Marc Andreessen: The VC business is a game of outliers.
“We have this concept—invest in strength vs. lack of weakness.”
“The default way to do venture capital is to check boxes: really good founder, really good idea, really good product, really good initial customers. Check, check, check, check.”
“But what you find with those checkbox deals is, they often don’t have something that makes them really remarkable and special. They don’t have an extreme strength that makes them an outlier.”
“On the other side, the companies that have really extreme strengths often have serious flaws. So one of the cautionary lessons of venture capital is—if you don’t invest on the basis of serious flaws, you don’t invest in most of the big winners.”