Ben Gilbert: evaluation

Transcript context

…I don't know if you see this, but being VCs, and we invest in some of the wonderful founders and work with folks, but this is really like a disease that I've noticed over the years. Startup founders and management teams look for the worst in their competition and they make themselves feel better about how great they're doing. We're guilty of it too, but that is the wrong way to look at it. A much better way to look at it is it doesn't matter what they're doing wrong, look at what they're doing right and steal it. Most times you talk to a founder, of course, most times we talk to founders, they're pitching for investment. They're going to have a different posture. It's, oh, yeah, that is another company in our space. Yeah, here's why they're doing it wrong. Here's why that's the wrong approach. If you look at a Jensen Huang take on this, his would be like, oh, it turns out, actually, everyone else doing three-sided polygons that was right, so we're going to do everything we can to immediately move to that. You're right. Sam woke up every day and thought, how can we go find something a competitor is doing right and steal it? A core part of being a founder, I think, especially these days, is identifying something that you don't like in the world or that could be done better and then doing it better. That's how companies and products get started. But once you've done that, you've done that, you're doing it. Now go make it better. It doesn't matter what everybody else is doing wrong. I just love that one.…

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