Sarah Drinkwater

A lack of trust is why many marketplaces have struggled (e.g. Couchsurfing) and why those that cracked the trust problem (e.g. Airbnb) have gone on to do exceptionally well.

First, most emerging firms raise small funds. Smaller funds generally outperform, as they can participate meaningfully in early rounds and a single outlier has the potential to generate strong fund-level performance, even if the fund is only able to garner modest ownership.

Roelof Botha brought up this same topic in a recent Invest Like The Best episode in an even more poignant way: "Imagine the venture business in a decade, and Sequoia is gone. We presided over the decline of Sequoia, this team, the people here in this room, it was us. What happened? What did we not do?"