Remove entrepreneurs Remove incumbents Remove opportunity
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Why Entrepreneurs & VCs Should Focus on Basecamp, Not the Summit

Both Sides of the Table

Equally, I encouraged entrepreneurs to spend time getting to know their future VCs early because getting a feel for your chemistry is far more important than how the VC is ranked in some survey. Equally, I encouraged entrepreneurs to thoroughly reference check their VCs – you’ll learn much more from this than anything else.

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How To End Your Pitch with Your Vision

Dream It

We have made the decision to invest in entrepreneurs without slides, whose ambition, passion, depth of understanding of an opportunity and compelling vision come through crystal-clear in conversation,” states Sarah Guo from Greylock Partners. As all investors know from the case of Uber, you cannot size a market based on an incumbent.

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Why I Backed a 24-Year-Old Trying to Assess Human Potential

Both Sides of the Table

I speak a lot on college campuses and entrepreneur events and amongst the most common things I’m asked to talk about are: What do VCs fund? Hard Problems I encourage entrepreneurs to try and tackle harder problems even if it makes fund raising more difficult and is less likely to succeed.

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How I Invest

Both Sides of the Table

I spend hours thinking about the products, competitors, market opportunities, recruiting and financing of these businesses. I love businesses that aim to massively reduce the costs of products or services in a way that makes a product or service vastly more accessibility and in which incumbents would have a hard time competing.

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Why We’re Looking to Fund Stuff With More Meaning

Both Sides of the Table

As is often said if you don’t get at least a few fellow VCs (and entrepreneurs) scratching their heads you may not be funding ideas with enough upside. They point out perceived market risks, they might question the management team’s experience, they might worry about regulatory risk or incumbent competitive powers.

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Why Hulu is the OPEC of Online Video

Both Sides of the Table

The founders felt that having a legitimate site for content would discourage Silicon Valley VC’s from funding entrepreneurs to create the next big TV killer. I have made many of my arguments in a blog post I wrote on The Innovator’s Dilemma , a concept that is critical for both innovators & incumbents to understand.

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Revolution co-founder talks Living Social, ZipCar, Steve Case & GroupOn Super Bowl Ads

Both Sides of the Table

We look at huge markets where there are large incumbents that might not be incented to innovate or react to what they perceive as an insurgent. When Steve left AOL he wanted to be very involved with the next generation of entrepreneurs. Revolution is essentially Steve Case’s original money from AOL.

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