Put yourself in the shoes of a startup investor. Every day you review entrepreneurs, through a sort of funnel: very wide at the top and narrow down below, with only a few investments coming out the bottom each year. The average venture capital firm reviews approximately 1,200 companies in order to make 10 investments. At Village Capital, we make contact with nearly 10,000 entrepreneurs a year...
Working with hundreds of startups, various patterns eventually become obvious. One common pattern is wrapped around the common refrain of mentors to entrepreneurs, “focus“. The actual pattern is a bit more complex. It goes like this: 1. You have an idea. It may feel fully formed, but it’s half-baked. You know enough about the problem and just enough about the customers to...
Earlier this year I had a most amazing experience, traveling to India to meet the President of the Tibetan government in Exile, the Speaker of the House, the Chief Justice of their Supreme Court and his holiness, the 14th Dalia Lama. One of the take aways from this trip was the Tibetan attitude about the present and the future, first shared by Lobsang Sangay, the current President. It goes like...
Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World continues my research into wealth inequality and the real-world workings of capitalism. This book is the story primarily of four men: Norman, Strong, Moreau, and Schadt, the heads of the central banks of the UK, U.S., France, and Germany in the 1910’s through 1940’s. These are the men who restructured the financial world at the end of...
