Latest / The Learning Corner by Precursor / Episode #48: VCs are Cockroaches, Engineers Fixing Vibe-Coded Projects, Serial Entrepreneurs Continue to be Favored
Transcript
- 0:00I also think there's this feedback loop in venture where a lot of people wanna get into
- 0:05hard to access deals.
- 0:06And I think some of it is this competitive dynamic in our business where winning and
- 0:10getting access to stuff that's hard to get into is different than getting access to stuff
- 0:14that's good.
- 0:15It's the week of September 15.
- 0:18Welcome to the Learning Corner, a Precursor Ventures podcast.
- 0:25Welcome to the Learning Corner by Precursor.
- 0:27I'm Mia Farnam, and I'm joined by our GP and managing partner, Charles Hudson, where we will
- 0:31be talking through the articles and Goodreads that caught our team's attention over the past
- 0:36week.
- 0:36Our first topic is a LinkedIn post from Micah Rosenblum at Founder Collective who stated that
- 0:41VCs are like cockroaches.
- 0:43He's addressing the murmurs about VC funds merging and disappearing with people asking,
- 0:48will the VC market finally shrink?
- 0:50His cockroach comparison centers on how VCs are hard to kill and rarely merge.
- 0:55Even funds that shrink over time continue to endure.
- 0:58Part of this resilience stems from venture capital being a people business, which makes
- 1:03combining firms nearly impossible.
- 1:05Additionally, LPs often invest in the individual running the fund as much as the
- 1:10brand itself, so they're essentially signing on to a series of fund investments from the start.
- 1:15He concludes by questioning whether this current cycle will be different given that
- 1:18multistage funds hold so much capital weight and could potentially tip the scales.
- 1:22However, the resilient cockroach nature of VCs might ensure the market remains unchanged.
- 1:29We've talked about the shifting nature of the fund manager market all the time.
- 1:34So wanted to pause and see if you had any new thoughts after reading this one.
- 1:38Yeah.
- 1:38It's funny.
- 1:39I've been a VC off and on since the early two thousands.
- 1:43And when the Internet bubble burst, everyone's like, oh, you know, the industry's gonna
- 1:47permanently contract.
- 1:48There's gonna be far fewer VCs.
- 1:50Firms are gonna go out of business.
- 1:52And to be clear, there were firms that disappeared and went out of business.
- 1:55That absolutely happened.
- 1:57But not to the degree that people thought.
- 2:00And the longer I am in this business, a couple things are true.
- 2:03One, once you raise a fund, you have a fee stream that lasts you essentially for the life
- 2:09of that fund.
- 2:10Could be ten years.
- 2:10Could be twelve years.
- 2:11Could be fifteen years.
- 2:12But you you have a fee stream that can keep you in business even if you're unable to raise your
- 2:17next fund for a really long time in a way that few other businesses allow you to do.
- 2:22Second, I think the egos involved in this business oftentimes make it difficult to merge
- 2:28firms.
- 2:29And also, I often question if you have one firm that couldn't raise money or was having
- 2:34challenges and another firm that was having challenges.
- 2:37Putting those two firms together is unlikely to produce a new winner.
- 2:41If you have a firm that's doing well and a firm that isn't doing well, the firm that's doing
- 2:46well is like, well, why would I wanna acquire the assets of a there's no real acqui hires in
- 2:50venture.
- 2:51Maybe occasionally, but like, not like there are in startups who are like, oh, this person
- 2:54has talent.
- 2:55Because in venture, the output of your talent is the decision making and the companies you
- 2:59get into.
- 2:59And if that's not good, I'm not sure what you're really acquiring.
- 3:02And I think the other thing that's worth remembering is you can have a three person
- 3:06venture fund that fails where each of those people independently goes off and starts his or
- 3:10her own venture firm.
- 3:11So one venture firm that fails can actually create three brand new venture firms.
- 3:16So it's not like failure always reduces the number of firms in the industry.
- 3:20Now look, we have seen some things that look a lot more like acquisitions and venture, which
- 3:25is a new thing, a newish thing.
- 3:27You know, back in the day, there was the rumor that Clanor Perkins was trying to acquire
- 3:30Social Capital, and in the end, they did get Moon to join them.
- 3:34But that was like a publicized thing.
- 3:36General Catalyst has bought two franchises and also brought on Yuri to lead early stage.
- 3:41So I just always ask myself, what are you really getting when you buy a venture firm?
- 3:45You're usually getting some combination of the management fee stream that that fund is
- 3:49entitled to in the future, which if you're a big multistage fund, that's a drop in the
- 3:53bucket.
- 3:53That doesn't really matter.
- 3:54And you're getting the portfolio.
- 3:56And so, Mia, you know, when things started getting hard for emerging managers in 2022, I
- 4:01had some LPs who came to me and said, hey.
- 4:03Do you think you're gonna acquire or pick up any of these venture firms that maybe you're
- 4:07gonna have a hard time raising?
- 4:08Like, so let me get this straight.
- 4:10The same firms that you could easily keep in business by giving them money, I'm supposed to
- 4:14Yeah.
- 4:14See fit to acquire them.
- 4:16Like, that doesn't make any sense to me.
- 4:18I don't know.
- 4:18It's very hard to end these things, and it's very hard to combine them.
- 4:22And I think the real funny thing to me is that one venture firm can produce n number of net
- 4:27new firms as people peel off and spin out.
- 4:29Well, that's something that I was gonna have you run back because I think if you're a
- 4:32founder listening to this podcast and you just heard that blurb of you can have a completely
- 4:36failed venture fund spin out and have three new people raise potentially, like, oversubscribed
- 4:41new funds.
- 4:42How does that even happen?
- 4:44You know, I think limited partners have a very difficult job in trying to decide who to fund.
- 4:48And sometimes, the real answer is you have a relationship with someone.
- 4:52And there are certainly circumstances where there are three two or three people who are
- 4:56like, in any relationship, they are good people, but they are not good together.
- 5:00And I have seen some venture breakups where the individual partners are good investors with
- 5:06their own strengths as investors.
- 5:08But in a partnership, maybe there was too much bad blood or too many things that happened or
- 5:13something had gone unsaid for too long.
- 5:14Where those two people can no longer work together, that doesn't mean they're not both
- 5:18good investors.
- 5:19And so I think that's the thing that's important.
- 5:22And a lot of, like, what makes a good investor, I think, is oftentimes LP perception.
- 5:26Sure.
- 5:26If you've returned a ton of money to LPs and DPI, that counts for something.
- 5:30But most venture capitalists haven't done that.
- 5:32They've got paper markups, and they've got the strength of relationships and the strength of
- 5:36the brand that they're leaving.
- 5:37So I've certainly seen cases where LPs have told me, yeah.
- 5:39Those two people are both great.
- 5:41They're just sort of no longer capable of working together, or those three people can no
- 5:45longer work together, whatever whatever the combination of individuals in question might
- 5:48be.
- 5:49One last question here.
- 5:50I guess, is a bit of consolidation or funds sunsetting when it happens a good thing in
- 5:54venture?
- 5:55I feel like we've been talking about managers deciding to not raise subsequent funds and
- 5:58actually finding that to be really more of a sound choice based on personal circumstance.
- 6:04I think it's necessary and healthy for the industry.
- 6:07Let me be clear.
- 6:08I don't feel good saying this.
- 6:09I don't want anybody who who dreamt of being a venture capitalist to have that dream taken
- 6:14away from him or her because the the truth is, like, it's an amazing job, and there really
- 6:19isn't, in my opinion, a really great next best job you could get once you've been a venture
- 6:24capitalist.
- 6:24It is kind of a peak job.
- 6:26But I think if you raise LP capital and, you know, you're not able to produce decent returns
- 6:32and you can't convince LPs through relationship, charm, insight, or intellect that
- 6:37they should give you another shot, going out of business is probably the right thing.
- 6:40And that capital should go to somebody else who either has an established track record or who
- 6:44deserves a shot at their first time.
- 6:46But I also think because these fun relationships are so long, I'm sympathetic to
- 6:50LPs for just, like, it's really hard to tell somebody no.
- 6:53Now maybe in a new relationship, it's not as hard.
- 6:55You've been an investor in the fund for one or two years.
- 6:57And the the most probably the the one piece of feedback I remember from when I first got
- 7:02started, I had a really good, really well placed adviser who'd been a GP for a long time.
- 7:08I said, what advice do you have for me?
- 7:10He said, just make sure your first fund is really great.
- 7:13He's like, if your first fund is really great, it will buy you a lot of grace.
- 7:15It will buy you a lot of time It'll open a lot of doors for you.
- 7:18If your first fund isn't great, it's actually very difficult to recover from that.
- 7:22And I didn't fully understand what he meant until till later.
- 7:27Because that, I assume, felt obvious in the moment.
- 7:30But then going through it ten years later, you're like, I can see how that would be a
- 7:34roadblock.
- 7:34Someone who I was in I was an intern for this guy in when I was in high school, this guy
- 7:39named Mark Willis.
- 7:40Like, shout out Mark Willis.
- 7:41And I worked in his Smith Barney brokerage office when I was in high school, when I was
- 7:45getting ready to go to college.
- 7:46I asked Mark for some advice, he said, get good grades, which sounded like the obvious advice.
- 7:53And I'm like, why is it?
- 7:54If you get good grades, all the doors you'll want after college will be open to you.
- 7:57And it seemed so obvious, and it was honestly super good advice.
- 8:02Our next piece is from Emmanuel Meiberg at four zero four Media titled The Software Engineers
- 8:08Paid to Fix Vibe Coded Messes.
- 8:11This focuses on the ironic phenomenon of engineers making money by collaborating with
- 8:16teams who essentially vibe coded their projects to life and now need assistance making them
- 8:20actually functional and polished.
- 8:22The projects range from fixing inconsistent UI, UX design, and poorly optimized code to
- 8:28restructuring color schemes and layouts.
- 8:30People across Fiverr are offering these services and making money by delivering this
- 8:35type of value for folks who wanna build something fast and be more cost efficient in
- 8:38that last mile delivery by bringing in a person rather than spending more money on token spend.
- 8:43One of Emmanuel's quotes was, if the resulting software is so poor, you need to hire a human
- 8:48specialist software engineer to come in and rewrite the vibe coded software.
- 8:53It defeats the entire purpose.
- 8:56Of course, engineers coming in to unwind and fix entirely botched nonfunctional projects
- 9:01feels really ironic, but some folks would argue that vibe coding allows more product minded
- 9:06individuals to get closer to an initial version of a project than ever before.
- 9:10Any thoughts on this and then the article itself?
- 9:13I was joking.
- 9:14I was like, well, there have been a bunch of people who said that the rise of AI would
- 9:17create a bunch of jobs and job types that we didn't know before, and here we go.
- 9:21It's very interesting to me to see, like, on balance, what does this mean?
- 9:25If you vibe code something and then you have to spend a bunch of time having professional
- 9:28developer clean it up, are you better off?
- 9:30Maybe.
- 9:31I mean, I've had the experience where I've built some things myself in Cursor or using
- 9:35Cloud Code where I'm like, this is kinda clunky.
- 9:37I'm sure that a professional software developer could write this more efficiently or make it
- 9:41run better.
- 9:41But I think this is sort of the natural, again, rubber meeting the road experience we're having
- 9:47right now with AI, which is people are like, oh, I could vibe code something in ten minutes.
- 9:51I'm like, you could, but it won't be perfect.
- 9:53And getting that fit and polish and usability right still, I think, requires professional
- 9:59help in some cases.
- 10:00I don't think this is like a knock on vibe coding.
- 10:02I think it just means that there are gonna be cases where people build things that are beyond
- 10:06their ability or the system's ability to naturally fix, and you're going to need
- 10:10professional talented people to come in.
- 10:12I'll be curious to see if at some point some of these vibe fixers come in and just say, you
- 10:16should just throw this thing away.
- 10:17Right.
- 10:18We build you build you somebody does the same thing for half the price it would take for me
- 10:22to fix your Frankenstein thing.
- 10:25Yeah.
- 10:25And you as the product minded person are probably none the wiser of kind of being like,
- 10:29okay, I guess you're right.
- 10:30It's like going to a car mechanic shop and them telling, like, this thing is broken.
- 10:34You're gonna
- 10:34have to just start
- 10:35a Yeah.
- 10:37When I think about Fiverr, I think a marketplace for commoditized talent.
- 10:40And so you can get quick projects done through specialist support at a fraction of the price.
- 10:46So it's interesting that with Fiverr, I assume that maybe that cost could be quite low to
- 10:52bring a project across the line.
- 10:53But if you're thinking about it from the standpoint that the article is describing it,
- 10:57that extra 25% that the project needs to be taken and and polished is probably the most
- 11:03important part of the entire build.
- 11:05There's an argument to be made that you should actually probably spend more on that than
- 11:11trying to cut costs there.
- 11:13Or maybe the answer is you vibe code the prototype and you get a professional person to
- 11:19build the production version.
- 11:20And I also just wonder, will there be specialists who are like, oh, I'm a replet vibe
- 11:24coder fixer specialist, which is different than a lovable vibe coder
- 11:28Oh, I bet.
- 11:28Fix it specialist.
- 11:29Because there'll be people who understand this is the nature of the mistakes that each of
- 11:33these platform tends to make, and here's how you undo them.
- 11:35You know, I I've thought a lot, like, what does AI mean for Fiverr?
- 11:38And Fiverr has felt like one of these Fiverr's such effort.
- 11:40It's felt like one of these platforms that was really susceptible to AI because a lot of the
- 11:44work that they were doing was labor arbitrage of people in other countries doing tasks for
- 11:49less money than they could be done onshore.
- 11:51I was just talking to a founder actually today who vibe coated a decent amount of the product
- 11:55and was curious if they should work with an engineer to build it out even more and get it
- 12:01closer to like a more polished v one or bring it to market just so that they could start
- 12:06reaching customers first?
- 12:08And I think the correct answer or the way to go about it, or the one that we just talked about
- 12:12was, okay, well, what do you want the first interaction to look like between your customers
- 12:15and their product?
- 12:16And that's kind of up to you.
- 12:17Do you want them to kind of know that it's a work in progress and be okay with the fact
- 12:21that, let's be honest, it kind of looks like a Chattypie T wrapper?
- 12:23Or do you want it to feel something a little bit different and more personalized?
- 12:26If you want that second one, you're gonna have to wait, and I think that's up to founders of
- 12:30deciding, are you gonna be patient enough to build something that's a little bit more in
- 12:34line with what you hope to ship out long term?
- 12:37And I think VC expectations now are that you should be able to vibe code something awesome
- 12:42already.
- 12:43And I think it's actually as someone who builds stuff, it's harder than one might think if you
- 12:47don't do it regularly once you add in any level of complexity.
- 12:50Our last topic is a recent piece by Jacob Robbins at PitchBook titled, why serial
- 12:55founders still have a fundraising edge over first timers.
- 12:59Part of this has to do with the current market where investors are looking for safer bets and
- 13:03larger outcomes, which right now come in the form of repeat founders.
- 13:07PitchBook shared data showing that median pre seed and seed deal sizes continue to be much
- 13:12higher for serial founders, more than double compared to novice founders, with this gap
- 13:17continuing to grow across all stages but being the most prevalent in the earliest.
- 13:21From a valuation standpoint, that difference is anywhere from two to three x between serial
- 13:26entrepreneurs and first time founders.
- 13:28Our friend, Rob Goh, raised the question in one of his pieces, quote, is the best talent
- 13:33irrespective of background actually getting a shot versus the same kind of person getting the
- 13:40shot no matter what?
- 13:42So obviously, in a market where investors are eager to return capital, I'm not very surprised
- 13:47this return to a safer founder profile is happening.
- 13:50The piece goes on to say that AI has magnified this trend, where the startup costs to bring an
- 13:56AI concept to life are much higher, and it becomes difficult to hand off a $20,000,000 or
- 14:02so capital lump to a first time founder.
- 14:05Wanted to pause for your thoughts here just Yeah.
- 14:07Knowing you've seen it in so many different cycles.
- 14:09I don't think anything else say will surprise you.
- 14:11When I read that subject line, I was like, well, second time founders continue to raise
- 14:15more capital because that's VC's preferences.
- 14:18Yeah.
- 14:18And it's so easy.
- 14:20And I almost shared this in the Discord.
- 14:22My friend Narayan from Franklin Park had this really interesting LinkedIn post about
- 14:27pedigree, and he's like, well, maybe once upon a time, like, pedigree meant something.
- 14:31But how many people have now started companies on the Internet in the last twenty years?
- 14:36And what does being a repeat founder how does it give you pedigree when the pool of people
- 14:40who have that pedigree has become quite so large?
- 14:43Yeah.
- 14:43Versus someone who's left OpenAI, that's a much smaller pedigree pool.
- 14:47And I think I've learned two things.
- 14:50You know, I've talked to a lot of founders who've been angry.
- 14:52They're like, well, VCs have this cynical preference for second time founders because,
- 14:56you know, the memo writes itself if the company doesn't work out or people from fancy schools
- 15:00or fancy companies.
- 15:02It's easy to justify why you made the investment if it doesn't work out.
- 15:06And I don't think it's just that.
- 15:07As you know me, like, working with first time founders is kind of like Groundhog Day.
- 15:12You have the same experiences with different characters and different circumstances, but the
- 15:16same experiences over and over.
- 15:17And a lot of my peers are like, I don't wanna do that anymore.
- 15:20I did that earlier in my career as a VC, and now I basically wanna work with people that are
- 15:24more mature and more experienced and who can handle more of the day to day zero to one with
- 15:31less input from me.
- 15:32And part of what they're paying for when they pay up for Pedigree is they're paying up to be
- 15:37able to say, I expect you to be able to handle more of this on your own without me.
- 15:40And for some people, I think that's just at this stage of their career, they would prefer
- 15:44to work with people like that.
- 15:45But, you know, where do people think second time founders come from?
- 15:49So I I really do worry that we have dramatically over rotated to second time
- 15:55founders or people who are who weren't even, like, the principal prime mover in a company,
- 16:00but were adjacent to the right company, the right space.
- 16:02And we're imbuing these people with darn near sainthood, and we're ignoring the possibility
- 16:08that people with less experience have more talent.
- 16:11I think we're doing a big disservice to the industry.
- 16:13And I always, I guess, wonder I think it's funny with second time founders having such a
- 16:18large halo effect.
- 16:18And, course, a large portion of that is deserved.
- 16:21It's so incredible when you're able to accomplish something successful in the startup
- 16:24world.
- 16:25But to be able to, I don't know, have, like, lightning strike twice is crazy.
- 16:29And typically, the founder goes off and starts sometimes something in a completely different
- 16:34industry, and that's their second act.
- 16:38And it's funny that they get the same halo effect as being a second time founder in a
- 16:41completely different area with a completely different team.
- 16:44And sometimes areas that they have no business entering into, I find that that happens a lot.
- 16:49And folks are more willing to bet on that than a person who maybe has, like, a little bit more
- 16:52expertise, maybe not as much pedigree, but folks are really desperate to hold on to the
- 16:56fact that they've done this before, driven the ship, albeit a completely different one in a
- 17:01completely different market.
- 17:02That's just interesting You to
- 17:04and I see that a lot in digital health.
- 17:05People who know nothing about health who are successful in some of their domain.
- 17:08I also think there's this feedback loop in Venture where a lot of people wanna get into
- 17:13hard to access deals.
- 17:15Many repeat founders have relationships with VCs, which allow them to create more favorable
- 17:20deal dynamics, which create more deal heat, which makes the deal feel more competitive,
- 17:24which makes people wanna get into it, which makes winning it and getting into it feel
- 17:27better whether the company is successful or not.
- 17:29And I think some of it is this competitive dynamic in our business, where winning and
- 17:34getting access to stuff that's hard to get into is different than getting access to stuff
- 17:38that's good.
- 17:39Yep.
- 17:40But in the moment, oftentimes, the focus is like, oh, that's competitive and hard to get
- 17:44into.
- 17:44I wanna win and get into it even if it's maybe not a great investment.
- 17:48Yeah.
- 17:48So much of it is just outward signaling of what looks good to other people.
- 17:52But I would say, I don't know, looking at our own portfolio, how many of our best bets from
- 17:57our earlier funds are from repeat versus first time founders?
- 18:02There are very few of our most successful companies in our portfolio that were started by
- 18:06repeat founders who had a big success first.
- 18:09We have some we have some who had other companies before, but in most cases, those
- 18:13companies were not of consequence.
- 18:15I guess that's actually a good question.
- 18:16How do you weigh a second time founder who maybe their first act wasn't successful at all?
- 18:20How do you approach that and stand them up next to a first time founder?
- 18:24I think the big thing I'm always trying to figure out is what did that now second time
- 18:28founder whose first company wasn't super successful, what did they learn or take away
- 18:32from that experience?
- 18:33And I tend to judge them by a higher standard.
- 18:35I expect them to know, assuming they raise venture for the last thing.
- 18:38I expect them to be more knowledgeable about fundraising.
- 18:41I expect them to be a better problem solver.
- 18:43I expect them to not get intimidated by how hard startups can be to build and scale.
- 18:47I I frankly expect them to just be better than I would for a first time founder.
- 18:51Last question.
- 18:52I mean, our fund is, I would say, two thirds first time founders, one third repeat.
- 18:56Would really love to hear how you've been able to see the strengths and weaknesses of
- 18:59different profiles, especially in, I feel like, today's VC market where it's definitely split
- 19:03out into two buckets of the haves and the have nots.
- 19:05I find that it's very rare we have these, like, middle middle road folks.
- 19:09I think the one thing I love about first time founders is oftentimes they they don't have,
- 19:14like, a playbook from their last company that they followed.
- 19:16And oftentimes, they don't have a playbook at all.
- 19:19They're like, oh, I'm just gonna reason from first principles.
- 19:22Now sometimes that leads to waste and efficiency.
- 19:24But other times that leads to truly interesting breakthrough ideas that are so different than
- 19:30what other people would think of.
- 19:32And those people are just following their instincts.
- 19:34They're not trying to pattern match a playbook.
- 19:36They're not trying to, like, follow something they write in a blog.
- 19:38They're just like, I don't know any better, so I'm just gonna follow my own instincts here.
- 19:41And I think it's kinda magical.
- 19:43We we have a handful of companies where I think it was the lack of playbooks and the lack of
- 19:47sort of knowledge of what to do.
- 19:48I I can honestly say the same thing is true of emerging managers starting their own funds.
- 19:52I've met some people who are really good investors precisely because they simply hadn't
- 19:56been indoctrinated into the things that other people have, and they have different beliefs
- 20:00about what good looks like and where to find companies and how to work with people.
- 20:03And so I think this is why, like, every industry needs newcomer outsiders because they
- 20:08just bring a different perspective.
- 20:10Well, we are all out of time today.
- 20:12Thank you, Charles, for stopping in.
- 20:13Thank you to our folks for stopping and listening.
- 20:15Please like and subscribe, and we will talk with you all next week.
- 20:18Thank you.
- 20:19Bye.
- 20:19See you.