Randle writes a Substack on venture capital and startups, including Tiger Global's investing style and the payments company Wave.
HN commenters cite his 'Playing Different Games' post to explain Tiger's fast investing; one calls a later article an over-written copy of it.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1487500943511932941.html
I was in an incubator program, and there were two serious problems with it, which if you join YC are potential problems too:
Problem 1. The belief by founders that they could get good advice from others. This is a dangerous attitude to have programmed into yourself, because when starting a business you must stand on your own feet and trust your own opinions. Listening to others is fine, but it is to easy to cripple yourself by believing in the advice of successful people, and listening to the wrong advice. You need to make your own mistakes. That tightrope is an essential skill as an owner, and I don’t know how it is taught, especially to neophytes. I saw other founders learn to doubt themselves because they were not subject experts in so many areas of their business, and that doubt was damaging to them and their businesses. Yes Listen; yes respect the advice of others; no do not take advice without being careful to validate it for your businesses’ needs. I did also see some founders ignore excellent advice, but at least their businesses died honest deaths without interference!
Problem 2. Incubators push businesses to get funded. The push is probably mostly organically due to the atmosphere of competition between founders, plus the expectation that it is just what you do, but also the incubator chiefs push for it. I saw many other companies take money to grow, and then lose control and end up with no meaningful…
Huh, few months back this [1] was shared here[2] and also this[3]
The import was Tiger is somehow playing investment game at totally different level. And they are totally upending whole VC model with their speed of investment and little due diligence. It definitely felt a whole lot of bullshit to me.
1. https://www.readthegeneralist.com/briefing/tiger-global
2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29296904
3. https://randle.substack.com/p/playing-different-games?s=r
Ugh, just read the original that this post rips off, which has all the analysis and none of the egregious over-writing.
https://randle.substack.com/p/playing-different-games
This article is also a good explainer for Tiger's high-velocity capital deployment strategy - https://randle.substack.com/p/playing-different-games
Maybe also because of that:
https://randle.substack.com/p/playing-different-games