Drew Taggart

perspective of where they came from before and the problem they're solving now.

And you're just like, I don't know if they're going to be successful, but this has all of the ingredients of a company we should be investing into.

And then there's the founders where you're like, I'm going out in the woods on my own a little bit here.

I don't think this idea is so radically weird that no one else is going to be interested in this, but there's going to be a lot more alchemy than science initially.

And those ones are kind of like the company I just brought up, Nuon, before, where I think is really exciting as an investor.

We're testing a hypothesis right now about where we think the future is going.

And this guy has the right pedigree.

We have some solid people around the cap table with us.

But the momentum to get this ball moving is going to be a lot harder than the other company, which is just, hey, if Sequoia invested, someone is going to do that A, even if it's just for no reason.

I think that's what...

You have to learn through experiences.

How do you see through all the noise and bullshit of hype versus reality versus certain periods?

And we've really seen a lot in the last six years, and it really changed my perspective on when you want to throw yourself into something.

and when something's not real in venture.

Because I think there's so many stages of, oh my God, we got our company marked up to series A. We must be really good.

There's so much further for this company before you see any liquidity or success.

It's interesting how you don't want to get caught up in that part of the puzzle where you're like, well, I'm creating, my IRR looks pretty solid right now.

And it's like, what's your DPI?

That's really the question you need to be asking yourselves.

And we're all chasing that game of who is our customer?