Sarah Drinkwater

Third, most emerging fund managers do not have to worry about succession plans or manage an existing brand and track record. They can be focused on deliverying on their chosen strategy,

If it is true that the era of collective experimentation online was short lived, then the next interesting question is why. One hypothesis that I’m intrigued with is rooted less in technological changes and more in social ones. Shirky’s dictum that revolutions start from behavioral change rather than from technological change helps us also explain... See more

Asking friends what would kill their firms, I heard; Performance. Succession planning. Politics. There was plenty of overlap in their answers. What stuck out to me the most was how a lot of these fears closely aligned with the revolutions already going on in venture that I've been writing about. The productization and improvement in a venture funds... See more

They win through speed, empathy, and expertise. By avoiding firm politics, solo investors can move more quickly, committing to a round in hours or days. Many are current or previous operators, giving them empathy for founders’ journeys. Some bring unique expertise to the table, too.

The core problem is not that open source projects are not sharing the money received. The problem is that, in total numbers, open source is not getting enough money. $2.5 million is not enough. To put this number into perspective, startups get typically much more than that.