A short transcript excerpt from a conversation (Jason M. Lemkin and another speaker) about how investor time and involvement affect startup outcomes. Lemkin argues that the most impact comes from helping mid-performing founders rather than clear winners or losers, and discusses loyalty and differing returns versus involvement levels.
This. It ties to how involved to be like the 5x versus 1x. But I actually don't know if you can see it early enough to really have those impacts you described.
A lot of people worry about just loyalty. Quite right. How do you feel about that? Spend time with your winners. They're the ones that return the fund.
I mean, I don't know. I think it's a little bit weird where the winners don't really need you, so spending time with them doesn't really change the outcome. The losers don't really need you either, because they're going to lose. So it's actually kind of the people in the middle that probably need you the most, you know, and so really it's just spending time with those. Like, if you spend time with like, Airbnb or not. I don't know. Also, I've never seen those ones actually fail. If they're 100% committed, they have any customers. Right. And I actually think the difference between 0.5x and 1x can be huge. If it's. If the funds in carry mode, like you can make mil, you could also make. Maybe you don't make $100 million, but let's not be gleeful.
