RSS at Feed BurnerTom Perkins on Venture Voice
This week Venture Voice has a great interview with Tom Perkins of Kleiner Perkins.
Most investors generally talk about how they prefer to invest in people over the ideas. Some claim that there are plenty of ideas out there and it is unlikely you will come across a totally unique idea. Execution is generally considered the hard part. And that is why I was surprised to hear Tom say he invests in ideas, not people. He supports his claim because, first of all, people with good ideas are generally good people. He says he is also able to build a good team to help support the company. It is hard to argue with a person with so much success in investing in companies.
He goes on to talk about building a team. He says you don’t need a good team right away. A main reason is because if you are seeking to build the best team that you can, it is unlikely the best people won’t come on right away when company is in its highest risk state. So you need to prove the company has potential and when there is less risk and a proven potential, it is easier to get successful and experienced people to lead the team.
That point does support the idea that the team is very important, but it seems Tom and his team have enough experience building companies that they can provide the assistance necessary to get the company to the point of being able to prove the potential.
The host of Venture Voice, Greg, asked Tom about their “ICU” for failing companies. Tom said they put failing companies in an ICU where the companies will either fail and they shit everything off completely or they make it out. The idea of “killing” the company completely even if there is some potential left is interesting. It reminds me of one of the central ideas behind Seth Godin’s “The Dip”. You don’t want to dedicate resources to things without a great deal of potential. You have limited resources and need to make sure you are focusing them on things with the most potential.
Hopefully you get a chance to check this podcast, I highly recommend Venture Voice and only wish it was done on a more frequent basis.