Gil Dibner is GP of Angular Ventures, an inception stage venture fund for determined technical founders in Europe and Israel.
Gil is also a thoughtful writer, and was kind enough to spend some time with me to discuss his essay the Five Emerging VC Swimlanes for the latest edition of Investors Who Talk Smart, with Random Walk.
What followed was a surprisingly frank (and fun) discussion about the current state of venture, chock full of differentiated perspectives from a guy who just sees it (and does it) differently.
Unkillable Rambos? Yeah, we got those too.
As per always, I recommend listening on 1.5x speed.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.
ICYMI
The best way to catch up on everything you missed is to skim the archive
There’s a lot of goodies. You don’t want to miss ‘em.
Intro to Angular Ventures and why it does it what it does
00:00 Introduction to Angular Ventures and Gil Dibner
02:40 Evolving Milestones in Venture Capital
04:58 VC as capital partners: 3 kinds of decisions
08:19 Navigating Breakeven and Fundability
Structural changes in VC (and the incentives that matter)
13:22 Structural principal-agent problems in VC that determine what gets funded (and what doesn’t)
15:47 Loss of the apprenticeship model reflects a fundamental change to VC incentives
Venture swimlanes (and who’s swimming and who’s not)
17:31 Venture Swimlanes
21:54 Challenges for Mid-Sized Venture Funds
23:52 Real story behind the rise of GPs going out on their own
Investing in illegibility (and the Real F-ing Business Fund)
25:31 Investing in illegible stuff
28:19 Building Real Businesses: The RFB Fund Philosophy
29:55 Relationships with founders as a key to business survival
32:59 VC’s Earned Insight: close work and hard conversations
36:15 Focus on the one thing you can control, and optimize
Earned insights (of various sorts)
39:02 The Need for Cross-Pollination in Venture Capital
39:36 Of M&A and Liquidity, and running a constant process
41:48 A quick hack for more effective board meetings
42:59 Is the AI frenzy repeating the mistakes of cycles past?
Youtube link for those youtube lovers.
