Neil Mehta

What they're explicitly telling you is they're saying, we are optimizing for coverage. There's too much happening. There's too many ways to make money. The world's a big place. We have five offices and all these great people, and we are a factory that's able to produce it. Now, I think that's actually the right end state for a vast majority of our industry.

What they're explicitly telling you is they're saying, we are optimizing for coverage. There's too much happening. There's too many ways to make money. The world's a big place. We have five offices and all these great people, and we are a factory that's able to produce it. Now, I think that's actually the right end state for a vast majority of our industry.

I think 90 something plus percent of our industry should work that way. I think for the 10 to 15 best founders each year, that's precisely the wrong way to work. What you should definitely not do is meet someone in that little matrix, have it elevated to a senior partner at the firm, or maybe most of these firms are not found to run anymore anyway, but have it elevated to someone at the firm.

I think 90 something plus percent of our industry should work that way. I think for the 10 to 15 best founders each year, that's precisely the wrong way to work. What you should definitely not do is meet someone in that little matrix, have it elevated to a senior partner at the firm, or maybe most of these firms are not found to run anymore anyway, but have it elevated to someone at the firm.

And then they chase it all down and bring some people in and try to win it. And you become one of... 35 or 40 investments they make that year. I think it reduces the purpose of venture capital, which is a little bit of validation, a little bit of actual company building and partnership, a little bit of speed and velocity.

And then they chase it all down and bring some people in and try to win it. And you become one of... 35 or 40 investments they make that year. I think it reduces the purpose of venture capital, which is a little bit of validation, a little bit of actual company building and partnership, a little bit of speed and velocity.

And so I think if you're one of the 10 to 15 best founders, people like us should be able to find you before anybody else finds you. You shouldn't have to explain what you do all that much. We can understand from the outside in better than most anybody else on the earth. And you should get all of Greenhouse, not a little bit of Greenhouse, all of us.

And so I think if you're one of the 10 to 15 best founders, people like us should be able to find you before anybody else finds you. You shouldn't have to explain what you do all that much. We can understand from the outside in better than most anybody else on the earth. And you should get all of Greenhouse, not a little bit of Greenhouse, all of us.

And because we know that there's not more than 10 to 15 people we want to really meet each year, we don't need to bifurcate our firm into multiple layers and have investment committees or any of that. We should be laser focused on the vital few and basically leave alone the trivial many.

And because we know that there's not more than 10 to 15 people we want to really meet each year, we don't need to bifurcate our firm into multiple layers and have investment committees or any of that. We should be laser focused on the vital few and basically leave alone the trivial many.

I think it's highly replicable. I think that one thing to know is we started when I was 27. We've got a long way. We have no beach houses. We like being in the office 80 hours a week. We like working with each other. We're extremely high performing. And we love understanding companies. There's nothing else. We're not on Twitter. We like basketball. We don't have to go to any games.

I think it's highly replicable. I think that one thing to know is we started when I was 27. We've got a long way. We have no beach houses. We like being in the office 80 hours a week. We like working with each other. We're extremely high performing. And we love understanding companies. There's nothing else. We're not on Twitter. We like basketball. We don't have to go to any games.

By just being ultra focused on this at the exclusion of anything else, surprising how much you can get done.

By just being ultra focused on this at the exclusion of anything else, surprising how much you can get done.

What a great question. Tons. It's funny. We learned the hard way on this too. Early on, we're building Green Oaks. It's like GCO1. We had heard some amazing things about Elon Musk at SpaceX, obviously. He was already Elon Musk at SpaceX and Elon Musk at Tesla. He was already the guy. But we had some mentors, some people in the venture capital industry.

What a great question. Tons. It's funny. We learned the hard way on this too. Early on, we're building Green Oaks. It's like GCO1. We had heard some amazing things about Elon Musk at SpaceX, obviously. He was already Elon Musk at SpaceX and Elon Musk at Tesla. He was already the guy. But we had some mentors, some people in the venture capital industry.

It's actually the biggest mistake we've ever made at Green Oaks. It's a mistake I'm about to tell you. which as we had heard, he fires people quickly. He's hyper-aggressive. He manages down to the F layer. He micromanages people like crazy. He disappears for large swaths of time, comes back in and changes everything. And we're like, wow, this guy sounds like he's doing too much.

It's actually the biggest mistake we've ever made at Green Oaks. It's a mistake I'm about to tell you. which as we had heard, he fires people quickly. He's hyper-aggressive. He manages down to the F layer. He micromanages people like crazy. He disappears for large swaths of time, comes back in and changes everything. And we're like, wow, this guy sounds like he's doing too much.

And we had mentors and friends of ours who were like, he's not packable. Oh, well, I guess we can't buy it. And we didn't do the primary work ourselves. We actually outsourced that work. This is one of our big learnings. And if you looked at the feedback we got, it read like it was much worse than it actually was. I'll never let that happen again.

And we had mentors and friends of ours who were like, he's not packable. Oh, well, I guess we can't buy it. And we didn't do the primary work ourselves. We actually outsourced that work. This is one of our big learnings. And if you looked at the feedback we got, it read like it was much worse than it actually was. I'll never let that happen again.