Should venture firms provide hands-on oversight and services to founders, or trust exceptional founders and stay largely hands-off?

Alex Lebrun · Jun 19, 2023

The best VCs are the ones who stay out of the way and deliver on-demand help when asked, rather than demanding calls and board meetings

With Andreessen Horowitz he had no board meetings and no check-in calls, but got real estate, events, and access to top people within a day whenever he asked, letting the company scale with only 13 employees

Scope: depends on founder and stage

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Harry Stebbings · Jul 22, 2024 · hedged

Beyond fraud prevention, investor governance is unnecessary because investing in a founder implies trusting them, and VCs should not act as overbearing parents

If you invest in someone you trust them

Scope: concedes the fraud-prevention case for oversight

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Kevin Hartz · Jul 22, 2024

The hands-on Sequoia model of oversight, recruiting and services beats the Founders Fund model of just giving exceptional founders money and getting out of the way

He has seen help, oversight and a star chamber of great talent cut out many mistakes that would otherwise have been made

12:47 Hands on oversight recruiting and services model beats hands off approach

Kevin Hartz · Jul 22, 2024

A strong lead director adds real value by matching founders to help in areas like go-to-market, growth hacking, engineering and reliability

It shortcuts the mistakes founders would otherwise make a few times before getting it right

13:58 Strong lead director matching founders to specific help shortcuts founder mistakes

Adam Fisher · Jan 22, 2024

Investors are lighthouses, not co-captains: their role is to show founders where the rocks are, not to direct the route, because they don't know how to get there

Navigating to the destination is the entrepreneur's job

33:05 Investors should warn of dangers lighthouse not navigate the route