Venture Capital

More on Adapting to the Great Reset

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My post on Adapting to the Great Reset was something that has been brewing in my head for a while.

I was pleased then when Luke Norris, CEO of Faction asked me to go deeper. Luke had seen a short presentation I put together for an CEO Forum earlier this week and he gave me a good reason to clean it up. Luke is a wonderful entrepreneur to work with because he’s intellectually curious, open-minded and doesn’t accept hollow answers to tough questions.

Btw, Luke, get a new Twitter picture…

The PPT is embedded below. Enjoy and please ask questions or comment, even if you disagree…

More on Adapting to the Great Reset

Tahosa’s Summit: 6 Months [Series]

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Tahosa CapitalI enjoy reading blog posts of entrepreneurs that chronicle the journey of starting and building a business. The ones I enjoy most are at times heart-breaking and at other times triumphant. The most memorable are always always authentic and introspective.

To my knowledge, no-one has ever done a blog series on the process of building a venture capital or growth equity firm. If that is right, I’d like to be the first. Building a world-class investment firm feels to me to be every bit as entrepreneurial, with all highs and lows, exuberance and trepidation, joy and fear, as any entrepreneurial endeavor. It feels like its worth writing about.

The Good

Six months into the process of building Tahosa Capital, I’m feeling…

Tahosa’s Summit: 6 Months [Series]

Unicorpse and The Moral Hazard of Making Unicorns

Derek Pilling, , , , 1 Comment

UnicorpseI’m sure that many more thoughtful than me have written about the moral hazard of venture capital. In economics, moral hazard occurs when one person takes an unreasonable risk because someone else will bear the burden of the negative consequences. In the age of unicorns, the moral hazard in venture capital has never been greater. Moral hazard and exuberance to make unicorns leads to unicorpses. I was reminded of this today during a conversation with an emerging growth business run by capable, yet young entrepreneurs.

The Situation

The 20 something entrepreneurs with whom I was talking have built a solid, already profitable business generating $4.3 million ARR. The company has taken a total of $200k of outside financing. With a modest amount of incremental…

Unicorpse and The Moral Hazard of Making Unicorns

How we say “No” matters

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I have to say “No”; alot. In fact, every one of us investor-types says “No” much more than we say yes. How we say “No” matters; alot.

Sometimes, you don’t know you have said “No” well until years after the fact. Today, I had one of those moments. Several weeks ago, Todd Vernon, founder and former CEO of Lijit and now, founder and CEO of VictorOps asked to have lunch. I didn’t ask the topic, because we’ve known Todd for a long time and because I like Todd. We had lunch today.

How we say “No” matters

What is this “momentum” of which you speak?

Derek Pilling, , , 1 Comment

A meeting with an entrepreneur last Friday reminded me of the most frustrating and overused feedback entrepreneurs receive from VCs:
Talk to me when you have “momentum”; or

I need to see some “traction” first.
With more and more VCs looking to make later stage investments, entrepreneurs are receiving this feedback more than ever. You can understand why an entrepreneur might find this feedback frustrating. If they had massive traction, they probably wouldn’t need VC money, or if they did, the deal should be priced at a much higher valuation. That said, the real issue with this feedback is that it triggers a conversation about the definition of momentum. Entrepreneurs complain (rightly so I might add) that the VC definition of momentum comes in the following forms: 1) VC defines momentum by saying; “I know it when I…

What is this “momentum” of which you speak?