[scottlocklin]

The two things you cite are great examples of pieces of advice oriented to VCs rather than founders, and you should congratulate yourself for recognizing this.

They want two cofounders to test for sociability like they say, but also because it lowers their risk (if one develops problems or is a loser, the other can step up), and actually increases their leverage over the founders. I mean, one founder can always be some stubborn type who says "no." It's easier to get to "yes" when you have two people making choices -this is basically an algorithm. The sociability thing is reasonable and a good test in many ways, but I know about as many solo founders who made it as I know founder-teams, so the advice is obviously wrong for some. Distribution is about what you see in big firms: plenty of Zucks and Bezoses out there to balance out the famous dyads.

The "go for unicorn" thing should be familiar to you as a trend follower. I believe the old Turtle systems would have a majority of initiated trades as expected to lose money (aka start up failures -most of them fail!). You make up for the losing trades by doubling up and riding the winners. It's also vastly lower risk to do it this way than try to get a lot of medium sized deals/trades: the longer the trend rolls, the more you are certain the trend is real. The only way to make money on lots of little/medium moves is stat arb; a trading strategy where you can hedge, and VCs can't hedge.

The founder's utility function is vastly different from that of a VC. VCs optimize their utility; not yours. You're just one of many dice they roll.

If you want founder advice, get it from non-VC founders who succeeded at something, or people who have tried to do what you're doing. Otherwise: you are the product.

[woolvalley]

I think Calacanis said it best: https://calacanis.com/2019/02/11/what-is-a-startup-vs-a-life...

VCs are optimizing for the unicorn, and there is nothing wrong going for the non unicorn either. It's just you shouldn't go for VC financing. If you make a business that hires 50 people and throws off $10 million a year to you, you'll probably make more than most founders ever will anyway after 3 years of that business.

[scottlocklin]

I have a pal who made a Unicorn. He got a nice condo out of it! His next one was a non-unicorn and he made vastly more when he sold it, as he had most of the equity.

[nyrulez]

That's pretty astute. I would say VCs do hedge their risk by allocating in many options, sometimes by investing in multiple startups in the same domain or even different/opposite approaches to the same goal. But that could be classified as diversifying their risk too.

Personally I don't mind the idea of going lean in the beginning, which I think applies fairly well to early founders. The current Silicon Valley notion of throwing money at it to generate enough revenue + growth, without potentially having profit for a long time is a bit uncomfortable to me. I have a hard time distinguishing between businesses that are re-investing their income for growth and no profits (like Amazon) vs. those subsidizing their growth from VC money and having little chance of being self-sustainable in the long run (e.g. I don't know where Uber will land).

Ideally, I would like to do a venture where profits do come in even at smaller unit sizes and you can test that before you decide to go big. I am not sure if there is a term for that or if anyone thinks like that.

PS: like your blog and background.

[scottlocklin]

The "hedging" point is, VCs can't hedge away the risk of making 100 little bets which are only expected to make a mean profit of $10m each (private equity might). They need the triple bagger $1b unicorns to make up for all the firms who don't make it, or their business model falls apart. Just like with trend following. The game has negative expectations; it's only the bet sizing which makes it profitable.

I'll say it a different way: VCs don't give a shit about the company _ever_ making a profit. They give a shit about ther VC making a profit. It's not the same thing at all! VC makes a profit if they invest at good valuations and sell at much higher valuations when the company goes public. The company doesn't have to be profitable! For all they care it will never be profitable! Pets dot com made some VCs a bunch of money!

(thx for kind words -good luck with your startup!)