Venture Capitalists at Work: How VCs Identify and Build Billion-Dollar Successes

Second, we launched quickly and iterated.

When you present to a VC, your approach should be, “I am comfortable right now. I want your money to scale up.” VCs love that.

People with “great DNA” see problems—and they roll up their sleeves and try to solve them. It takes a very special person to do that.

Besides the virality and viral channels, what else stands out to you in a great product? Lee: Engagement. Do I go back and use the product on a consistent basis? Is the experience such that I am getting value out of it consistently? It does not have to be every hour or every day, but is there something there that is new and insightful on at least a

the real question is, why will your product stand out? One way to measure that is when people get emotionally excited about product, you know you are on the right path.

Think about how an idea from a twenty-eight-year-old kid in Chicago [Andrew Mason] turned into a multi-billion-dollar business. That was not possible five or ten years ago. Opportunities like this are a possibility because the markets are so big. If you believe in the product, you believe in the use case, and you have the right team—you should ride

I wish that every CEO was really perfect in telling their company story. If they do that, they can raise money, they can sell products, and they can build partnerships. Can they really tell the story of their company—who we are, why we are here, and why we are valuable. That sounds pretty easy. It is hard.

What are some of the signs that you are way too early? Wagner: The key sign is when you’re spending all your time educating the market and the market never seems to be much readier. There is always an education phase when you’re doing a market-creation type of project. But if that education is never drawing to a close and you’re in constant educati

Maples: We do not even think that much about our portfolio. Every company we look at, is there a chance it could be something huge if things go our way? To us, there is nothing else. There is no other question that matters. There is no other analysis that we care about. That is all there is.