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0 pointsuntangle7y ago0 comments

I think that you are over-generalizing. VCs use a number of disparate investment theses, including gut feel and betting-the-team in a "hot" (trendy?) space. Another dynamic is funding a team that previously produced a big win for the VC firm (as appears to be the case here).

And do you have a reference for the "fantastically high batting average" of US DoD research? Are you familiar with the SBIR program, for example?

I would judge that neither DoD/DARPA nor VCs have a great batting average. But both have some spectacular wins.

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graycat7y ago

> VCs use a number of disparate investment theses

To be more clear, I believe that such other issues, often mentioned, some on the Web sites of VCs, are nearly all just smoke to hide what I listed as the main issues. In particular, of course, I was pushing back against the statement I quoted from the OP -- their statement was much worse than mine!

But here on HN, I warn entrepreneurs who have already sent 100+ e-mail pitch decks to VCs: I gave my best guess on really how VCs select deals.

Batting average reference? I'm not considering the SBIR program at all. E.g., GPS, coding theory, e.g., as part of radar, lots more in high end radar, e.g., phased arrays, Keyhole (a Hubble, before Hubble, but aimed at the earth), the SR-71, the F-117 stealth, the SOSUS nets and adaptive beam forming sonar, some of ABMs, a huge range of parts of the SSBNs, high bypass turbo fan engines, the nuclear power reactors on the submarines and air craft carriers of the US Navy, and much more were not SBIR projects. I am drawing from early in my career in applied math and computing for problems of US national security within 100 miles of the Washington Monument and comparing with what I've seen in VC work.

The Navy's work on rail guns looks darned promising.

For DARPA, yes, they flop a lot, on their batting average, much more than the rest of DoD, but DARPA also has some spectacular wins. E.g., of course, TCP/IP. And they fooled me on their autonomous vehicle "challenge": While I believe that autonomous vehicles are a long way from being ready for real roads with real traffic, I can believe that so far already the DoD has gotten some good progress for some cases of logistics. E.g., one of the issues in Gulf War I was truck drivers. There an issue was that a lot of the drivers for the US were women, and the Saudis didn't like women driving vehicles. So, there was a trick, a deal: The US and the Saudis agreed that when the women were in uniform and driving US military vehicles, they were "soliders" and not women. Otherwise they were still women and could not drive!!!

Uh, the robots of Boston Dynamics are impressive, maybe still less good on legs than a cockroach, but already or well on the way to being useful for the US Army.

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