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Good morning 👋
We asked about the future of investing in the USA in yesterday’s piece, and the results were unanimous. Greatest country on the planet about to go through a golden era of innovation and growth.
Today we’re taking a thought from Sam Lessin @ Slow and comparing the new model of venture as a regatta race.
Here’s what Sam thinks + our takeaways.
P.S. 💰 We have one more week taking in responses before we start creating our annual VC comp survey.
Today’s highlights
More emphasis on positioning out the gate
Sovereign wealth funds are engulfing AUM
AngelList lands a big partnership for fund managers
Outlier mental models used by the best investors in the world
TOP
If you ain’t first start slow, you’re last 🏁
Sam Lessin (GP @ Slow Ventures) is one of the smartest people I follow on Twitter, and he put this out earlier this week.
Here are the main takeaways:
The old VC model of traditional of raising a new letter round on a certain timeline is dead
The new model is raising on an as-needed basis with more flexible financing schedules
More emphasis is put on positioning out of the gate (product positioning, market positioning, cap table structuring, scalability, etc.)
The new model puts more pressure on initial traction (if you don’t get things right to begin, you’re in for more trouble down the road)
More multi-stage firms enter earlier, either directly or through the invention of scout funds
There are some things I agree with and some things I disagree with in here - what do you all think?
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LINKS
📶 Outlier frameworks: How tier-one investors think
💵 how much do VCs make? Last year’s breakdown of what you can expect to earn as a full-time investor
💔 The Dangerous Seduction of the Lifetime Value (LTV) Formula: Bill Gurley explains the trap
🪙 Minimum Viable Raise: Some thoughts on raising as little as possible
🚩 The red flags and magic numbers that investors look for in your startup’s metrics: Andrew Chen does not miss
? I Have A Few Questions: What Morgan Housel is asking himself
💰 Refer other VCs to Confluence, earn $100: Join our affiliate program to make money by telling other investor friends to join **
**For members of our private community
TWEET
HEADLINES
Sovereign wealth funds engulf AUM (Pitchbook)
Meet 8 SaaS startups that could see tariffs as an innovation opportunity (Pitchbook)
AngelList Partners with Bitwave to Streamline Digital Asset Management for Venture Funds (GlobalNewsWire)
Insight VC describes Databricks’ wild $10B deal and the bad advice the CEO ignored (TechCrunch)
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POLL
What do you think about the regatta analogy used by Sam in today's piece?
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
RESULTS
Here are the results from our poll question in yesterday’s piece:
Given these two choices, where are you betting most of your capital over the next four years?
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 The USA 🇺🇸 (7)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Somewhere else 🌏 (0)
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