Three Interesting Things
Headlines and content that stood out to me over the last few days
No great insightful post from me this week. Instead, I’m sharing three of the most interesting (in some cases, absolutely wild…) things I read/watched/saw this week.
Rippling sues Deel for corporate espionage. Absolutely wild story. Shows how real it can get when you’re building something that matters.
Jason Carman releases “Too Cheap To Meter”, streamable on X, which covers the history of energy and the importance of the next wave of nuclear power. Crazy how energy consumption per capital basically flatlined in the 70s.
Abe Othman, Head of Research at AngelList, dives deep into data on whether seed funds should follow-on to their investments. It’s about a 20 minute listen on 1.2x speed. One of my main takeaways is that top decline funds result from winners running (and investing more in them).
Enjoy!
Adding to the Abe Othman comment. Top decile returns seem to depend on follow-on, but he seems to say a lot of this depends on luck and that everyone should be very humble about their "skill." In essence those who are top decile are simply luckier than the top quartile.
I am going to listen to it again because it is very nuanced. At the end of the day as an LP the question I walk away with and will need to toggle in my mind and update "who do the follow-on reserves serve?"
Another question to consider:
Is the pool of available follow-on within a single fund too small and therefore in order to have an effective follow-on strategy, do you need to essentially resample from a larger pool. This would seem to support his comment that GPs should provide all follow-on opportunities to their LPs who have a much broader lens and portfolio from which to pick. Food for thought.