Tom White

A great deal has been written about what constitutes Venture Capital and what does not (including by this very author) in these seventy years. Though many different things to many different people, Justice Potter Stewart’s famous dictum in Jacobellis v. Ohio works for our purposes:I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I... See more

The more complex or valuable is whatever you’re trying to sell, the more important it is for you to build a world around that idea, where other people can walk in, explore, and hang out – without you having to be there with them the whole time. You need to build a world so rich and captivating that others will want to spend time in it, even if... See more

The result is that the New Faith, which rejects nearly every fundamental principle of liberal modernity – the existence of an objective and immutable reality that can be discovered by reason; the scientific method; an enduring human nature; the primacy of the sovereign individual over the collective; impartial equality before the law; secular... See more

Like New York, the internet never arrests its massive sprawl. Instead, it exists as complex adaptive system that renders senses overworked and synapses under-rested.To open any app is to wade into frenzied maelstrom whipped by gale-force winds. Whether requests, reminders, or retweets, waves and winds alike pummel your attention as you try your... See more

Like most things, though simple, it is not easy. After all, the map is seldom the territory.To hammer this home, below are two things Venture Capital is decidedly not:If you are funding a company to “pour gas on the fire” and replicate/scale already-validated results, that is not venture capital. If you are funding a company to “run the same,... See more

On Failure: I think seeing failure is really important. It’s important to learn the lesson of what didn't work, sometimes more so than learning the lesson of what did work.On Networking: Replace the word networking with relationships. Networking feels transactional; nobody wants to be networked. Your job in your 20s is to forge relationships and... See more