Nate Cooper

idk this essay relays a very articulate picture of the current zeitgeist in VC but also establishes a few opinions as fact that imo are empirically incorrect: The general premise here again is the now-common VC trope that only 10 companies matter, and everything else is chopped liver. I find this nonsensical because: 1) implies that only a company with certain input permutations (e.g. founder credentials) can grow to "matter", which enforces an elitism (e.g. "legible to institutional capital from day one") that only founders of a certain geography or milieu can matter (as we know, even this is wrong in the current climate). imo this is inherently the antithesis to the original "pirate" spirit that has historically driven VC returns (and why this industry even exists). also there is no empirical evidence that there are permutations of founder credentials that reliably predict outcomes 2) by extension of 1), that means everything priced cheaply (e.g. $5M post) is "lower quality" (and will not produce outcomes due to structural conditions). however, OP also says a way for small funds to navigate the narrow path is to invest in "opportunities in sectors or categories that are not yet legible to large institutional firms" and "to take bets where others won’t" (which is 100% correct btw). These verticals are exactly where those supposed poor $5M post deals are found btw (so the entire point on low price = low quality contradicts itself). 3) the assumption here is also that only companies hot on the private market will have liquidity opportunities (as IPO and M&A is "dead"). VC-backed tech co's not IPOing is primarily a product of cheap private capital, and frankly, brittle businesses that might have exploding revenues (which VCs value) but suck w.r.t free cash flow (which the public market values). incidentally, i would make the counter bet that this "narrow path" will actually produce *more* companies that are viable for the public market (by necessity, due to lack of access to cheap capital), but these might not be companies carrying the SF VC halo (OP uses OpenAI as the gold standard example, which is objectively a bad business in the truest sense of selling services or goods at a profit) fwiw I don't think Lucas is wrong per se. imo he's talking about a new category that's emerging as a product of AUM bloat in VC, which is still operating under the "VC" umbrella, but is not really VC anymore (and we should find a new name for it)

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