Reading Investments Through Their Decisions

Case studies are most useful when they recover the decisions and uncertainties behind an outcome. In venture this is especially difficult, because outcomes are extreme and memory is selective. A celebrated investment may have included an unwise decision rescued by an outlier; a total loss may have followed a reasonable decision overtaken by fraud. The task is to separate what the investor could have known from what happened afterwards, and to identify what reveals a repeatable capability.

The eight cases below illustrate paying for a superior product, accepting founder control, concentrating ownership, governing a controlling founder, matching a valuation framework to the economics, diligencing governance in a competitive round, creating a company around a platform, and originating a company to capture founder-level ownership. Figures are those reported in the research companion's investment entries, which record their sources and confidence. Reported values are not audited fund results, and the interpretations are analytical judgments rather than claims that one decision caused an outcome.