Should investors try to see every great deal, or is missing some acceptable if focus is maintained elsewhere?

Nico Wittenborn · May 22, 2023

The way to reduce investment misses is to decide better on a small number of companies rather than to increase deal volume.

His binding constraint is not time but the mind space required to make good decisions, so he consciously stays away from volume.

Scope: framed as his own approach, contrasted with Harry's high-volume platform

30:55 20VC: Why Your Fund Model Should Not Rely on $10BN+ Outcomes, Why the Large Funds Got Too Large, The Rise of Solo GP's; The Pros and Cons & Is Consumer Subscription Even a Good Sector to Invest in with Nico Wittenborn @ Adjacent

Harry Stebbings · May 29, 2023

An investor does not need to see every deal, only enough of the great ones; the belligerent insistence on seeing everything produces an unfocused scattergun approach

He is comfortable missing a deal if he is working on something great instead

6:04 20VC: Why Financial Models at Seed, $5M Seed Rounds & The Fear of Signalling Risk is all BS | Why Multi-Stage Firms Have Destroyed Seed & Who Wins and Who Loses in the Next 10 Years of Venture with Adam Besvinick, Founding Partner @ Looking Glass Capital

Michael Eisenberg · Feb 8, 2021

Venture is a low market share business — you will only ever get some of the winners, so the goal is to capture some rather than to avoid missing any

You can't own all the outcomes, so missed deals are simply part of the structure of the business

31:51 Venture is inherently a low market share business so the goal is capturing some winners not avoiding all misses

Adam Besvinick · May 29, 2023

It is better to see a great company and pass on it than to never see it at all

Being in the deal flow is what matters; having done the job for a decade he now understands the preference for seeing everything over the comfort of ignorance

5:11 Seeing every great deal beats selective ignorance