Disqus - Latest Comments for pkedrosky

Re: When VCs Don’t Bullshit You

Paul Kedrosky — Fri, 01 Aug 2014 22:05:39 -0000

I have confidence in your ability to say No. I just prefer to follow a game theoretic approach in these matters, and make credible commitments to being irresponsible, thus reducing the likelihood of being asked to, you know, help.

Re: When VCs Don’t Bullshit You

Paul Kedrosky — Fri, 01 Aug 2014 20:10:09 -0000

Good post, Brad. Of course, now every fundraising would-be VC in the world is going to tail-waggingly show up here, roll over, and try to get you to rub their belly. People constantly confuse "No bullshit" with "No no's".

Re: Fun Friday: The AVC Book Club

Paul Kedrosky — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 11:01:13 -0000

Fred -- I just re-read first three books of Herbert's Dune series. Highly re-recommended.

Re: Reflections on Turning 46

Paul Kedrosky — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 20:28:24 -0000

Yes, so long as you also move to Base 365 counting, which I strongly encourage.

Re: Reflections on Turning 46

Paul Kedrosky — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 20:24:09 -0000

Happy birthday, Brad.

And wrt future birthdays, aging, etc., it's really a birthday recognition issue. Since there is no auditing, however, I suggest doing what I have done: transition the age-accounting books to a non-GAAP biannual birthday recognition system. It has worked wonders here, to the point that I'm contemplating stretching out birthday recognition to triennial. Screw PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

Helpfully, your friend ...

Paul

Re: Is There Anything I Didn’t Ask You That I Should Be Asking?

Paul Kedrosky — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 10:48:15 -0000

I get this question constantly from media people, and it drives me mad. I used to take it seriously and try to engage ("Well, I guess there's this..."); and then I began messing about ("Everything I told you in this call was made up!"). Now, however, I just say "No, there isn't".

Re: Well That Was Fucking Brutal

Paul Kedrosky — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 23:37:25 -0000

Just had mine. Can't afford to be flu-bound, nor be Patient Zero to transmit it to my kids. I'll call off the bfeld APB tho.

Re: Storm Clouds

Paul Kedrosky — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 20:33:37 -0000

My ego's big enough that I don't need validation, but ... I feel validated for my "super-seed crash" post last summer.

http://paul.kedrosky.com/ar...

Re: The VC Market: An Adaptive System

Paul Kedrosky — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 01:11:49 -0000

Nicely done, Roger. Clearly argued and persuasive (and not just because I agree).

Re: The VC Market: An Adaptive System

Paul Kedrosky — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 01:11:18 -0000

Good musing, Roger. Nicely argued and expressed.

Re: Angel Liquidity

Paul Kedrosky — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 00:31:03 -0000

As you'll likely remember, Fred, $15b/year is roughly the number that came out of my Kauffman paper on the subject last year. We'll be doing a follow-up shortly.

Re: The Panel Pile Up

Paul Kedrosky — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 12:29:48 -0000

Right. Oh, you're _that_ interchangeable real estate agent. I thought
you were the _other_ interchangeable real estate agent.

Re: The Panel Pile Up

Paul Kedrosky — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 12:12:21 -0000

I give them to my kids who white out the names and use them for their secret spy agency. $0.25 per mystery solved.

Re: The Panel Pile Up

Paul Kedrosky — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 12:11:22 -0000

I stopped carrying biz cards a few years ago as well. How hard is it to find me? Why do you want a piece of paper with my name on it? If it's because you think you'll forget who I was then you didn't want to talk to me very badly in the first place, did you.

Re: Old VC firms: get ready to be disrupted

Paul Kedrosky — Sun, 02 May 2010 15:34:10 -0000

Great comments, Chris. I have made the same point repeatedly (and to little avail) to institutional investors around the world in last few years.

I made this point again on a Milken Conference panel last week in Los Angeles. Serial persistence is over. Old VC brands are dead. The members of the last Midas List to make money, a decade ago, are now all pushing 60 and older.

Re: The Venture Diet Is Working

Paul Kedrosky — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 12:03:43 -0000

Until venture starts delivering competitive returns the asset allocated to it by LPs will shrink. An industry that doesn't deliver competitive returns to its investors isn't sustainable, and therefore can't help entrepreneurs.

While you might say "then make better investments", the reality is that venture, given ten-year fund cycles, is still suffering from capital inflows in the dot-com daze. We are only now approaching pre-bubble normalcy with respect to a pace of investing that delivered competitive returns in 1997 and earlier.

Re: How To Get Me To Hang Up On You

Paul Kedrosky — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 10:42:06 -0000

As do I. With hundreds of emails, many of which are about meetings and/or interviews, if I tried to get in the middle of it odds are a much lower percentage of them would ever happen -- as I'm actually the one in the meetings and interviews. It is one of the main reasons I have an assistant.

Re: Why Social Beats Search

Paul Kedrosky — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 10:43:42 -0000

As a point of Fred-ish corroboration, after my bleat about the awfulness of Google search in finding dishwasher information, among the more interesting side-effects has been all the people in my social graph who have emailed me useful information on dishwashers. This social-+-email thing could be huge -- huge I tell you.

Re: Sovereign Foie Gras

Paul Kedrosky — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 17:33:30 -0000

The key, however, is that the end sovereign result will be highly asymmetric: Some countries that shouldn't be able to sell debt (read: U.S., or possibly U.K.) will be able to, and some others, with less dire domestic balance sheets, will be starved for capital and forced to default..

Re: 2009…The Year of IDEAS!

Paul Kedrosky — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 00:30:17 -0000

Foods:
- Carne asada burrito (from Papa Chitos in San Diego)
- Pepperoni, mushroom and spinach pizza (from Bronz Pizza in SD)
- Salmon sashimi
- Lamb vindaloo
- Bi bim bap

Re: Clive Thompson returns to blogging

Paul Kedrosky — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 11:33:33 -0000

I love Clive's writing. Smart, lucid and geek-abetting.

Re: Hope…Won’t Work in the Stock Market, but Politics?

Paul Kedrosky — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 16:32:35 -0000

I always find it much better in these conversations to wait for Dick C to say something, and just say "I agree". In this I only mostly agree -- Obama irritates the tar out of me much of the time -- but I still agree.

Re: PR industry: Still grasping for a clue

Paul Kedrosky — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 08:52:03 -0000

I'm a big fan of Spoonerisms, so you're delong with a pro here.

Re: PR industry: Still grasping for a clue

Paul Kedrosky — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 01:27:55 -0000

"Rocket surgery"?

Re: We Need A New Path To Liquidity

Paul Kedrosky — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:19:22 -0000

Agreed Fred. My worry is that we're really seeing here is the market saying venture doesn't need to be as large an asset class any more, the companies being created and capital required don't warrant it.

That is another way of reading a shrinking exit market.