Am I a Bad VC for Wanting Our Portfolio Companies To Make More Money for Public Investors Than They Did For Us?
Hoping for a Legacy of Enduring Corporations, Not Penny Stocks or Goodwill Write-Downs
Get me a cremation urn decked out in company logos like a NASCAR driver (notice to the executor of my will, there’s gonna be a lot of weird requests). While my life is greater than just my career, I do believe in working on projects that you’d put on your tombstone. And since the Homebrew logo is already tattooed on my shoulder, extending the portfolio to my posthumous memorials isn’t that far of stretch. But the motivation here isn’t an IRR victory lap, more a goal that the companies we were associated with were enduring, even beyond my own life.
As venture capitalists, we toggle too often between claiming credit or distancing ourselves from a startup based on the circumstances. Winning companies produce stories of key introductions, strategy discussions and other ‘value add.’ Failures yield ‘I’m just a small investor’ or ‘you know there’s only so much you can do in that situation’ even when our tenure involved Board service or systemic ethical lapses. I’m throwing stones from inside, not outside, the glass house as I’m surely guilty of this as well (although we try to own our decisions…
