What VCs want?
October 29th, 2006
Guy Kawasaki is a fun and interesting guy, and I enjoyed the recent interview with him on the excellent Venture Voice podcast. Excerpt:
- Gregory:
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When you see a company, what do you look for? Is it the entrepreneur, the market analysis?
- Guy:
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Well, this is the question that every VC gets asked and every VC answers consistently by saying, “We’re looking for a proven team, with proven technology, and with a proven business model”.
And that’s a load of crap.
Because, frankly, if you look at the huge successes, I would say for those three parameters, usually the huge successes are zero-for-three. Maybe one-for-three.
And I would say that about Apple, I would say that about Google, about Cisco, and Yahoo. They were not three-for-three there.
So I could more easily build a case that you should look for an unproven team with unproven technology in an unproven market, cause that’s the billion dollar deal!