Venture Hacks

I’m reading Randy Komisar’s book, The Monk and the Riddle.
He wrote it before he became a partner at Kleiner Perkins and I like his description of the Rocket Ship model of investing (emphasis added):
“Over the last several years… a new investment model has taken hold. Fill each startup with rocket fuel as fast as possible [...]

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Summary: Raise as much money as possible. With these caveats: (1) maintain control at any cost, (2) monitor your liquidation preference, and (3) act like you don’t have a lot of money. Also understand that if you do raise a lot of money, you will have to (1) “go big or go home” and (2) [...]

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In The Psychology of Entrepreneurial Misjudgment, part 1: Biases 1-6, Marc Andreessen kindly interprets an essay from Charlie Munger’s book, Poor Charlie’s Almanack:
“Mr. Munger’s magnum opus speech, included in the book, is The Psychology of Human Misjudgment — an exposition of 25 key forms of human behavior that lead to misjudgment and error, derived from [...]

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There is lots of wisdom in John Doerr’s (Kleiner Perkins) introduction to Inside Intuit (emphasis added):
“Inside Intuit is a tale of missionaries, not mercenaries. It’s about a founding team that prevails through tenacity, frugality, and an obsession with the customer experience…
“Kleiner Perkins first learned about Intuit in 1985… But when it came to large numbers [...]

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The latest great quotes from the Venture Hacks Twitter feed: twitter.com/venturehacks (RSS):
Boards
“Don’t let conflicts get in the way of selecting the ideal board member.” – Fred Wilson
“Avoid ‘big names.’ For the most part, they are useless.” – Fred Wilson
“I was on the Spectra board and I think I nearly drove… the company CEO nuts with [...]

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Hilarious new t-shirts for the “top 2/20%” (get it?) of the population from VC Wear:

There are more awesome t-shirts at VC Wear as well as a Powerpoint Pitch and a Buy it (the company) Now button.
There’s truth in every t-shirt. I’ve heard that “every” VC in Silicon Valley [...]

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Tom Perkins from Kleiner Perkins slaps us with knowledge in this interview with Creative Capital. Here are some choice quotes from the beating:
On Timing
“It’s always a good time to be in venture capital.”
“You can’t look at the stock market and decide whether or not to invest in a startup.”
“The growth of technology has been [...]

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We’ve started a Venture Hacks page on Twitter: twitter.com/venturehacks (RSS).
We’ll be posting interesting quotes, links, and other things we like. We’ve started with a few quotes:
“Common stock is decorative.” – Anonymous Investor
“Valuation is temporary, control is forever.” – Venture Hacks
“You never ask board members what they think. You tell them what you’re going to do.” [...]

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