Bessemer Venture Partners' Anti-Portfolio
bvp.com
bvp.com
> David Cowan’s college friend rented her garage to Sergey and Larry for their first year. In 1999 and 2000 she tried to introduce Cowan to “these two really smart Stanford students writing a search engine.” Students? A new search engine? In the most important moment ever for Bessemer’s anti-portfolio, Cowan asked her, “How can I get out of this house without going anywhere near your garage?”
> Jeremy Levine spent a weekend at a corporate retreat in the summer of 2004 dodging persistent Harvard undergrad Eduardo Saverin’s rabid pitch. Finally, cornered in a lunch line, Jeremy delivered some sage advice, “Kid, haven’t you heard of Friendster? Move on. It’s over!”
“Stamps? Coins? Comic books? You’ve GOT to be kidding,” thought David Cowan. “No-brainer pass.”
So, the point is, that has there been a growth of resources and capabilities—opportunities—for motivated individuals to write software apps that are much stronger and capable than their 1990s predecessors? Common sense says "Yes, of course!" But a comprehensive look says no one who is social nor someone who is educated is doing anything like what Sergey and Larry have done for their pre-Google generation. No one is writing anything, no one is building, and least of all is anyone who does the college education thing building anything remotely close to the next Facebook or Google.
There are no engineers today. Just drones doing financially compensated development. No passion for building. Instead just doing what is told to do and for to be done.
Reversing that (so it's easier and more profitable to compete and outgrow them) is step 1.
Despite all the fuss over passion, even Sergey and Larry would have abandoned it all for the type of money being thrown around in recent years.
1. This list is tiny. They have pass on 10000 more companies than the ones on this list. Most of that passing was done correctly
2. VCs rightly over-index on the big winners. The Facebooks and Airbnbs of the world are completely outsized in terms of one key thing: how much money they make for the GPs and LPs. However, as builders, we should not focus on these because they are few and far in between and you don't need to be a founder of one of these to have a life changing event. You just need a good 7 or 8 figure exit. VCs don't make money on an 8 figure exit so they train us to go big or go home. This webpage is another piece of that propaganda.
To me, this is a way to brag about them being so selective that they rejected Google, so you can be excited when they offer you a deal at Acme AI.
Everything about this page underscores the importance of access to deals. Bessemer can afford to pass on Google because the quality of deals they get is so high that it's not too bad to pass on winners.
Airbnb, Apple, Atlassian, Coinbase, eBay, Facebook, FedEx, Google, Intel, Intuit, Kayak, Okta, PayPal, Snapchat, Tesla, Zoom, Instacart
Interesting notes from the page:
1. Apple: Bessemer had the opportunity to invest in pre-IPO secondary stock in Apple at a $60M valuation. Neill Brownstein called it “outrageously expensive.”
2. Coinbase: Ethan’s pithy response would go on to earn Brian and Coinbase a spot in the Anti-Portfolio for life: “There’s really no questions you could answer that would cause me to invest!” Almost nine years later, Coinbase would go public in a direct listing valuing the leading crypto exchange at $85.8 billion – or just a mere 8,580x the price Brian had eagerly offered up!
I guess in part it depends on whether BVP just gets on the cap table and stays the f out of the company direction :D
The runner up darling child (outside of questionable financial products) seems to be biotech, whose heavy regulation and complex supply chain issues are offset by almost everyone in the world's desire to not die.
I guess you should blame the airline for that one
It's a "It might not be you. I could very well be us." message.
If you are getting rejected by 99 VC firms, it can beat you down and something like this could be soothing when things seems grim.
And the more opportunities you get with the ball, the more opportunities there are to fumble it.
If you go "oh shucks i fumbled some %" that will excuse anything and everything.
If you give me a list of the times you fumbled and they're all the most amazing opportunities ever, what that tells me is that you're taking the obviously good opportunities, and missing the counter-intuitively amazing opportunities.
VCs brand themselves as finding the next growth monsters. It's fine if they want to "find companies that you can reliably value and are undervalued by the market" (which is what Buffet does), but then don't market yourself as a VC.
“Actually, owning Paramount made me think even deeper, but I certainly looked harder about the whole question of what people do with their leisure time and what the governing principles are of running an entertainment business of any sort, whether it’s sports or movies or whatever it might be,” Buffett said. “I think I’m smarter now than I was a couple years ago, but I also think I’m poorer because I acquired the knowledge in the manner I did.” ← great quote
Source: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/war...
They’re no longer in business.
Furthermore, you might make money but less than you could at no risk.
Your criterion of being in business is awful. It sounds like it was the first thing that popped into your mind and you entertained it for about a second before typing it down.
Or, I suppose, you could commit fraud. I’m assuming we’re talking about regular vc companies and not criminals.
Yes, the truth is more complex than a single sentence can convey. I hope in time you can forgive my crime of brevity.
me "what's your criterion for being good at investing?"
you "you're good when you do well"
If you're so brief that you end up saying nothing at all, just skip the typing instead.
On reflection, the long version of my comment is something like this: “The market is the best judge of VC funds. Good choices mean good returns. Bad choices mean VC funds go out of business. And BMF had been profitable for 113 years. Make of that what you will.”
In retrospect, perhaps I could have said that.
> …, just skip the typing instead.
Similarly, lay off on policing my words so heavily. It’s rude. You are a single voice, and while your opinion is interesting, how I phrase things simply isn’t up to you. Especially when you do so from an anonymous burner account, “lkdfjlkdfjlg”.
If you don’t like my tone, perhaps consider following your own advice. Skip all the typing and just downvote my comments.
Is this serious or sarcasm?
Sure, they might do spreadsheet analysis and business planning to show the first person to invent a working, practical <foo> will make billions. But is this the company that will invent that?
That is an inherently vibe-heavy judgement.
I can well believe they remember considering a load of things, including the competition from their buddy's new venture firm. And they don't know themselves quite how they weighted the many things that contributed to the vibes, but they know saying 'generosity' sounds better than saying 'I didn't like the guy's glasses'