Do top investors actually make companies successful, or do they mainly pick winners?

Matteo Franceschetti · Nov 20, 2023

Investor brand genuinely adds value by improving a startup's ability to hire

Several exceptional hires joined because they reasoned the vision must be real if those investors backed it; some applied after seeing a tweet from Keith Rabois or knowing Khosla, Founders Fund and Valor had invested

Scope: not the sole factor in those hires

23:08 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep

Dan Siroker · May 15, 2024

A marquee venture brand helps but is not the difference maker for a company's trajectory; its most tangible benefit is recruiting

Great talent can work anywhere, and marquee investors who did their homework de-risk the founder and company in the eyes of that talent

Scope: helps at the margin rather than being decisive

51:00 20VC: Fundraising Wisdom that is Total BS; Dilution, Meeting Associates, Taking the Highest Price, Always Be Raising | Why Second Time Founders Are More Investable & Why Not To Hire People Out of College with Dan Siroker, CEO @ Limitless

Akshay Kothari · Sep 18, 2024 · hedged

Sequoia is probably the best brand in venture and a genuine needle-mover for a company

Their track record speaks for itself

32:37 20VC: Notion's Founder on "Founder Mode": When it Works & When it Doesn't | Why The Way Startups Fundraise & Construct Boards is Broken | Raising at a $10BN Valuation in Peak Bubble Times and How Notion Has More Money Than Ever Before with Akshay Kothari

Markus Villig · Nov 13, 2024

Sequoia's main contribution to Bolt was brand validation that unlocked hiring, not help with growth

The business model already worked and just needed replicating in more markets; what changed was that talented European candidates who had heard Bolt was doing well finally committed once top funds invested

Scope: especially in Europe

58:33 20VC: Bolt; The Most Insane Story in Startups | Turning a $5K Loan into an $8BN Company | Why Every VC Turned Down One of Europe's Biggest Winners | Competing with Uber & The Future of Micromobility and Self-Driving

Johannes Reck · Jun 23, 2025

A large US-led Series A in 2013 turned GetYourGuide from a nobody into a startup-scene superstar overnight and transformed who they could hire

The round quantum was very large for Europe and almost no US VCs were investing in Europe then, so the signal was outsized

Scope: only the 2019 SoftBank Vision Fund round had a comparable effect, at greater scale

30:45 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide

Jesse Zhang · Sep 19, 2025

A brand-name venture investor matters more than people give it credit for, especially for recruiting engineers

On average, strong engineers do care who backs the company

13:58 20VC: Why 90% of Founders Build Startups Wrong | Why AI Growth Rates are Sustainable & Remote Work is BS and the AI Talent War | Competing with Brett Taylor and Sierra: Who Wins the Customer Service War with Jesse Zhang, Decagon

Alex Bouaziz · Oct 22, 2025

Investor brand genuinely matters — to assemble the best team in the world you need the best investors in the world

Top investors help attract talent, attract more capital, and help navigate complex situations they have already lived through, bringing deep pattern matching

27:08 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't

Winston Weinberg · Jan 19, 2026

Recruiting is the one area where a prestigious investor brand genuinely helps, because humans judge each other badly and over-weight prestige signals like school and resume

Legal and tech are the two fields where prestige, school, grades and who you worked under matter most, so an investor brand makes candidates assume a higher chance of success

Scope: only 'might be' the one helpful area

17:50 20VC: How Model Performance is Plateauing | Two Key Rules for Effective Deal-Making | Company Building Lessons from Keith Rabois, Brian Halligan and Pat Grady | Why Enterprise AI Adoption is Years Off with Harvey CEO Winston Weinberg

Sebastian Siemiatkowski · Feb 16, 2026

Taking Sequoia's investment was as much about brand and engineering-talent credibility as about capital

Spotify and Daniel Ek had all the tech credibility in Stockholm while Klarna was seen as a boring invoicing company, so Sequoia's brand would give them the tech credibility they needed to attract engineers

Scope: about Klarna's situation at that time

41:53 20VC: SaaS is Dead: Why Systems of Record Will Die in an Agentic World | What Revenue Multiple Will Software Companies Trade At? | From 7,000 to 3,000: We Need Less People Than Ever with Sebastian Siemiatkowski

Harry Stebbings · Jun 20, 2026

Founders consistently underestimate how much VC brand drives great operators' decisions to join a company

Even sophisticated candidates use a Sequoia or Founders Fund logo as a signal that the company must be hot

35:11 20VC: Why Remote Work is White Collar Fraud | Why Revenge and Patriotism are the Best Founder Traits | Two Questions Every Founder Needs to Ask | The Wild Story of Raising $1BN from Masa Son in an Hour Long Meeting with Ryan Peterson, Founder @ Flexport

Arvind Jain · Jul 11, 2026

Employees do care who your investors are, because investor reputation directly transfers to the company's reputation

Investor reputation directly impacts your reputation

38:43 20VC: Why OpenAI and Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Teams Will Get Bigger Not Smaller in a World of AI | Why AI Removes Incumbents Advantage of Bundling | China vs America: Who Wins the AI War with Arvind Jain, Co-Founder @ Glean

Harry Stebbings · Jul 11, 2026

Great candidates are meaningfully more willing to engage with a startup that has top-tier investors, contrary to founders who claim the best people only care about the mission

Observed behaviour of candidates when a brand-name fund is on the cap table

38:45 20VC: Why OpenAI and Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Teams Will Get Bigger Not Smaller in a World of AI | Why AI Removes Incumbents Advantage of Bundling | China vs America: Who Wins the AI War with Arvind Jain, Co-Founder @ Glean

Gili Raanan · Mar 18, 2024

A founder who wants to build a large business should choose a company-builder investor rather than a pure picker.

In every successful company there is at least one board member who is the CEO's first call and is in the room for the important decisions.

Scope: applies at the seed stage; many excellent investors are terrific pickers but not company builders

6:28 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan

Hemant Taneja · Sep 22, 2025

A firm can manufacture additional power-law outliers by giving more founders tools and support, rather than merely trying to hold enough capital to buy into the outliers that naturally occur

The set of naturally occurring outlier founders is fixed, so expanding the proposition to founders is the only way to increase the number of iconic companies

7:23 20VC: General Catalyst CEO Hemant Taneja on The Future of Venture Capital: Chanel vs Walmart | Lessons Scaling GC to $40BN in AUM | Investing $5BN+ Into Stripe Over 14 Rounds | Investing Hundreds of Millions into Anthropic at $60BN Valuation

Zach Lloyd · Oct 17, 2025

The most valuable thing a VC provides is hands-on operational help like closing engineering candidates and advising on the customer base, not just capital or brand

Marc Benioff invests but doesn't sit down to help think through the customer base or close candidates, whereas Andrew and Dylan will

56:10 20VC: The Startup Adding $1M ARR Every Week | Competing Against OpenAI's Codex and Claude Code: Who Wins | Why Gemini is Failing and GPT-5 Is Winning | Do Margins Matter in a World of AI | The Ugly Truth About AI Coding with Zach Lloyd, Warp

Chad Peets · Jan 9, 2026

The right way to be involved as an investor is a private-equity-style, in-the-weeds approach — talking to CEOs and CROs daily and designing comp plans yourself

That level of involvement is where he adds value, even though it means many founders don't want him around

Scope: acknowledges most people don't want this

8:43 20Sales: Why the Best Sales People are F**** in the Head | Why Remote Work is BS | Why Europe is a Nightmare for Recruiting Sales Teams | How to Build a Sales Machine | What Everyone Gets Wrong Today in Sales with Chad Peets

Chad Peets · May 23, 2026

Mike Spicer is the ideal VC partner because he sees around corners and is uniquely both a stock picker and an operator

Mike sees things before anyone else, is an operator, and tells you the truth without holding back because he just wants to win

Scope: acknowledges there have been execution issues around his vision

75:41 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan

Chad Peets · May 23, 2026

The best VCs to partner with are the ones who get in the weeds and put in the hours

All three VCs he named share this trait: they do the work and they care

76:38 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan

Cristóbal Valenzuela · Aug 28, 2023

No single person added to a cap table will change your company — only you and your team will

You should trust your instincts and build a great team; individuals can be added for fun or proximity but won't be radically different to what you do

Scope: allows that a Disney-scale enterprise commitment would be a great business deal, but says you need many such customers, not one

33:45 20VC: Why AI Models are not a Moat, Where Does the Value in AI Accrue; Startups or Incumbents, What the World Has Got Wrong About AI, Why AI Needs a New Story and Who is the Right People to Tell it with Cris Valenzuela, Co-Founder & CEO @ Runway

David Tisch · Feb 5, 2024

Investors' claims that they were central to a company's success are content marketing; the actual hard work of building is done by founders and their first employees

Founders take an N-of-1 shot at an unrealistic outcome with blood, sweat and tears, while investors merely sit on podcasts claiming they 'knew it when they met it'

27:30 20VC: The Biggest Misconceptions & Hardest Truths About Seed Investing Today; Why The Best Founders Don't Need You, Why Uncapped SAFEs Are Good, Why Reserves Are Bad, Why Signalling is BS, Why Price Doesn't Matter with David Tisch & Terrence Rohan

David Tisch · Feb 5, 2024

A company's success depends on the founder and employees one to a hundred, not on outsiders; investors, advisors and coaches only amplify what is already being built internally

The internal team is what makes or breaks a company; outside help can improve leadership and culture but isn't the cause of success

Scope: coaching can help CEOs get better at scale; won't help pre-Series A; not dismissing the coaching industry entirely

75:13 20VC: The Biggest Misconceptions & Hardest Truths About Seed Investing Today; Why The Best Founders Don't Need You, Why Uncapped SAFEs Are Good, Why Reserves Are Bad, Why Signalling is BS, Why Price Doesn't Matter with David Tisch & Terrence Rohan

Bastian Lehmann · Apr 8, 2024 · hedged

Having a known, tier-one lead investor sets up a real signal, but outcomes come down to execution — often even great VCs and a lot of hype can't change a company's outcome

Signal shapes perception, not performance

Scope: having a known lead investor mattered a lot to them emotionally at the time

14:24 20VC: Postmates Founder Basti Lehmann on How the Uber Deal Went Down and How a $2.65BN Deal Turned into $5BN, Why Great VCs Add No Value and VC Value Add is BS Marketing & Why The Biggest Companies in History Will be Born Today and Replace Incumbents

Nick Chirls · Sep 6, 2024

VC value add is not real: no VC has ever been the difference between a company's success and failure

In his experience investors help only around the edges — Coinbase would have been just as successful without a16z and USV

Scope: allows that firms help 'around the edges'

40:26 20VC: Why VC is a Ponzi Scheme Today | Why Most VCs are Bankers | Why Big VCs Ruin Startups | Why Incentives in VC are Broken | Why American Dynamism is a Tool for VCs to Raise Money with Nick Chirls, Asylum Ventures

David Cahn · Oct 27, 2025

VC kingmaking is not real — capital and brand cannot make a company succeed; the company has to already be working

The hardest-learned lesson in venture is that you think your capital will change the business and it doesn't; success comes from the founder, the idea, and product market fit, and believing otherwise is how VCs make mistakes

Scope: acknowledges it may be a controversial view; brand and flywheel dynamics do shift probabilities, just less than people think on average

36:13 20VC: Sequoia's David Cahn on The Winners and Losers in AI | The $0-$100M Revenue Club: Is Triple, Triple, Double, Double Dead? | The Future of Defence: Who Wins and Who Loses | How to Analyse Margins and Growth Rates in a World of AI

Cristóbal Valenzuela · Aug 28, 2023

Investors don't make a big difference to a company's outcome — their role is to trust the founders, not to build the company

No one will care about your company more than you; success comes from grinding and the tenacity of waking up and doing it every day even when things are hard, so relying on one person as a magical solution is not how things actually work

Scope: concedes they may help with intros and other things

27:52 20VC: Why AI Models are not a Moat, Where Does the Value in AI Accrue; Startups or Incumbents, What the World Has Got Wrong About AI, Why AI Needs a New Story and Who is the Right People to Tell it with Cris Valenzuela, Co-Founder & CEO @ Runway

Harry Stebbings · May 8, 2024

The damage bad investors do to companies is overestimated — very few actually damage companies; they are annoying rather than destructive

Scope: concedes they are not great to have on the cap table

9:12 20VC: GV's Tom Hulme on Why Investing in Foundation Models is like Investing in "Power Stations", The Conventional Wisdom in VC that is BS & Lessons from a 24x Angel Track Record, 255x on Robinhood and Making Billions on Uber

Dan Siroker · May 15, 2024

Investors rarely get in the way; the bigger reality is that even world-class investors are too busy to engage, because you are just one of many companies to them

With 200-300 people on his investor update list, a good email gets maybe 20 responses

55:34 20VC: Fundraising Wisdom that is Total BS; Dilution, Meeting Associates, Taking the Highest Price, Always Be Raising | Why Second Time Founders Are More Investable & Why Not To Hire People Out of College with Dan Siroker, CEO @ Limitless

Guillaume Moubeche · Dec 13, 2024 · hedged

Outside investors can't spare a founder from a plateau — mistakes and learnings are your own and you have to live through them

Your mistakes only light your own path; you have to pick your battles, and they themselves believed the problem was product rather than persona until they saw otherwise

36:52 20Growth: How to Scale to $30M ARR Bootstrapped through Content and Brand | The Ultimate Equation to Success in Sales and Why Most Founders Suck at Sales | Why You Should Overpay People and What That Means with Guillaume Moubeche @ Lempire

Harry Stebbings · Aug 4, 2025

Early-stage managers do not actively manage their companies and should not — LPs and founders want passive investors

He works with many, and when they actively manage they make the wrong calls: pushing companies into enterprise too early, into more products, to scale faster and take more cash because they want markups

47:11 20VC: Inside Carnegie Mellon's $4BN Endowment | Why 90% of LPs Shouldn't Invest in VC | The $140BN Problem with Multi-Stage Funds | The Hidden Math Behind DPI, TVPI, and Illiquidity with Miles Dieffenbach

Josh Browder · May 18, 2026

Venture investors are at best people who watch it happen rather than make it happen, and sometimes they are people who wonder what happened

The main thing they can do is not go crazy on founders, which happens a lot; they can add value at strategic points

Scope: they can add value at strategic points

20:22 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder

Christian Lanng · Sep 27, 2023

You only learn whether an investor is good by whether they show up when things go badly, not when everything is going up

Everyone cheers during hypergrowth; the investors he still has relationships with are the ones who stayed when something blew up

34:39 20VC: "How Being a Founder Almost Killed Me"; We Have Lied to a Generation of Founders | The Hardest Truths About Being a Founder Revealed | Why AI Co-Pilot is BS, Seat Pricing is Over & User Interfaces are Stupid with Christian Lanng

Johannes Reck · Jun 23, 2025

The celebrity treatment that follows a mega-round is fickle and transactional — the same VCs and big-tech executives who court you disappear when the company is struggling

After the round everyone wanted meetings and called him the smartest person on the planet, but when the crisis hit none of them called

45:28 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide

Harry Stebbings · Sep 8, 2025

It is rare for a lead investor to get money back for everyone when a company fails, and doing so is the mark of an exceptional investor.

He experienced a failed investment where Brian Kim did exactly that, quickly and well.

36:50 20VC: ElevenLabs Hits $200M ARR: The Untold Story of Europe's Fastest Growing AI Startup | The Real Cost of AI from Talent to Data Centres | How US VCs are in a Different League to Europeans | The Future of Foundation Models with Mati Staniszewski

Alex Bouaziz · Oct 22, 2025

Venture investors do add real value, and Andreessen Horowitz has been top tier by far among Deel's investors

They helped find board members and place great people in the business, and stood by the company through crises when other investors didn't

Scope: based on his own experience with a16z and General Catalyst

24:41 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't

Matan Grinberg · Jun 13, 2026

The investor quality that actually matters is deep conviction when a company is not obviously hot, not enthusiasm during a hot round

When a company is hot every investor is your best friend and it's their job to make you feel special — they're skilled at it — so behavior during tough times is the only real signal

54:35 20VC: Who Wins the Model War: OpenAI, Anthropic or Open-Source | Token Maxing, AI Hangovers & The Coming ROI Reckoning | Labour Displacement Fears are BS & Overblown | From Physicist to Sequoia Founder with Matan Grinberg, Founder @ Factory

Harry Stebbings · Dec 11, 2023

Having big-name angels on the cap table is valuable, but very few founders actually extract the value they want or need from them

29:38 20VC: Why Founders Should Take as Many VC Meetings as Possible, Should Founders Meet Associates, How to Get Intros to the Best VCs, How To Extract the Most Value From Your Investors, Why Post IPO Operators Are the Best Angels with Sam Corcos @ Levels

Sam Corcos · Dec 11, 2023

The default founder behavior fails: don't assume investors can read your mind or share your context, and don't passively criticize them for low engagement when you've made no effort to engage them

They spend an hour a month thinking about your company while you spend all day every day on it; getting value requires proactive effort

29:52 20VC: Why Founders Should Take as Many VC Meetings as Possible, Should Founders Meet Associates, How to Get Intros to the Best VCs, How To Extract the Most Value From Your Investors, Why Post IPO Operators Are the Best Angels with Sam Corcos @ Levels

Sam Corcos · Dec 11, 2023

The single most important and most commonly failed prerequisite for getting value from investors is knowing what you need — answering 'I don't know' to 'how can I help' is already failure

You'd be surprised how often people can deliver if you maintain an explicit list of team and company needs

30:54 20VC: Why Founders Should Take as Many VC Meetings as Possible, Should Founders Meet Associates, How to Get Intros to the Best VCs, How To Extract the Most Value From Your Investors, Why Post IPO Operators Are the Best Angels with Sam Corcos @ Levels

Martin Mignot · Aug 11, 2025

The best founders don't need broad investor help; they selectively leverage the right people at the right time on very specific topics

Great founders are good at reaching out narrowly rather than treating an investor as a one-stop shop for everything

Scope: implicit critique of the 'full-service platform' model common in the market

13:17 20VC: Figma, Scale, Wiz: Inside Index's Decacorn Factory | Decision-Making, Investment Process, Biggest Lessons, Biggest Misses | Why Gross Margin is a Fallacy at Seed | Never Turn Down a Deal on Price with Martin Mignot, Partner @ Index Ventures

Anish Acharya · Feb 9, 2026

The best founders don't fail to need their VCs — they know how to maximally leverage them to extend success and increase momentum

Founders like Alex effectively hold their investors to a sales quota and pull in Marc, Ben, DG and the whole team for introductions; he could do it without them, but leveraging them compounds his momentum

Scope: concedes some founders may never need their investors

65:38 20VC: Is SaaS Dead in a World of AI | Do Margins Matter Anymore | Is Triple, Triple, Double, Double Dead Today? | Who Wins the Dev Market: Cursor or Claude Code | Why We Are Not in an AI Bubble with Anish Acharya @ a16z

Zach Lloyd · Oct 17, 2025

Sequoia's brand halo and network deliver real, tangible operational value that a random VC firm cannot provide

The brand helps in recruiting and customer conversations, and when Warp was being blocked by CrowdStrike, an intro from Andrew got him on the phone with CrowdStrike's president the same day

51:08 20VC: The Startup Adding $1M ARR Every Week | Competing Against OpenAI's Codex and Claude Code: Who Wins | Why Gemini is Failing and GPT-5 Is Winning | Do Margins Matter in a World of AI | The Ugly Truth About AI Coding with Zach Lloyd, Warp

Patrick Forquer · May 11, 2026

Bringing your VCs into deals is a genuine sales weapon in legal tech

Funds like ICONIQ, General Catalyst and Bessemer have huge legal networks and are big spenders on legal services themselves, so they can advocate effectively — and competitors do the same

33:46 20VC: Inside Legora: $100M ARR in 18 Months | Jude Law Generated $50M in Sales Pipeline: The Economics Broken Down | Competing Against Harvey, the 800 Pound Gorilla | Why Legora is Undervalued at $5.5BN with Patrick Forquer, CRO @ Legora

Harry Stebbings · May 11, 2026

Founders should use their cap table as a weapon

33:46 20VC: Inside Legora: $100M ARR in 18 Months | Jude Law Generated $50M in Sales Pipeline: The Economics Broken Down | Competing Against Harvey, the 800 Pound Gorilla | Why Legora is Undervalued at $5.5BN with Patrick Forquer, CRO @ Legora

Patrick Forquer · May 11, 2026

The investor syndicate around a customer opportunity exerts significant influence on deals, and he wishes he'd understood that sooner

The syndicate of influence around an opportunity matters, not just the opportunity itself

68:06 20VC: Inside Legora: $100M ARR in 18 Months | Jude Law Generated $50M in Sales Pipeline: The Economics Broken Down | Competing Against Harvey, the 800 Pound Gorilla | Why Legora is Undervalued at $5.5BN with Patrick Forquer, CRO @ Legora

Harry Stebbings · May 18, 2026

Kingmaking translates directly into customer acquisition, with top venture investors acting as a revenue generator by introducing portfolio companies to major customers

A big part of customer acquisition at companies like Harvey and Legora comes from their venture investors bringing in mega law firms

48:23 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder

Christian Lanng · Sep 27, 2023

Taking money from a big-name investor is only worth the premium if you actually secure that partner's ongoing attention, not just their brand

The brand behind you only accelerates you if the right people are pushing for you; otherwise you've paid for a name

Scope: applies to marquee firms/partners

32:14 20VC: "How Being a Founder Almost Killed Me"; We Have Lied to a Generation of Founders | The Hardest Truths About Being a Founder Revealed | Why AI Co-Pilot is BS, Seat Pricing is Over & User Interfaces are Stupid with Christian Lanng

Oren Zeev · Feb 2, 2026 · hedged

Having Sequoia on the cap table may make a real difference to a company, but it depends on the situation and the specific partner

They are a great firm and he rates the individual partners he has worked with

Scope: depends on situation and partner

53:32 20VC: 50% of Funds Will Go Out of Business | Why Growth Expectations Today are BS and Will Not Last | Why Oren Zeev Takes $0 Management Fees But 30% Carry | Why GPs Should Not Tell LPs Their Strategy

Anish Acharya · Feb 9, 2026

Founders should pick investors who actually do things, verify that by talking to other founders, and understand that a VC's real value is lending brand and credibility while you're small

The VC can't distort the market — all they can do is make introductions and lend their brand until yours is bigger; you still need the best product, technology and go-to-market to win the customer

Scope: brand-lending value decays as the company's own brand grows

66:21 20VC: Is SaaS Dead in a World of AI | Do Margins Matter Anymore | Is Triple, Triple, Double, Double Dead Today? | Who Wins the Dev Market: Cursor or Claude Code | Why We Are Not in an AI Bubble with Anish Acharya @ a16z

Matan Grinberg · Jun 13, 2026

Ivanka Trump provides real investor value beyond brand, including network access and unglamorous investor support work that many dedicated investors won't do

She is genuinely kind and intelligent, widely liked across tech, generous with her time, and does the dirty-work help other investors skip

58:11 20VC: Who Wins the Model War: OpenAI, Anthropic or Open-Source | Token Maxing, AI Hangovers & The Coming ROI Reckoning | Labour Displacement Fears are BS & Overblown | From Physicist to Sequoia Founder with Matan Grinberg, Founder @ Factory

Max Junestrand · Aug 15, 2025 · hedged

Benchmark's brand is powerfully validating — the fact that ~99% of their companies go on to raise a Series A/B is the only stat that matters

The graduation rate of Benchmark portfolio companies to the next round speaks for the brand's signalling power

Scope: citing a remembered statistic

32:14 20VC: 15 Term Sheets in 7 Days and Choosing Benchmark | Harvey vs Legora: Who Wins Legal and How to Play When You Have $600M Less Funding | Are AI Models Plateauing Today | Building a 9-9-6 Culture From Stockholm with Max Junestrand

Harry Stebbings · Aug 15, 2025

Benchmark is exceptional among venture firms, also holding the highest hit rate of producing $5B+ companies

Cole Rotman's analysis showed Benchmark with the highest hit rate of $5bn companies

32:30 20VC: 15 Term Sheets in 7 Days and Choosing Benchmark | Harvey vs Legora: Who Wins Legal and How to Play When You Have $600M Less Funding | Are AI Models Plateauing Today | Building a 9-9-6 Culture From Stockholm with Max Junestrand

Josh Browder · May 18, 2026

Once a top-three firm commits, investor interest becomes a stampede, revealing that most VCs are following signal rather than judgment

The same investors who were absent three weeks earlier all pile in immediately after the brand-name commit

41:05 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder

Josh Browder · May 18, 2026

Kingmaking by top venture brands is real because in a noisy world people outsource their judgment to established brands

Information overload pushes people to defer to brand signals

48:18 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder

Semil Shah · Nov 21, 2022 · hedged

There is a set of roughly 50–75 venture funds that, working with each other and with entrepreneurs, know how to guide a company to a large outcome or IPO

When big companies go public there are consistently three or four recognizable venture firms on the cap table, and that isn't an accident

Scope: acknowledges this could stop being true in the future

45:08 20VC: Semil Shah on The Biggest Mistakes VCs and LPs Made Over the Last 24 Months, Why LP Churn is Coming, Core Lessons on Scaling from $1M Haystack Fund I to Today and How To Find, Win and Manage LPs as an Emerging Manager

David Tisch · Feb 5, 2024

Only a handful of people inside a handful of firms move needles, and they move bigger needles later in a company's life; the seed-stage creation of a company must come from the founder

HubSpot's outcome came before that outside impact, and even in incubations it was the founder inside the incubation who made it work

76:33 20VC: The Biggest Misconceptions & Hardest Truths About Seed Investing Today; Why The Best Founders Don't Need You, Why Uncapped SAFEs Are Good, Why Reserves Are Bad, Why Signalling is BS, Why Price Doesn't Matter with David Tisch & Terrence Rohan

Josh Browder · May 18, 2026

Founders wrongly define the kingmaker tier too broadly, and which firms actually kingmake depends on the sector

Tier two firms think highly of themselves but aren't at the level of Founders Fund or Sequoia; a consumer company might be kingmade by Forerunner instead

47:05 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder

Zach Perret · Oct 16, 2024

Only a few VCs have added real value to Plaid, and the value came from deciding to invest at the right moment rather than from ongoing help

NEA stepped in when a round was falling apart, offering more money at a higher valuation, which meaningfully changed the company's trajectory

Scope: based on his own experience at Plaid

44:26 20VC: Why Founder Mode is Dangerous & Could Encourage Bad Behaviour | Why Fundraising is a Waste of Time & OKRs are BS | Why Angel Investing is Bad for Founders to Do and the VC Model is on it's Last Legs with Zach Perret @ Plaid

Miles Clements · Mar 9, 2026

The best founders don't need investor help; investors add value on the two or three big 'bumper' decisions a year, not the many small operating decisions

A founder's life is many little decisions and a few big ones — investors shouldn't micromanage pricing or design, but a sounding board is useful for partnerships, acquisitions and pivots

Scope: 'need our help' is an overstatement, not that help is worthless

49:12 20VC: Inside Accel's $4BN Growth Investing Machine | Cursor is Dead is Total BS: Here is Why | What Missing Rippling and ElevenLabs Taught Us | Are $2BN-$10BN IPOs Dead | Why Now is a Great Time to be Thoma Bravo with Miles Clements

Gokul Rajaram · Mar 16, 2026

The best founders don't need investor help and investor value add shrinks as a company grows, but one or two marginal interventions — a hiring choice or go-to-market thinking — can be the difference between a mediocre exit and a generational company

Investors add value only on the margins, and those margins are where mediocre and great outcomes diverge

Scope: value add declines with company scale; only one or two things, not everything

53:47 20VC: The 8 Moats of Enduring Software Companies: How to Analyse for Durability and Defensibility in a World of AI | Why Dropouts are "AI Maxing" the World & Remote Early-Stage Companies are Dying with Gokul Rajaram

David Tisch · Feb 5, 2024

An investor's job is to invest — to say yes, communicate decisions transparently and quickly, give founders money and get out of their way

Many people in the business simply waste founders' time; not wasting time and reducing friction is the core of the job

Scope: should act on founder requests when asked

60:39 20VC: The Biggest Misconceptions & Hardest Truths About Seed Investing Today; Why The Best Founders Don't Need You, Why Uncapped SAFEs Are Good, Why Reserves Are Bad, Why Signalling is BS, Why Price Doesn't Matter with David Tisch & Terrence Rohan

Harry Stebbings · Mar 18, 2024

The most important thing a founder can look for in a VC is a lazy VC, because VCs don't add value and the best founders build the company themselves.

VCs don't add value, so the best founders build for themselves and are better off with a hands-off investor.

6:11 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan

Mike Maples · Jan 6, 2025 · hedged

An investor can't do much to help a founder achieve product market fit; the main contribution is addition by subtraction — reminding them PMF is the only thing and helping eliminate distractions

The value he can add is keeping the founder focused on the bottleneck between them and strong product market fit

Scope: in his opinion; there are some things he can do

44:28 20VC: How To Do a 10x Seed Fund in 2025 | Three Frameworks to Evaluate Startups an Founders | Lessons from Losing Billions Missing Airbnb and Pinterest & Investing Lessons from Charlie Munger with Mike Maples @ Floodgate

Roger Ehrenberg · Feb 19, 2024 · hedged

VCs generally attribute more skill to themselves than they have, and a VC who isn't proactively and consciously humble about the limits of their influence is probably value-destructive to companies

Scope: 'probably'; partial agreement with the 90% figure rather than endorsement of it

66:04 20VC: Why VC Returns Will Get Worse, Why LP Incentive Structures are so Broken, What is the Answer to Liquidity with No M&A or IPOs, When to Sell vs Hold Your Winners & Turning $5M into $250M with The Trade Desk | Roger Ehrenberg, Eberg Capital

Tom Hulme · May 8, 2024

There are three types of investors — smart investors who know they're smart and add value, passive investors who stay passive and stay out of the way, and passive or dumb investors who think they're smart and interfere; only the third type should be avoided

The first two categories are both fine for a company; the damage comes from investors who interfere without insight

Scope: framework originally given to Tom by one of his own early investors, which he endorses and applies to himself

0:00 20VC: GV's Tom Hulme on Why Investing in Foundation Models is like Investing in "Power Stations", The Conventional Wisdom in VC that is BS & Lessons from a 24x Angel Track Record, 255x on Robinhood and Making Billions on Uber

Mamoon Hamid · Oct 21, 2024

VCs can destroy value through wrong advice, but with the right advice and help a VC can supercharge a company

Value destruction comes from bad advice, not from board involvement per se

50:08 20VC: Kleiner Perkins' Mamoon Hamid on Investing Lessons from Leading Rounds in Figma, Slack and Rippling | Lessons Building a Generational Defining Firm with Kleiner Perkins | AI: Where Value Accrues, Startups vs Incumbents & Scaling Laws

Eric Paley · Sep 20, 2023

Large venture firms mostly don't care about their non-breakout portfolio companies, and much of the capital deployed in recent years has been apathetic and disengaged

You often can't even get such investors to respond or sign off on documents needed to complete a sale, requiring other VCs to chase them; the operating logic is 'if it becomes important in my portfolio I care, if not I don't'

Scope: not true of every fund — some great funds exist; being in business with disengaged investors has some upsides

49:48 20VC Roundtable: Is the VC Model Broken? The Biggest Disconnect Ever Between TVPI & DPI, Why Market Size is Dangerous, Why "Go Fast" is Terrible Advice, The Dangers of Raising Large Rounds at High Prices & Why Next Year Will See the Biggest Hiring Spree i

David Tisch · Feb 5, 2024

Average VCs are not merely passive — they think they have answers and generate noise, such as forwarding articles to founders who are far deeper in the industry

A founder obsessed with a space for seven years gains nothing from an investor's forty-two minutes of reading

79:23 20VC: The Biggest Misconceptions & Hardest Truths About Seed Investing Today; Why The Best Founders Don't Need You, Why Uncapped SAFEs Are Good, Why Reserves Are Bad, Why Signalling is BS, Why Price Doesn't Matter with David Tisch & Terrence Rohan

Nick Chirls · Sep 6, 2024

Far fewer than 90% of VCs actually destroy value; the real problem is that most simply don't care about the company or the people

Across the VCs he works with there is no long list of people who are dangerous to companies, but plenty who treat a position as 1% of the fund and disengage

Scope: based on his own experience of the VCs in his community

44:03 20VC: Why VC is a Ponzi Scheme Today | Why Most VCs are Bankers | Why Big VCs Ruin Startups | Why Incentives in VC are Broken | Why American Dynamism is a Tool for VCs to Raise Money with Nick Chirls, Asylum Ventures

Winston Weinberg · Jan 19, 2026

VCs are poor judges of which specific executives to hire, because they only see board meetings and mistake people who present well for good operators

VCs get managed up and don't see inside the business, so board-meeting polish and impressive backgrounds build reputations that don't hold up; his own gut has been right a decent amount against their recommendations

Scope: he has also been wrong in some of those instances

16:06 20VC: How Model Performance is Plateauing | Two Key Rules for Effective Deal-Making | Company Building Lessons from Keith Rabois, Brian Halligan and Pat Grady | Why Enterprise AI Adoption is Years Off with Harvey CEO Winston Weinberg

Harry Stebbings · Jan 19, 2026

Investors are generally wrong about who they suggest founders hire, often bringing in people too senior for the company's stage

With hindsight his own recommendations turn out not to have been good ones

17:22 20VC: How Model Performance is Plateauing | Two Key Rules for Effective Deal-Making | Company Building Lessons from Keith Rabois, Brian Halligan and Pat Grady | Why Enterprise AI Adoption is Years Off with Harvey CEO Winston Weinberg

Harry Stebbings · Mar 9, 2026

VCs are good at identifying when a founder should hire someone but bad at identifying who to hire

The VC's contact is typically a big-company executive, e.g. the CRO of Atlassian, who is a poor fit for a much smaller or different business

51:04 20VC: Inside Accel's $4BN Growth Investing Machine | Cursor is Dead is Total BS: Here is Why | What Missing Rippling and ElevenLabs Taught Us | Are $2BN-$10BN IPOs Dead | Why Now is a Great Time to be Thoma Bravo with Miles Clements

Mo Koyfman · Aug 8, 2022

Early stage is a boutique, bespoke business where great investors add real value as strategic sounding boards, connectors and recruiters — even though entrepreneurs drive all the real value creation

Investors with years or decades of experience can help founders avoid pitfalls, open any door, close recruits and open business development doors — and they do it when the company matters to them

Scope: entrepreneurs still drive all real value creation

39:06 20VC: Investing Lessons from Fred Wilson and Why Small Funds Outperform Large Funds | Why the Secret to Winning in Venture is Splitting Deals |Learnings From the Biggest Hits and Biggest Losses | Why Anyone That Always Does Their Pro-Rata is Wrong with Mo

Delian Asparouhov · Jul 29, 2024

Contrary to most of his partners, the best founders do want engaged investors around the table, so post-investment involvement is a real part of the venture job

The best founders in his portfolio seek out people whose opinions they value and want them around the table, which is why he meets companies monthly and attends board meetings

Scope: acknowledges partners like Trae and Brian legitimately take a hands-off approach

46:57 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead

Victor Lazarte · Apr 14, 2025

Benchmark's real constraint is stage and fit — it makes the most difference early, with founders who actively want a sounding-board relationship

That's where a partner with deep context on the business adds value, and most early rounds are under $50M anyway

58:12 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling

Jude Gomila · Feb 11, 2020

One of the valuable things an investor can bring is the perspective of distance — stepping back from the founder's whole 'combination lock' of product-market fit and pointing out something obvious the founder is too close to see

Founders are deep in the numbers focusing on one dial at a time, while an investor can see the whole lock and point out that e.g. the business model is wrong or the culture is broken

Scope: sometimes it's a genius specific strategy, but often it's just stating something obvious

22:37 20VC: Lessons from 150 Angel Investments into the likes of Carta, Gusto, Airtable and Superhuman, Creating Algorithms and Models For Investing At Seed & Why Younger Investors Have An Advantage When It Comes To Finding Deals Early with Jude Gomila, Angel I

Kevin Ryan · Apr 10, 2024

A CEO is necessarily too close to the business, so an investor's distance and pattern recognition across many companies can surface things the CEO has not factored in

Board members who have worked with 20 CFOs or seen 20 sales plans have a slightly better comparative perspective

Scope: value is occasional, not constant

24:11 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp

Matteo Franceschetti · Nov 20, 2023

Having conviction investors behind you gives founders the confidence to make bold decisions like discontinuing all existing products and repositioning premium

With people like Khosla, Keith Rabois and Delian supporting the vision, you don't second-guess whether you're deluding yourself; most companies are scared to discontinue their products

22:01 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep

Shiv Rao · May 16, 2026

Investor kingmaking is real but works through psychology rather than brand — a top investor's bet makes a founder feel inevitable, which makes them more likely to become inevitable

It's a placebo effect: when people with incredible track records that you admire bet on you, that belief seeps into your psyche

57:21 20VC: Lessons from Jensen Huang on "Founder Mode" | How to Know if OpenAI or Anthropic Will Kill your Company | How USV Liking Music Made Them $1BN on an Investment | The Five Year Desert to Product Market Fit & a $5.3BN Valuation with Shiv Rao @ Abridge

Chris Sacca · Oct 11, 2021

Success in venture is cyclical — reputation for being helpful causes the best founders to seek you out, and Doug's denial of this was bullshit

Kevin Systrom pitched him for Instagram specifically because he wanted three angels and had seen Sacca's helpfulness and writing while a junior guy at Google — Sacca wasn't even looking at photos

57:06 20VC: Chris Sacca on Coming Out of Retirement To Unf**k The Planet with Lowercarbon, How Chris Evaluates His Relationship To Money Today, Why We Have Bred a Generation of Ass**** Kids, Do VCs Provide Any Real Value and The True Unfiltered Opinion on Faceb

Delian Asparouhov · Jul 29, 2024 · hedged

Differentiating on post-investment help to founders is worthwhile, and doing it well improves your performance in the other parts of the VC job

Making himself useful to Keith's existing portfolio meant founders like Max Rhodes of Faire would vouch for him, which helped him win deals such as Truework

Scope: a matter of investment strategy his firm agrees to disagree on

27:15 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead

Mati Staniszewski · Sep 8, 2025

Raising from top-tier funds like a16z and Sequoia meaningfully moves the needle by changing how clients and the market perceive and respect the company

After the a16z round it was clear people respected them differently, and Sequoia in the Series B doubled down on that perception with clients; investor-brand names like Nat Friedman matter more to investors and engineers than to clients

Scope: client perception driven mainly by a16z/Sequoia; Nat Friedman's brand resonates with investors and engineers rather than clients

61:19 20VC: ElevenLabs Hits $200M ARR: The Untold Story of Europe's Fastest Growing AI Startup | The Real Cost of AI from Talent to Data Centres | How US VCs are in a Different League to Europeans | The Future of Foundation Models with Mati Staniszewski

Josh Browder · May 18, 2026 · hedged

Investor brand drives customer acquisition even in consumer businesses, not just enterprise ones like law firms

DoNotPay consumers likely signed up because of the investors who backed the company

48:43 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder

Harry Stebbings · Feb 5, 2024

The brand of the very top funds improves their loss ratio because so many capital sources will keep funding their companies, and companies often just need cash to reach product-market fit

Firm brand attracts capital sources willing to fund, and cash buys time to find PMF and customers

Scope: applies to the very top funds

77:18 20VC: The Biggest Misconceptions & Hardest Truths About Seed Investing Today; Why The Best Founders Don't Need You, Why Uncapped SAFEs Are Good, Why Reserves Are Bad, Why Signalling is BS, Why Price Doesn't Matter with David Tisch & Terrence Rohan

George Sivulka · Jan 22, 2025

Peter Thiel's money is some of the best capital a startup can take, and getting his check was a game changer that made other investors pile in

Investors already in late discussions immediately moved to join once Thiel was in

20:08 20VC: Why All AI Companies Are Under-Valued | The Future of Foundation Models: Scaling Laws, Generalised vs Specialised, Commoditised? | From Unable to Afford Rent to Raising $130M From Index and Peter Thiel with George Sivulka @ Hebbia

David Tisch · Feb 5, 2024

Only a handful of individual VCs (roughly the top 5–25) can materially impact a company; the rest of the investment world is a commodity and probably a net negative, and founders wrongly treat whoever will lead the round as potentially good rather than neutral or bad

The magical ones mostly join boards at Series A or B; everyone else is just money

Scope: 'five to 25, whatever the number is'

73:20 20VC: The Biggest Misconceptions & Hardest Truths About Seed Investing Today; Why The Best Founders Don't Need You, Why Uncapped SAFEs Are Good, Why Reserves Are Bad, Why Signalling is BS, Why Price Doesn't Matter with David Tisch & Terrence Rohan

Harry Stebbings · May 8, 2024

Truly 'smart and adds value' investors are more like 3% of the market, not 25%

Having interviewed 2,700 investors, only a tiny fraction offer insight that genuinely changes how he thinks

Scope: defined narrowly as investors whose insight changes how he thinks

8:09 20VC: GV's Tom Hulme on Why Investing in Foundation Models is like Investing in "Power Stations", The Conventional Wisdom in VC that is BS & Lessons from a 24x Angel Track Record, 255x on Robinhood and Making Billions on Uber

David Tisch · Feb 5, 2024

The biggest misalignment is that most VCs simply aren't good, and taking money from a not-great VC with a board seat creates enormous misalignment because they get in the way rather than affect the outcome

The company either works or doesn't for reasons unrelated to that investor; if anything an interfering bad VC is the reason it won't work

78:52 20VC: The Biggest Misconceptions & Hardest Truths About Seed Investing Today; Why The Best Founders Don't Need You, Why Uncapped SAFEs Are Good, Why Reserves Are Bad, Why Signalling is BS, Why Price Doesn't Matter with David Tisch & Terrence Rohan

Delian Asparouhov · Jul 29, 2024

The claim that a large majority of VCs actively detract value from companies is accurate

Based on the co-investors and board rooms he has personally sat in

47:38 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead

Hussein Kanji · Jan 20, 2025

European startups need hands-on investor guidance on what to build and cannot simply be left alone with capital the way US multi-stage firms operate

Europe is where US venture was in the '80s and '90s — companies needed a strong partner on the board helping them build; the US industry has shifted to assuming the market takes care of that, but in Europe the market doesn't take care of itself

51:33 European founders need hands on investor guidance unlike us where market assumes self sufficiency

Anish Acharya · Feb 9, 2026

Kingmaking is not real — the right investor can be a catalyst but cannot take a product that would not otherwise win and anoint it the winner

You have to assume buyers, especially today, have perfect information; a16z can connect small companies to the Fortune 500/2000 but cannot force them to buy

64:47 Buyers have perfect information so no investor can anoint a winner

Harry Stebbings · Dec 15, 2025

King making is real: a financier can invest enough to anoint a category winner, which then produces moats and ultimately victory

33:38 Enough capital alone can anoint a category winner

David George · Dec 15, 2025

Capital as a weapon is a flawed strategy: it is very hard in enterprise because you physically have to hire people, and it mostly doesn't work in consumer either — and it is an adverse selection machine, since companies that opt into it are the ones lacking a real reason to win

Enterprise scaling requires hiring reps and marketers rather than deploying dollars; in consumer the subsidy money mostly gets funneled back to Google and Facebook rather than building durable advantage

33:57 Capital as a weapon fails and adversely selects

Phin Barnes · Oct 2, 2023

Value delivery erodes with every step away from one-to-one, high-context help from someone with deep domain expertise who has been in the trenches very recently

The half life of operating experience is now very short because things change so fast, so you need people doing the work day in and day out, and that depth can only be transmitted one-to-one

20:55 Value erodes without recent one to one domain expertise since operating knowledge has a short half life

Clem Delangue · May 12, 2023

About 95% of an investor's value is financial support — helping you raise the next round and handle financial matters — and many investors have forgotten this in favour of acting as operators or quasi-CEOs

Their job at each stage is to get you to the next round, and financial help is where their leverage actually is

37:00 Investor value is primarily financial support for future rounds not operational involvement

Jack Zhang · May 27, 2025

Michael Moritz played a very important role in Stripe's success by evangelising the Collisons in early Silicon Valley, and Airwallex never had an equivalent visionary champion investor

Moritz waved the flag for Stripe early, telling Silicon Valley that John and Patrick would be the next Sergey Brin or Larry Page and build a trillion-dollar company

79:19 Individual investor evangelism drives company recognition and success

Nick Chirls · Sep 6, 2024

Cases like Doug Leone talking Fred Luddy out of selling ServiceNow changed who captured the enterprise value, not whether that value got created

The enterprise value would have been created regardless; the decision was financially savvy about accruing more of it, not existential for the company

41:10 Investor intervention shifts who captures value not whether it is created

Chris Degnan · May 23, 2026

99% of VCs are not vocal enough with genuinely constructive advice, because they've never been operators and just regurgitate things heard in other board meetings

He cites a seed-stage board call where a VC asked when the company would do its first million-dollar deal, which added no value

39:51 Non operator vcs add little constructive value

Harry Stebbings · May 12, 2025

Venture platform value-add functions — BD teams, hiring teams — are essentially a justification for management fees

8:51 Platform value add teams mainly justify management fees

Brian Halligan · Jan 15, 2024

Sequoia's investment was one of the biggest needle-movers for HubSpot, not just capital

The brand was huge, they fixed the business and pricing model, and the Sunrise Tour tripled the company's network by introducing the leadership team across the Sequoia community

53:47 Brand plus business model fix plus network events together drove outsized non capital value

Harry Stebbings · Jul 22, 2024

What attracts great talent to a Sequoia-backed company is the Sequoia brand as a stamp of approval leveraged by compelling founders, not Sequoia's in-house talent teams

Great talent joins because a Sequoia investment signals a rocket ship; it's compelling founders who convert that signal into hires

13:37 Investor brand as stamp of approval leveraged by founders not platform talent teams attracts talent

Martin Casado · Dec 5, 2022

The investor's principal value is identifying spaces and selecting the leading company within them, since founders are smarter and lead the space, while the investor's edge is a broader view and team diligence

He does not believe he is smarter than any founder, but he can meet more people and has a team that can run diligence and call customers

43:44 Investor value is identifying promising spaces and selecting the leading company not being smarter than founders

Paul Erlanger · Jun 27, 2026

Multi-stage funds have more resources for founders than Benchmark does

At the Series A fomo had to do all PR in-house with no help, whereas Index brings resources and relevant history like their involvement in Robinhood

40:38 Multi stage platform resources beat lean partnerships

Jason Lemkin · Sep 20, 2023

A co-investor has almost no leverage to make a disengaged large fund show up, especially when the fund is pleasant rather than hostile

With a jerk there's a playbook, but persistent niceness deflects everything and there is a limit to how many emails and Zooms you can send

52:00 Co investors have no leverage to force a disengaged but pleasant large fund to engage

Peter Singlehurst · Mar 19, 2025

He was wrong to think value-add doesn't apply at the growth stage; growth-stage companies genuinely need help with stage-specific needs like going public, operating as a public company and building a great independent board

His old view was only true narrowly for operational matters companies should know themselves; the stage-specific problems are ones they have never faced and investors can be well positioned to help

62:24 Growth stage companies genuinely need investor help with stage specific needs like going public

Chris Dixon · Mar 27, 2024

Writing a check into an oversubscribed round is largely non-counterfactual, so investors seeking real impact need to do more than supply capital

He kept asking himself whether an investment would have happened anyway without him — someone else would have put the money in and he'd only given some advice

43:45 Investing in an oversubscribed round is non counterfactual so real impact requires more than capital

Akshay Kothari · Sep 18, 2024

Sequoia's distinctive value is that they demand excellence from their portfolio companies and supply the best questions and most nuanced feedback — valuable only if you want that pressure

Partners like Pat Grady have watched every generational SaaS company closely and can benchmark you against where a company like ServiceNow was years ago

32:51 Brand firm value comes from demanding excellence and expert benchmarking

Akshay Kothari · Sep 18, 2024

Investors' long-termism can be more valuable than their tactical input, because it forces management to recalibrate what it should actually be working on

Being pushed off quarterly gap-closing toward the 100M-user question reset Notion's priorities

33:52 Investor long termism adds more value than tactical advice

Akshay Kothari · Sep 18, 2024

The superpower of meeting investors early is that a good investor can see a bigger vision in your product than you do, which makes the idea itself far stronger

He saw Pulse as just another RSS reader while Emily Melton saw it as the next-generation browser for the iPad

39:33 Investors can see a bigger vision in the product than founders themselves

David Schneider · Sep 11, 2024

Capital itself is undifferentiated, so growth firms have to change how they service their investments to be world class

Thomas Laffont's view that the color of money won't change but the service model must, which drove Coatue to recruit operators rather than do traditional growth investing

54:28 Capital is undifferentiated so value add comes from service model not money

Mark Goldberg · Oct 25, 2024

At the early stage, building a trusted relationship that shows up in a founder's 'magic moments' is what makes an excellent investor, even for autonomous top founders — merely doing no harm makes you only a good investor

Value shows up not in placing employee 142 but in being the person a founder calls at 11pm on a Saturday about a co-founder problem, and those are the moments founders remember

9:33 Value shows up in magic moments of trust doing no harm only makes you good not excellent

Harry Stebbings · Oct 25, 2024

An established VC brand does not help a startup with hiring

It attracts the wrong type of people — those who love that a big brand is involved rather than the founder, team, and mission

23:45 Investor brand does not help hiring attracts wrong motivated candidates

Mark Goldberg · Oct 25, 2024

A big VC brand does not help with customers, but it does help with follow-on funding

When a firm like Sequoia does a deal, money follows — a feature of brand equity built over a long period

23:59 Vc brand doesnt help customers but drives follow on funding cascades

Tom Hulme · May 8, 2024 · hedged

Roughly 25% of investors are the 'smart and adds value' type, around 60% were passive money that flooded in during the low-rate era (peaking about 2020), and the remaining ~10% of dangerous interferers get cleared out over time; with less capital around, the share of investors with real strategies and fundamentals is now rising

Low cost of capital pulled in passive money; as capital tightens, fundamentals-driven franchises make up more of the market

7:31 Share of value adding investors rises as cheap passive capital recedes

Tom Hulme · May 8, 2024

When a founder and investor have worked together before, the relationship is purely additive because they already know each other's skills and avoid interference

Prior working relationship removes the friction that causes interference

9:05 Prior working relationship eliminates investor interference risk

Sam Corcos · Dec 11, 2023

Investor asks convert far better when they are highly specific, targeted at the right person and time-bounded — answerable in about a minute — because concrete requests exploit chunking bias

'Know any good designers?' converts near 0%, while 'connect me with the two best designers you've ever worked with' triggers immediate recall and action; too much noise gets filtered out

31:27 Specific time bounded targeted asks convert better due to chunking bias

Harry Stebbings · Dec 11, 2023

Sharing a hyperlinked sheet of target accounts and contacts where investors sign their name against intros creates a social-competition dynamic that both drives intros and makes investors want to bring the founder into more rounds

It makes it trivially easy for an investor to spot connections, and visible participation signals the founder's quality to other investors

33:30 Public sign up sheets for investor intros create social competition that drives engagement

Sam Corcos · Dec 11, 2023

Founders should set explicit engagement expectations with investors up front instead of taking money from anyone willing to give it, telling investors who won't engage that this isn't the right company for them

Not everyone is going to deliver value, and unstated expectations go unmet

34:04 Set explicit engagement expectations upfront and reject investors who wont commit

Sam Corcos · Dec 11, 2023

Levels' investors — mostly operators and angels, plus a16z as their only institutional capital — have been genuinely value additive, so the '90% of VCs detract value' framing doesn't match their experience

Operators and angels have been super value additive, and a16z's services model with a large operating-partner bench has been high leverage — their team extracted value from more than 110 a16z operating partners

35:04 Personal experience contradicts the 90 percent vcs detract value framing

Sam Corcos · Dec 11, 2023 · hedged

Some investors simply aren't good, which is the main reason certain investors add no value

43:22 Some investors are simply not good at the job

Auren Hoffman · Nov 3, 2023

Investor oversight matters little to fund returns because outcomes are power-law driven — the only thing that really matters is being in the 10x-plus companies

Oversight might move a bad outcome from 0.5x to 1x, which is marginal compared to the return from the big winners

42:50 Oversight barely affects returns since outcomes are power law driven only picking winners matters

Harry Stebbings · Feb 5, 2024

Having Sequoia on board was an absolute needle mover for HubSpot in terms of talent and customers they could access

76:22 Top firm board membership is a genuine needle mover for talent and customers

Mitchell Green · Mar 7, 2026

Kingmaking is weakening because there is now so much capital that multiple players can compete for the same deals

Abundant capital means no single syndicate can lock out competitors

54:36 Capital abundance erodes kingmaking power

Saam Motamedi · Jul 15, 2024

Investors can meaningfully help companies in the pre-product-market-fit stage; finding product market fit is not magic.

An investor can be a thought partner on customer segmentation and ICP definition, sit in customer meetings and give real feedback — he has seen it have real impact.

56:11 Investors can meaningfully help companies reach pmf through icp and customer feedback

Victor Lazarte · Apr 14, 2025

Investors can move the needle, but only by accumulating deep context over years — it is very hard to make a significant difference from the outside

Good founders already have access to lots of people, so the differentiated thing a board member offers is context: after seven years on the Brex board he has discussed every important hire, so when a problem arises he is called because he has far more context than anyone else

48:35 Value requires years of accumulated context not quick outside input

Victor Lazarte · Apr 14, 2025

If you write a small check as one of many investors, you make no difference no matter how smart you are

Participating without a board seat means you don't have the context needed to add value

50:07 Small non board checks cannot add value regardless of investor skill

Marcelo Claure · Jul 31, 2023

The biggest winners in venture over the next ten years will be investors who can positively alter the course of a company's business, not those with the best access to deals

43:51 Future winners are investors who add value not those with best deal access

Martin Mignot · Aug 11, 2025

Multi-product scale — ten products, LBO, credit — provides no help to an early-stage founder; what matters is a firm small enough to sustain personal, trusted relationships

Reasoning from the founder's needs first principles: founders need to be able to call ten people at the firm and get help on anything, and long partner and strategist tenure at Index builds trust and competency that is hard to replicate in much larger organizations where people move around a lot

10:18 Personal trusted relationships not platform breadth serve early stage founders

Harry Stebbings · May 11, 2026

Legora's approach to its investor base amounts to a geographic land grab — recruiting investors who can open specific markets

A GP friend at Airtree in Australia pinged him about Legora after joining the round

68:32 Recruit investors per geography to open local markets

Jesse Zhang · Sep 19, 2025

It is basically impossible for a VC platform to accelerate a company's path to product-market fit, even though VCs sell that they can; platform teams only become useful after the company is already accelerating

The PMF process can't be outsourced or sped up by an investor's platform

14:43 Platform teams cannot accelerate pre pmf only help after