The Future of Venture
The democratization of technology stacks, education, capital, and mobility suggests that the idea of Sand Hill Road — the concept of specific venture firms adding value to their portfolio companies — is dissipating before our eyes. In fact, nothing is further from the truth.
When I came to Stanford in 2001 the Twin Towers had just come down, the internet bubble had popped, and saying you wanted to work in startups was considered a condition slightly north of Stage 4 cancer. To my surprise startups were not that cool. Wall Street was cool. This made the few of us who wanted to build things kindred spirits. We found each other in the basements and back alleys of Stanford’s dorms, engineering quads, and club meetups. We were fighting against the cultural current.
I have a scarred memory in my brain of the Stanford GSB business plan competition, where a group of Sand Hill road venture capitalists told my friend and I that we “had no team”. It was fuel for motivation. But when I begged to join Mayfield Fellows, they replied that it was for “graduate students only”. I emailed literally every famous VC on Sand Hill Road and none responded. To my horror, I learned Stanford was not actually a welcoming place for kids trying to do startups. This sounds hard to believe nowadays, but that’s how it was.
Then one day I got a reply. The ONLY reply came from a new VC named Peter Thiel. He said come up to SF and let’s get coffee. We chatted for 30 minutes and he immediately got it. Peter linked me up with a young phenom, Joe Lonsdale, whom I already knew as a friend and the smartest student at Stanford. Their secret project was called Palantir and the first meetup involved Peter and Joe brainstorming the industries the company would fix. I was hooked.
At my Stanford graduation in 2005, Steve Jobs delivered the keynote. He gave the speech a dying man gives before he dies. Jobs’ challenge was to own entrepreneurship, own the world’s problems, and fix them with your friends. He asked us to be intentional. By this point, he was preaching to the choir. I was already on it.
Palantir later turned into a roaring success, but not all of my ventures have worked. I failed attempting to build a social network with Lady Gaga. Only later was I successful in building a cloud automation platform called NodePrime that we sold to Ericsson. All the while, and even to this day, I have mentored 5–10 Stanford undergraduates a year. I now mentor about 100 overall. I have tried to deliver on the promise to build the network that I felt wasn’t there at Stanford in the early 2000s, as have others.
As we move into the 2020s the old investors from the 80s will finally retire from venture. They will leave the industry in good hands. The young VCs of today are builders, entrepreneurs, and former operators. There are even a few dreamers! I work for 8VC because I am fundamentally bullish on the rising generation of entrepreneurs. Our firm eats and drinks startups. We work like dogs. We fix the back of the furniture so it’s perfect, even if no one sees. Venture is a craft. It’s not a sport or talent. It’s not something you interview your way into. It’s something you earn over 20,000 hours of hard work, and I feel we have done that work. I am optimistic that the next crew of investors fits this mold and understands the privilege of assigning capital. As former entrepreneurs and operators, we understand that the entrepreneur is queen. We are committed to a hands off approach when a founder wants space, and to calling in the reinforcements when we can help.
8VC BUILD is what I’m most excited about. We are opening a new arm of our firm to produce companies. We get in the shit with our Entrepreneurs in Residence, roll up our sleeves, and build things together. This active hands-on version of venture is the future of the discipline. It’s no longer enough to drive your Tesla to Rosewood and drink wine, see pitches and pretend to feel the entrepreneur’s pain, as the stereotype goes.
8VC is going to intentionally build a large, powerful, socially-transformative firm with strong values. We are going to win. We are going to win a lot. We are going to establish the bar for what a new young awesome firm needs to be and we’re still going to be in the game many years from now. I am excited to put on my badge and gun for 8VC everyday, and I will continue to love the game, every aspect of it. University to IPO.
Alex Moore
Partner, 8VC
8VC is a San Francisco based venture capital firm investing in industry-transforming companies. For more information, or to sign up for our newsletter visit www.8vc.com
