Anish Acharya

The company can't be bigger than their ability for it to be big, okay?

The fourth one I think is a little bit of geographic risk, and maybe this is less true today, but like, is a Silicon Valley team gonna do this?

And the fifth is fundraising risk.

This is a non-consensus deal that actually has no other investor interest around it.

That is not to say that you need investor interest, but if the team has a difficult time fundraising, no matter how good they are at sort of product and technology, they're not gonna get the opportunity to sort of see their vision through.

So I think taking competitive risk, can I win, and pricing risk.

When you say, sorry, can I win, you're saying can I win as an investor winning the deal?

Yes, against the other VCs.

That is what we should do.

That is like the number one most important thing that we do, win the deals by building trust with the founders, being smart on the markets, being first to conviction, like all of these things.

And that's why I think the Series A being hard, it's supposed to be hard, and you should be winning anyway.

I mean, I think we've always had to assess how sort of authentic their connection is to the problem at hand, right?

Because as it is, doing these startups is a little bit irrational.

And Alex said this on the pod, and I think he's exactly right, which you have to be a little bit irrationally optimistic to do it.

I think you also have to be irrationally interested in the domain in which you're working, because these things get hot and cold all the time, you know?

And I think that that authenticity, which is not like a comment on intent, sometimes really well-intentioned people, I've been this person, have a reason that they're building their company other than authentic connection to the problem.

I just don't think that's a good setup.

That's a setup for promiscuity.

I think there has to be some sort of irrational direction in which they're pointed.

Maybe it's pure capitalism.