Thought Leadership Threads

QED Investors has invested in 150+ startups over 14 years and consistently delivered outstanding results. Today, we announced a new $1B+ vehicle to continue on this journey.

In honor of this milestone, here are my 14 biggest insights from 14 years at QED: 👇🧵

The idea that each company has its own culture isn’t questioned. Most people claim that it’s important and a contributor to an organization’s success or failure.

But guess what? People struggle when asked to explain what culture is!

A framework and thoughts on the topic:

Do you want to know a secret about Board meetings?

The secret: They aren’t unique!

Seasoned Board Members discover that Board meetings fall into very distinct categories.

What follows is a classification framework and a few insightful nuggets (including a soundtrack).

Consumers are rational most of the time. They usually make decisions based on simple dimensions like price and functionality.

But we’ve entered a new era in which many consumers are making decisions based on “Beyond The Rational” criteria. Unpacked: 🧵👇

Most successful startups find product-market fit by doing a single thing better or cheaper than other available options. But most startups struggle to crack the code on additional products.

Here are 5 common fallacies to avoid if you want to expand beyond a wedge product:

For 10+ years, fintech startups were in “IPO or bust” mode because there weren’t many active buyers in the ecosystem.

But buyers are back which has profound implications on the outcome distribution for Founders and VCs. This is DEFINITELY worth internalizing. Unpacked:

Yesterday I tweeted an unpopular opinion that deserves unpacking.

Valuations are up. Unicorns are getting birthed faster than ever before. Multiples have hit all-time peaks. New investors are aggressively entering the VC ecosystem.

Who’s to blame? What does it mean? Unpacked:

After months of hard work you’ve managed to raise a comfortable amount of new of capital for your #startup. Now what?

A simple thread for Founders and VCs about shifting from a “need to raise” to a “need to prove” mindset.

If you want to constantly produce top quartile returns, you have to find at least one “return the fund” (RTF) investment every fund.

Here’s a simple exercise that’s helped me spot 1-2 RTFs every fund: