Show and guest
20VC, hosted by Harry Stebbings, with Box Group founder David Tisch as the guest. Original English title: Why High Ownership & Concentration is BS & The Lean Startup is a Fake | David Tisch.
Key points
- - Managers who concentrate their portfolios often say they win 90% of the deals they want to invest in; Tisch believes the actual figure is only about 20%. He once questioned Tisch’s model of lower ownership and a diversified portfolio, but Tisch proved through his results that the model outperformed 0:13
- - The lean startup is fake, especially in hot markets, where many people play a short-term game, while the right to invest in subsequent rounds is earned through performance 0:30
- - 2021 was an extremely frothy year, a good time to sell and a bad time to buy. There was no fundamental technological innovation at the time; it was more a matter of short-term changes in behavior 2:53
- - Seed rounds of 10 million to 20 million dollars have become fairly commonplace; for strong seed-stage companies with a solid track record, this has become a standard round size 5:59
Background and notes
20VC talks with Box Group founder David Tisch about whether the venture capital model has fundamentally changed, how the current cycle differs from 2021, and the new normal for seed-round sizes. Subtitle coverage: the subtitles cover 0:00–1:20:34 (full length: 1:20:42). This article compiles the guest’s remarks on ownership models, the lean startup, comparisons with 2021, and seed-round sizes. The views and timestamps are paraphrased from the original subtitles; each timestamp marks the start of the segment containing the corresponding remarks.