrupts an existing business model built on a larger but much more passive community of users. What I have trouble seeing is the contrasting model where a startup is trying to build a user community that isn't highly engaged, or isn't trying to disrupt a big market. Would you mind giving an example or two of someone you rejected along those lines, or does your strategic guide cut differently than I'm expecting?
the vast majority of the opportunities we pass on are a community that isn't large enough or engaged enough. i don't want to name names because that would be uncool to those entrepreneurs and companies. there are examples of businesses we see that are trying to serve the existing status quo and those are also not that interesting to us
I'm not the author, but asking people to explain actions they did-not-take is kind of bizarre. "why did you not cross the unamed road and the unspecified time...yesterday" has a million infinite answers. The purpose of having a "thesis" is to not waste time over-thinking in exactly this manner. If that makes sense.
"Why didn't you fund that startup" is exactly the sort of question Mr. Wilson should be able to answer--and he did below, generally.
You're right that the thesis is a test. My question was because it wasn't clear that there was actually a way to fail the test, or at least I wasn't clear on what Mr. Wilson viewed as failing the test. I didn't ask why he didn't do something that hadn't occurred to him, I asked why we he didn't do something on which he makes a pretty deliberate decision.
As I mentioned, in my own experience I heard a lot of "it's a move-fast environment", and I realized that I had no idea what that meant. It's like saying "be tall"--meaningless without a baseline or a standard of comparison, and yet everyone kept throwing around the phrase like it was a concrete observation.
Remember that through essays like this VCs are competing with each other as much or more than they are describing a competitive landscape as concerns the companies they pay attention to.
This seems like a trivial true-ism, and utterly useless as a strategic guide, yet he cites it as their core thesis.
I read the whole thing, and I'm still not sure he said anything concrete. There were lots of bits that seemed concrete [1], but on pausing and thinking about it for a moment, they all seemed to be of the variety "There's more blue than red, but don't forget there's some green there too."
ETA: I don't intend to crap on the linked article; I'm sincerely struggling with my intuition that there's very little light for all the heat in VC pronouncements. During my startup experience I continually heard sage bon mots like "it's a move-fast environment." Okay, how fast? Are there move-slow environments?
[1] Cletus' post above does a good job singling out statements that appear concrete but are either literally non-sensical, or just trivial a=a observations.