Wanted to share something I think you’ll all appreciate: “Ya know,

Question

Wanted to share something I think you’ll all appreciate: “Ya know,

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.

Tech investors are not supposed to look for safe bets. Tech investors are looking to make major returns on their money and that requires leaps of faith.

If they don’t want to make massive returns that only tech companies can provide, then they should put their money in the bank or some safe conservative investment, not in tech companies.

There are many investors who won’t lead rounds, they’ll only follow. What that means is that they’ll never be the first money in, but rather, they’ll depend on the due diligence of another investor who will lead the round, and then they will follow.

So in essence, many investors are trying to have their cake and eat it too. They’re looking for high reward with low risk.

The result is that there are many entrepreneurs who I know personally that have built revolutionary products, sometimes market-making products, but they are, what we call, moonshots, and investors don’t want to go near them because the risk is too high.

So let me put it to you this way.

If I came to you 25 years ago and said “I’m starting a book store from my garage, and I’m going to sell books online. This thing is going to be huge. I’m gonna one day be the richest man in the world!”, would you invest in me?

If the answer is “Absolutely not”, then you would have missed out on investing in Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.

How about this? If I came to you and said “I’m going to change the way taxis work. People will no longer need a taxi license to drive others around. They’ll be able to use their own car and people will summon them with an app!” Would you have invested? Probably not because for that idea to work, so many laws and regulations would have to be changed.

If you had said no, you would have joined the hundreds of investors who turned down Uber, and not only did they miss out on an opportunity, they missed out on an entire market. Not often can you say that a company created an entire market. Uber did.

Tech investors, as far as I’m concerned, have two jobs: To identify the next big thing while taking massive risks, and then helping that moonshot become a reality after they invest capital into the company.

If a tech investor doesn’t want to take risks or help the company post check, I suggest that investor find a new profession. 🤷‍♂️”