The wise Jon Miller who ran AOL and recently was a top Newscorp executive is speaking today about a certain type of VC.
It reminds me of another type.
Type #1. See patterns. Pattern recognition. The world moves, things repeat, stuff comes back, you match the frame, and you know what’s happening. I thought of this listening to the way the Motorola CEO was talking today about “Motorola is the next Youtube for Google” –> e.g., this isn’t just a hardware deal that will struggle, it’s a breakout, it’s all different this time, it’s a moonshot like Youtube. I was the veteran wireless guy listening to this guy and seeing a pattern, concluding that it won’t work. OK.
Type #2. Confirmation bias is a key weakness of investors. They see what they already believe and it underlines their expectations and contrary evidence gets dismissed. To find new things you must be ready to see the world as it is now, not as it was. You must be ready to overthrow assumptions that are cemented by your past, irrelevant experience.
One of these is the smart VC, the other is the genius VC.
Not sure which.