Signal Leverage

In other words, dominance in a market, not aggregate GMV across many markets, is the goal of any marketplace and ultimately what determines equity value.

TAM arbitrage: The core idea is that if you, as an investor or a founder, can do the work and understand a market better than anyone else, and appreciate that its actually bigger than anyone gives it credit for, then investors can pay higher prices, founders can be more aggressive with burn, and experiment more broadly.

This is one key insight in Ben Thompson’s famous Aggregation Theory: modern marketplaces get their power from aggregating the demand side. And that’s a much better position than the old way of trying to own the supply side.

Money entering a market boosts returns and reduces volatility, leading to very strong (realized) performance. This attracts more money, which improves performance even more. A positive feedback loop ensues.

Venture firms should aggressively ally with these disruptors. While tier 1 funds will worry more about Tiger Global, solo investors have changed the market’s dynamics. Proactive firms will adapt, empowering these managers and benefiting from their favorable brand and impressive reach.

This has a significant impact on the competitive advantages of a firm in the market as it scales. When party rounds were the standard course for smaller seed firms, connections were the scarce skill set, enabling access to deals led by other reputable firms. As these funds have become larger and rounds have become increasingly tighter, conviction b... See more

Funds taking a more concentrated approach and investing in fewer companies most likely are assuming that one of their investments has an extremely large outcome while the rest either go to zero or whose exits are much more modest. This is called the power law dynamic and historically, this can be seen happening often in venture capital. Funds takin... See more