I think being in venture capital for more than a couple years—unless you really love it and are committed to it—is a complete, absolute, banging waste of time.

I'm perfectly nice, but I'm just not going to lie to people

I think people don't want to be in somebody's First Institutional fund.

If you're naturally curious about markets and what's happening in the world and learning and connecting with people and just even helping someone informally that you met... that is the key thing to unlock. And I would say, if you don't have that, just go home.

There's so much in this business we can't control. And one of the things we can control is who we spend time with and who we have conversations with and who we help out in the community.

Are talented people also entrepreneurial? And I don't believe that. I believe there's tons of talented people who are not entrepreneurial, and there are a bunch of entrepreneurial people who don't have the requisite talent. Really what we're trying to do is trying to find that overlap of who has the talent plus the entrepreneurial ability.

A lot of people that knock on our door with this amazing product experience or amazing experience, you don't get the sense that... they really want it, that they're really hungry. And I also believe... that most people who have an entrepreneurial gene in their sort of hard-coding have expressed that in some other way before they've knocked on our doors.

The very very best people are going to be kept within their fund

We're all going to go watch a movie but we're going to watch three trailers probably a hundred times over the next six months before it comes out and that's what people need in general.

I think because I was so consistent and telling them when I was stopping that a lot of people respected that and remembered it.

There's really no Common Thread

there's too many small funds and so people get confused.

a brand is that it's a shortcut for the brain

a very clean brand can kind of come in and capture attention

I have a very strong point of view that if people are curious about venture, they should start early and figure out in the 6 to 12 months, like, do I love it or not? And it's okay if you don't love it.

I sort of had no choice but to start my own fund

It's a people flow business, and that when you meet a lot of people and you help them, or you're direct with them, or you're honest with them, or you're swift with them, or even do things like say no in the meeting, or get back to them in a normal manner, over time, especially in the Bay Area and now in other places, that network effect can compound of other people sending you things.

For you, for me, for a lot of those people, they haven't even lived through a recession. You have to be well over 40/50-years-old to have actually lived through a recession as an adult. All the dips that we've had have been pretty narrow in terms of their duration.

I think there are 101 ways to source a potentially good investment or high-potential investment. And so, to me, it's not about if you're a player on the field, do you do that the right way or the wrong way; it's a way that can get to the outcomes you eventually need.

Are those hot seed rounds necessarily indicators of entrepreneurial value creation? Probably not. Are they best suited to understand what's at the cutting edge of product development or infrastructure? Probably.

I'll never forget Keith Rabois once tweeted years ago; he said, 'One of the best ways to raise a series A round is to get a lot of series A partner meetings,' because then you get on the radar. VCs don't want to admit this, but I think the reality is that they want to know they're competing for something that their peers also view is interesting.

It all stems from someone's curiosity. Like, if you're hungry to make money, you're going to suck at sourcing.