In a survey done by the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, when nine hundred venture capitalists were asked about what they considered the most important factor in the success of their portfolio companies, timing came in second, only after the makeup of the team, a testament to the importance of market timing above many other factors.

Fundraising is an integral part of the success story of billion-dollar startups, and it is true that a large portion of the ones I studied had an easy time raising money, round after round, from brand-name investors. Yet startups that didn’t enjoy this level of attention from top VCs were also able to achieve billion-dollar outcomes.

market. I listen to many founders, and some think they want to challenge every single assumption in an industry, and I push back. Most successful founders were challenging one or two major assumptions in their industry. They’re creating a solution because they think there are one or two assumptions that just make no sense. They’ve asked why, why, w

Pivots are extremely common, and the startup community generally welcomes them. Many of the companies that have eventually seen billion-dollar valuations started with a completely different idea. The founders made radical changes along the way, a testament to the fact that they were not missionaries about a specific idea but rather mostly had the b

Andreessen follows this credo: “Invest in strength versus…

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If you have to list five bullet points for the problems you are solving, and five bullet points for your value propositions, and bullet points for why now is the best time, think harder. Get to the root. Try to understand the one thing that you really are solving, who is really the customer, the one key value proposition, the one reason that makes

Root Insurance had an IPO in 2020 valuing it at over $6 billion.

it took us eleven years until the company was acquired.

As far as billion-dollar companies go, most investors are lucky to have one in their portfolio. In my study, I found a number of angel investors who had five or more. Many of these top angels were former founders. Elad Gil (who started Mixer Labs and Color Genomics), David Sacks (PayPal, Yammer), Dave Morin (Path), Jason Calacanis (Weblogs.com), Je