[pm90]

Only slightly related to your point, but I find almost the entire VC community not one that I would want to be working with very closely with. It’s just not the kind of people I find interesting. Not that they’re not skilled or provide value, but the whole fundraising dance seems to be tiring and honestly pointless. Harkens back to an equally pointless endeavor I’ve been through before: the struggle to get good grades in college. Artificial struggles created by humans for other humans. I guess some people like that but it has an element of “rat race” that I find deeply disturbing.

If I had a wish to materialize an ideal VC firm, it would be a place with both business types and highly skilled engineers who are on top of their skills and continue to build things.

[clairity]

> "If I had a wish to materialize an ideal VC firm, it would be a place with both business types and highly skilled engineers who are on top of their skills and continue to build things."

idealab is somewhat like this. they cycle in engineers to work on an itch for a limited time on salary, then go through an internal round of fundraising (pitch idealab itself for seed money), then seek external rounds if there is traction.

branch[0] is a company that successfully launched from idealab this way. they started as a shift-swapping chat app for hourly workers and have branched (haha) into payments now.

[0]: https://www.branchapp.com/

[akharris]

There are quite a few VC firms that model what you're talking about - for instance I think this describes what Garry's doing at Initialized.

But raising money is a choice that some founders will make because their businesses require it. If you don't need it, don't raise it. If you do need it, go into the process and decision with as much information as you can get.

[pm90]

I think I should have phrased my comment better. I’m not opposed to the idea of raising funds to grow a company, but the way that it’s usually done today. In particular: the people that the money needs to be raised from (VCs) seem to not be the kind of down to earth engineers that I love and respect, and the process itself involves a lot of marketing fluff that I find off putting.

I am willing to accept that, it may not be possible to have such a process. Perhaps to succeed in the “real world” you absolutely need to be fantastic at marketing and pitching.

I’m trying to describe what a process would look like that I personally would find enjoyable to work with, ignoring the reality of what might actually be required.

[bgroat]

This is kind of what I'm working on.

Basically a product studio with LPs

[jacquesm]

It's been done, I know of a couple of these. They start out well intentioned and end up being backseat drivers in every company they launch, usually with bad side effects.

[bgroat]

I think the big distinction is avoiding launching companies and instead launching products.

I'm increasingly convinced that very few products need to be companies, and the insistence that they do is why a lot of them end up so shitty.

[yowlingcat]

Having seen this model before, I think the challenge there is incentives, motivation and focus. If you have a winner, it's likely that through power law effects it makes sense to double down on it unless you have too much capital to deploy through that company.

With that said, I think running a product studio before you find product market fit or the killer company is not a bad idea, especially if you can work directly with LPs to source the funds. Then the challenge is just making sure people don't step on each other's toes when you staff the winner.

[bgroat]

It's still early days, and there are a lot of hypotheses that will be invalidated.

But one of my goals at the moment is to *not* double-down on winners. The thesis being, whatever is working, is clearly working.

I think a lot of products are killer, and should be left alone, and "doubling-down" or "iterating" might make them worse.

For example, Reddit v. HackerNews

[jacquesm]

> But one of my goals at the moment is to not double-down on winners. The thesis being, whatever is working, is clearly working.

Then you will likely end up so far diluted that you won't make enough on your winners to cover your losses. It's a tricky balance to find.