The longest-tenured advice I received in this industry, from a partner at a much older firm, was: do not confuse activity with judgment. He had been investing for thirty-one years. He spent most of his Tuesdays reading.
I did not understand the advice when I received it. I understand it better now. The structural pressure on a venture investor is to act — to issue term sheets, to take board seats, to press for the next round, to manufacture the appearance of momentum. Almost none of this activity, in our experience, correlates with the durability of a company.
The cost of pressing
When we press a founder to raise a larger round than they want, we are usually pricing in the firm's need for markups before the company's need for runway. When we press for an acquisition because the IRR window is closing, we are usually optimizing the wrong objective by a factor of ten.
We have built the firm to remove these pressures. Our funds are sized so that no single investment must return them. Our LPs have signed on for a decade. Our partners take board seats only when the founder asks. Most weeks, the most useful thing we can do is read, take a long walk, and reply to email by Friday.