Together with
Good morning 👋
Venture is one big game of finding signals through the noise, and everybody uses different proxies to find quality in a sea of average.
We back founders based on where they used to work, call seed companies “good deals” based on who is on the cap table, and label certain funds “smart” based on which LPs are backing them.
There is some value in these signals, but most of them are a form of lazy thinking.
Yoni Rechtman from Slow has some more thoughts …
P.S. 🎧 We’re giving away a pair of Airpods Pro 2 to one lucky reader …
Whoever refers the most new subscribers this quarter (ending June 30) will win a brand new pair of Airpods on us.
Today’s highlights
Negative signaling risk
Partner attribution shifting fund-over-fund
Sarah Tavel is leaving Benchmark
SPACs are back?
TOP
thoughts on “negative signaling” 👇
So much of venture decision-making comes down to signal risk.
A lot of signaling risk is made up (an example of this being what firms are backing a deal becoming a lower-quality signal than what partner is leading the deal), but Yoni does a good job giving some examples of real negative signals.
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TWEET
HEADLINES
Sarah Tavel, Benchmark’s first woman GP, transitions to venture partner (TechCrunch)
The VC industry is hoping to finally get more investment flexibility (Pitchbook)
The SPAC Is Back (Crunchbase)
Vinted launches corporate VC arm to back secondhand sellers (Pitchbook)
Figure AI sent cease-and-desist letters to secondary markets brokers (TechCrunch)
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RECS
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LINKS
🤨 When Every Employee Becomes an Agent Boss: What will the workplace look like when the leverage from AI is too hard to overstate and expectations for speed, depth of thought, creativity and effectiveness surges?
🫶🏼 Why AI is the New Social Media: Companionship is now the No. 1 use-case for generative AI, filling a void Facebook could not
🔦 A Few Short Stories: Morgan Housel tells a few short stories and the lessons gleaned from them
🏥 Paradox of U.S. Healthcare with Marc Andreessen: A few of the a16Z general partners explore what’s driving and stalling transformation in healthcare and some actionable insights for entrepreneurs navigating this complex space
🌱 How much is a seed?(!): Peter Walker of Carta, breaks down some data of seed evaluations and why we think it’s idiotic to auction your company at seed
Thanks for reading this far and giving us a little bit of your attention this week.
Feel free to unsubscribe whenever this stops becoming valuable to you.
- Clay
(Founder @ Confluence.VC | GP @ Outlaw)
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