How First Round Capital missed out on Twitter's first round.
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How First Round Capital missed out on Twitter's first round.
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Re: How First Round Capital missed out on Twitter's first round.
#2The key to any early stage investing is betting on the team involved. I agree valuation really matters, but getting in with a great team is more important than the perfect valuation.
Re: How First Round Capital missed out on Twitter's first round.
#3The key to any early stage investing is betting on the team involved. I agree valuation really matters, but getting in with a great team is more important than the perfect valuation.
As a counterpoint: http://pmarca-archive.posterous.com/the-pmarca-guide-to-star...
TL;DR Market is more important than team.
Of course, trying to estimate the market of something totally new (or sorta new) like Twitter is hard. What market does it enter/disrupt? Social networking? Blogging?
Edit: Example is Odeo. Just about the same team as Twitter... Crappy market as it turns out.
Re: How First Round Capital missed out on Twitter's first round.
#4The key to any early stage investing is betting on the team involved. I agree valuation really matters, but getting in with a great team is more important than the perfect valuation.
I'm not an expert yet, but I believe what really matters is a great market first, then a decent team second. From an investor point of view, you can always fix the team with money, you can't fix the market.
Re: How First Round Capital missed out on Twitter's first round.
#5It's nice (and rare) to see VCs being humble.
Re: How First Round Capital missed out on Twitter's first round.
#6The key to any early stage investing is betting on the team involved. I agree valuation really matters, but getting in with a great team is more important than the perfect valuation.
As a counterpoint: http://pmarca-archive.posterous.com/the-pmarca-guide-to-star... TL;DR Market is more important than team. Of course, trying to estimate the market of something totally new (or sorta new) like Twitter is hard. What market does it enter/disrupt? Social networking? Blogging? Edit: Example is Odeo. Just about the same team as Twitter... Crappy market as it turns out.
You can imagine Twitter in the early days saying along the lines of "Twitter relies on SMS almost more so than the Internet, and there are over 3 Billion SMS users in the world."
Re: How First Round Capital missed out on Twitter's first round.
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a counterpoint: http://pmarca-archive.posterous.com/the-pmarca-guide-to-star... TL;DR Market is more important than team. Of course, trying to estimate the market of something totally new (or sorta new) like Twitter is hard. What market does it enter/disrupt? Social networking? Blogging? Edit: Example is Odeo. Just about the same team as Twitter... Crappy market as it turns out.
You can imagine Twitter in the early days saying along the lines of "Twitter relies on SMS almost more so than the Internet, and there are over 3 Billion SMS users in the world."
Yaw-- defining what a market is is kind of tricky. Was Twitter in the SMS business? My rule of thumb is asking "What business/service/behavior do they displace? Whose revenue will suffer if they succeed?"
Re: How First Round Capital missed out on Twitter's first round.
#8The key to any early stage investing is betting on the team involved. I agree valuation really matters, but getting in with a great team is more important than the perfect valuation.
As a counterpoint: http://pmarca-archive.posterous.com/the-pmarca-guide-to-star... TL;DR Market is more important than team. Of course, trying to estimate the market of something totally new (or sorta new) like Twitter is hard. What market does it enter/disrupt? Social networking? Blogging? Edit: Example is Odeo. Just about the same team as Twitter... Crappy market as it turns out.
I tackled that exact question in a post about my experience on the Odeo team at the start of Twitter. My conclusion was that the phrasing was wrong. What matters most for a product? Market. What matters most for a company? Team.
Odeo the product failed because there was no market for it. Odeo the company produced a great win with Twitter because it had the right team to do something like that.
A little more depth here, Real Lessons from Twitter (section #2): http://www.stubbleblog.com/index.php/2009/06/the-real-lesson...
Re: How First Round Capital missed out on Twitter's first round.
#9It's nice (and rare) to see VCs being humble.
Actually, there may be something of a trend towards transparency forming.
http://paulgraham.com/airbnb.html --- http://www.bvp.com/Portfolio/AntiPortfolio.aspx