The VC Field Guide

Conclusion

I first coined a catchphrase I use all of the time, “Everyone is an investor” or “We are all investors,” back in 2018. At that time, I was several years into my venture capital career, and while I was simultaneously figuring out how VCs made investing decisions, I was also figuring out why customers made purchasing decisions. And that's when I eventually realized how much of life was a series of investment decisions.

And I am not alone in that thinking. Whether it's the family huddled over their breakfast table calculating paychecks and bills, or the college student pondering their first full‐time job, or the millions of people trying to figure out 401(k)s and workplace stock options, or the person deciding if they should rejoin the workforce after years, everyone is making investments all the time. Whether it's explicitly stated or written down by a person or left as an idea, everyone is producing hypotheses and betting largely on guesses about the future that they see. What drives those decisions? How do we, consistently, make sure that our hypotheses and bets lead to more winners than losers at the investment table?

In this book I have looked at the issue of how people make decisions in the largely opaque venture capital industry and, over years of thinking, listening to others, and experimenting on my own, I have been able to create a framework that works for me and will work for you, too. The puzzle of how VCs make decisions gnawed at me both personally and ...