Who has the next billion-dollar idea in Silicon Valley? If you’re like me, you don’t give a flying fuck.
But it is interesting that an industry so determined to inform our lives with algorithms, Big Data and Deep Learning basically throws shit at a wall and sees what will stick when it comes to doling out venture capital. Why wouldn’t VC investors use a more scientific Moneyball approach? I would guess it has something to do with ego.
From Claire Cain Miller at the New York Times:
Many people think they know what the founder of a tech start-up looks like: a 20-something man who spent his childhood playing on computers in his basement and who later dropped out of college to become a billionaire entrepreneur.
That describes Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. But there’s just one thing: They are anomalies.
Most tech start-up founders who have successfully raised venture capital have much less unusual résumés, according to data analysis by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business. The average founder is 38, with a master’s degree and 16 years of work experience.
Yet if someone like that came to a top venture capitalist’s office, he or she could very well be turned away. Start-up investors often accept pitches only from people they know, and rely heavily on gut feelings, intuition and what’s worked before. “I can be tricked by anyone who looks like Mark Zuckerberg,” Paul Graham, co-founder of the seed investor Y Combinator, once said.
That strategy, however, means that investors are likely to be missing some good bets.•
