How many ways can you make money?

We want a straight line to good with a call option on big

Classic venture companies have only one way to make money. It used to be two ways but now large scale M&A basically can’t/doesn’t happen. So once you (founders and early investors) get diluted to nothing, you need to build a public company or nothing at all. And you basically can’t know until they already have - it takes huge $$$ that might get stranded.

We’re not DONE with old venture but we can be realistic about its increasingly limited aperture. The 80/20 of our portfolio has flipped.

New venture companies have more ways to make money and in different amounts. And you can know if you’re money-good along the way because each card flip or milestone makes these companies not just valuable but viable.

When we back SMB platforms, vertically integrated service providers, or “sneaky big” marketplaces and software companies we do it expecting/enviisioning multiple options to be right and make money along the way to classic venture outcomes. We do it because these companies CAN be “just good businesses” on the belief that being a good business won’t preclude them from being great and huge if the right cards flip their way.

Put differently: we want a straight line to good with a call option on big

By being good businesses before they can be big business, new venture companies can raise money when there’s exciting investment opportunities in the business. Old venture companies raise money because they’ll go out of business if they don’t.

Nothing uncertain is worth doing if there’s no opportunity for a big important company at the end but it’s not viable to do without multiple ways to get paid along the road.