Hey guys! Itâs Kareem today, coming at you with another edition of VODCAST. We hope youâre having an amazing Tuesday. Todayâs edition is a podcast episode from one of our favorite podcasts, Acquired. They go deep with Alfred Lin, Partner at one of the most successful Venture Capital firms ever. We found it fascinating so give it a listen or look through the highlights and let us know what you think
ACQUIRED Podcast by Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal
Special: Sequoia Capital's Investment Playbook (with Alfred LinâȘ)âŹ
Apple - Spotify - Google - Other
Summary and highlights đĄ
Founder-Market Fit is a thing đ€
Sequoia, as an investment firm, focuses on markets and founders focus on problem-solving. Finding the intersection is the vital piece
How to know if the market is too small? đ€
âWhen a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact. â -Warren Buffet
Go after non-obvious markets, and a lot of it has to be based on trends. Identifying trends like mobile werenât the hard part - it was identifying how it would grow.
Think in the future đź
âHaving a prepared mind allows you to think about this conceptually, into the future, even though it might not ring true on the day you make the investmentâ
Now âyou can start a company anywhere in the world,â so itâs very important to take into account how things work in 1 geography and how it can work similarly in a different region.
Early-stage is a different game
Great company at the seed stage looks very different than at later stages, and itâs important to understand that.
âNot about margin percent, itâs about margin dollarsâ - High margin percent requires a high volume
Understanding compounding is key đ
âThereâs always been too much capital in the systemâ - this will always be the case and winners will always get a disproportionate amount of the market cap
Donât think simply from an IRR perspective and instead look at the long-run focus
High IQ + High EQ + Hustle = đ°
You can be wrong and win, and right and lose. There are no specific requirements that yield a win in investing (or founding)
âThis is ultimately a people businessâ and âthereâs not much special sauceâ
âFocus on the enduringâ
Thanks for reading. As always, let us know what you thought and send it to your friends. Weâll see you again on Thursday :)