I’ve learned that there are two kinds of mistakes in venture capital. There’s the mistake of commission, in which you invest in or go work for a company that fails. And then there’s the mistake of omission, in which you don’t invest in Google or don’t go to work at Facebook in 2005.
The longer you’re in this industry, the more you learn that the mistakes of omission are much, much worse. You had it. It was in your hand, and you could have done it, yet you didn’t do it. You weren’t open enough; you found some way to talk yourself out of it. You listened to your parents.
It’s funny. A lot of times, the criticisms that you paid attention to were correct. But the fact is that they just didn’t matter. If you want to find something wrong with a company, you can find something wrong. But if it has enough good things going for it, the bad things don’t matter. We use this phrase: invest in strength, not in lack of weakness.
Author: Marc Andreessen
Source: McKinsey Quarterly
Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital
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