George Gong

Why First-Time VC Managers Can Outperform Experienced Ones Institutional investors, and most of the Limited Partners (LPs) investors to the VC Funds, often prefer seasoned managers who have a proven track record of success and strong returns. While experience can be valuable, this principle doesn't always hold true in the VC industry. Experienced managers often operate based on mental models constructed from previous facts and information. While these models can provide valuable insights, they can also create flawed perceptions of new products or technologies. For instance, an experienced VC manager might dismiss an innovative idea by thinking, "It won't work because previously it didn't work." This reliance on past experiences can prevent them from recognizing groundbreaking opportunities. Before Elon Musk's success with Tesla, many investors were skeptical about electric cars. Venture capital investing is heavily influenced by mathematics and statistics, particularly the power law distribution. Success often depends on a small percentage of investments that yield significant returns. Therefore, having a well-diversified portfolio is crucial. A VC fund investing in, say, 40 startups can manage risk effectively because even if only 5% of those startups succeed, the returns can cover all fees and generate substantial profits. The returns might more higher if the fund operates in Emerging markets where operation costs for startups are low compared to more developed countries. Well-structured VC fund mitigates this risk through diversification and the statistical probability of success. While experience is valuable, it's not the sole determinant of success in venture capital investing. First-time managers can achieve results comparable to or even surpassing those of experienced managers if they avoid being limited by outdated mental models, employ sound statistical principles, and maintain a diversified portfolio also adding smart VC fund principles. Future Laboratory Ventures

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🌟 𝗩𝗖 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄 𝗘𝘀𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗮𝗹𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 🌟 Preparation can make all the difference in a venture capital interview. Here’s a guide to nail it: 📝 Prepare Your Answers: Common questions include your company’s mission, market size, and competitors. 📊 Highlight Metrics: Share key metrics like user growth and revenue to demonstrate traction and success. ⭐ Express Future Vision: Outline your short-term and long-term goals for your company’s growth. Equipped with detailed responses, you can approach your VC interview with confidence. #StartupPreparation #EntrepreneurAdvice #VCSuccess

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As the Shasta Ventures approval deadline approaches, we're presented with a unique opportunity to observe the complexities and inherent conflicts in GP-led secondary transactions. This scenario sheds light on the considerable leverage GPs hold within the private equity infrastructure. According to the article, proposed continuation fund requires LPs to approve the transaction if they wish to roll their interests into the new structure—a stipulation that could be seen as putting undue pressure on LPs. This raises critical questions about the balance of power in private equity deals and the alignment of interests between GPs and LPs. What are your thoughts? Is it appropriate for GPs to demand such conditions for LPs to participate in a continuation fund? How do you see this impacting the broader private equity landscape and the perception of GP-led secondary transactions? Looking forward to hearing your insights and perspectives on this pivotal issue. #PrivateEquity #VentureCapital #InvestmentTrends #ShastaVentures #GPledSecondaries

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That’s very accurate. PE Buyout Funds. Publicly traded parent companies with corporate VC arms scooping up the most profitable sector-specific subsidiaries. Fund of Funds get more popular and much more strategic. Family Offices dominate the landscape. Not investment advice.

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How to create your first VC Fund in Emerging Markets ?! Having navigated the journey, pains, and gains of establishing Georgia's first VC fund and accelerator focused on U.S.-oriented products, I want to share the lessons I've learned along the way. Starting tomorrow, I’ll be sharing daily posts aimed at those who aspire to start and grow their own venture funds in emerging markets, where people often prefer to invest in real estate, restaurants, or keep money in cash. These posts will cover a range of topics, including: - Fundraising Strategies: Tips on attracting LPs in emerging markets and overcoming skepticism about the potential high returns of local startups. - Building a Venture Partner and Advisory Team: Insights into assembling the right people to support your fund's mission. - Navigating Regulatory Landscapes: Guidance on legal considerations based on my experiences with VCLab, crafting recommendations for the Azerbaijani government, and securing a license for Georgia’s first registered VC fund. - Deal Sourcing and Evaluation: Why I decided to start in Georgia with early-stage startups, the addition of an acceleration program, and the focus on U.S.-targeted products. - Growing Pains and Gains: Personal challenges and successes in fund management, especially in a market where traditional investments still dominate. - The Importance of Collaboration and a Systematic Approach in Venture Capital: Why working together and building a structured approach matter in this field. - Ethical Norms in Venture Fund Management - And Other Topics My goal is to provide practical advice and foster a community for current and future fund managers. Whether you're just starting out or looking to scale, I hope these insights will be valuable on your journey. Stay tuned for the first post tomorrow! Feel free to share this announcement with anyone who might find it helpful, and don’t hesitate to leave comments or questions below. Let’s grow together! Future Laboratory Ventures #firstvcfunds #vcfunds #VC #LP

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After this week? You deserve a gift 🎁 Our experts analyzed 1500+ exits to create: 7 incisive reports on the state of tech M&A. Founders, investors, and anyone who cares about businesses with revenue below $100M – we made this for you. We created market reports for 7 key sectors: - SaaS  - Ecommerce  - AI  - EdTech  - Cybersecurity  - Fintech  - Marketplace Apps (Shopify, Salesforce, etc.)    Whether you’re looking to innovate, invest, or exit–these ideas are crucial to navigating the rest of 2024. Want a sneak peek before release? Comment for early access. 

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Why Buying Your First Business is the hardest & Financing The Fear is Being seen as too risky by lenders and investors. The Solution: Prepare a solid business plan with detailed financial projections. Work with a financial advisor to enhance your credibility. Consider alternative financing options like SBA loans or seller financing.

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Dream Investment: Seed a startup. It never raises again. Shoulder to shoulder with the founders for a 10 year run together. Become super close, grow together, watch each other achieve different life milestones. Company gets to $1b revenue and a epic exit. This is it.

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What CEOs of VCs do.

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How does DIME (YC W24) stay ahead of the competition in the fast-paced world of manufacturing tech? 🤔 In this clip, Ashish Bajaj, co-founder of Dime, shares the two key factors that differentiate his company from other players in the market. ✅ Discover how Dime's deep immersion on the factory floor gives them a unique advantage in understanding and solving real problems. ✅ Learn why Dime's focus on the needs of production managers and plant managers is a game-changer in the industry. ✅ Get inspired by Ashish's insights on how to build a product that truly resonates with your target audience. Listen to the full episode on your favorite podcast platform or watch it on YouTube - https://lnkd.in/gScqXQdY . . . . . #startups #manufacturing #innovation #competitiveadvantage #productdevelopment

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Exciting to see startups aiming to use AI to discover chemicals, materials, drugs, etc. Semi companies have taken notice: AMD is investing in and Cadence is acquiring them. Semi/EDA companies have broken out by becoming critical path, whether it’s through critical software, packaging, IP, design kits from foundries, or user communities. Aside from just making it easy to make new materials, these “AI for making X” companies also need to articulate a vision as to how they can establish monopolistic positions in their industries.

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The Qwen2 series from Alibaba Group focuses on efficient parameter usage in large language models, offering foundational and instruction-tuned models with parameters ranging from 0.5 billion to 72 billion. This series demonstrates improved performance over its predecessor, Qwen1.5, and competes effectively with proprietary models across a variety of benchmarks, including language understanding, generation, multilingual capabilities, coding, mathematics, and reasoning.   The flagship model, Qwen2-72B, achieves impressive benchmark scores: 84.2 on MMLU, 37.9 on GPQA, 64.6 on HumanEval, 89.5 on GSM8K, and 82.4 on BBH. Its instruction-tuned variant, Qwen2-72B-Instruct, also shows strong performance with scores of 9.1 on MT-Bench, 48.1 on Arena-Hard, and 35.7 on LiveCodeBench. The series supports around 30 languages, including widely spoken languages such as English, Chinese, and Spanish.   To promote accessibility and innovation, the model weights for Qwen2 are available on platforms like Hugging Face and ModelScope, along with additional resources on GitHub. Built on the Transformer architecture, the series features both dense models and a Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) model, employing advanced techniques such as Grouped Query Attention and Dual Chunk Attention to enhance performance and extend context capabilities. The pre-training phase utilized over 7 trillion tokens, significantly boosting its coding and mathematics skills.   Post-training processes included supervised fine-tuning and reinforcement learning from human feedback, aligning the models more closely with human preferences and enhancing their instruction-following capabilities. Evaluations have shown that Qwen2 outperforms various baseline models, including Mixtral-8x22B and Llama-3-70B, in both language capabilities and instruction-tuned functionalities.  Arxiv: https://lnkd.in/gjmyAK5C

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7 Tech Trends will shape 2025: ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ ✅ Crypto (easy value transfer, value storage, volatility is a feature) ✅ AI (we need it to accomplish great things) ✅ Quantum + AI (the most important challenges require quantum computation) ✅ Robots (so we can focus on more important things) ✅ Longevity biotech (largest market in the world - all people) ✅ Fusion power (because software consumes a lot of energy) ✅ Fundamental science - physics breakthroughs, it's been awhile.

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Interesting post, Frank Rotman . I'd argue that rather than try to use your markups as traction for raising funds 2, 3 and 4 , emerging managers should consider helping their startups get earlier liquidity via suggesting listing on growth exchanges like the Toronto Stock Exchange, the LSEG (London Stock Exchange Group) or the ASX . DPI > IRR or TVPI when it comes to LPs. A VC that returns >2x in 7 years to LPs is going to have a much easier time raising the next fund than a fund with an IRR or TVPI of whatever. The entire vc industry has drank the kool aid that companies should be doing >$300m in ARR before listing. The LP community needs / wants liquidity before the 12 to 14 years its currently taking to IPO in the US, however. Startups can list on the above exchanges doing $20m in revenue with 30% YoY growth, they don't have to deal with Sarb Ox compliance and follow on raises are orders of magnitude easier for a listed company. Why? There's so many more public market investors than private market investors. The only other option for Emerging managers to stand out is by getting DPI via selling secondaries to a fund like Practical Venture Capital Chris Mayo, CFA Neil Shah Delilah Panio Amit Verma Dave McClure Aman Verjee, CFA Karin Tenenboim

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🌐 What’s happening in venture capital today? Gain insights from a Founder, Venture Capitalist, and Limited Partner on the latest market trends. #venturecapital #vc #investing #fund

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VC’s Biggest Issue Altimeter’s Jamin Ball discusses what may be one of venture capital's most pressing challenges: the shifting alignment between VCs and founders. As funds grow from millions to billions, the dynamics that once drove shared success are evolving—and not always for the better. 1️⃣ How VCs Make Money: • 2% Management Fee: Covers operational costs like salaries and rent, providing steady income regardless of fund performance. • 20% Carry: A performance-based profit share that rewards VCs only when investments achieve major exits. 2️⃣ The Historic Power of Alignment: • Smaller funds in the past meant lean management fees, pushing VCs to rely on carry for wealth creation. • This created mutual goals: both VCs and founders needed big exits to achieve success. 3️⃣ The Billion-Dollar Shift: • Massive funds today generate lucrative management fees, reducing dependence on carry. • Raises questions: Is fund size prioritized over driving transformative exits, potentially misaligning long-term goals? 4️⃣ A Growing Concern: • Despite venture’s expansion, the "2 and 20" model remains unchanged. • Larger funds risk weakening the founder-VC alignment, impacting the future of startup innovation and wealth creation. How do you think the evolution of VC economics will impact startups and innovation in the future?

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We need more women leaders in venture capital.

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Worth reading: Situationsl Awareness by Leopold Aschenbrenner PDF : https://lnkd.in/gkxQ3yMD Web site: https://lnkd.in/gyJUCBhb Interesting perspective, time of course will tell.

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