Sublime

Perhaps more important than the venture firm itself is the specific partner that leads the investment—because, almost always, the partner who leads the round will join the startup’s board of directors. “We have always, always, always solved for the person joining the board,” Michelle Zatlyn, the co-founder of Cloudflare, told me. “It didn’t matter

As we said, even the best venture investors have a portfolio, but investors who understand the power law make as few investments as possible.

Founders tend to have these “Why now?” insights without recognizing how profound they are. When I started my blogging company, Weblogs, Inc., in 2004, I had a very simple thesis: I believed that great new writers publishing five short, unfiltered posts a day would get more readers than established journalists writing one story, edited by a half doz