Chris Douvos was interviewed on Capital Allocators last week. For the most part – I found the interview to be fairly standard stuff. However I did enjoy hearing about the change in Silicon Valley from ~20 years ago to today, specifically with respect to focus.
Chris mentioned that in the past, one could essentially boil the ocean as a VC and meet with everyone around, whether other VCs or potential investments. Today, with so much more deal flow and market participants, one can’t boil the ocean and take all meetings.
Chris mitigates it with having thematic focus and certain constraints on potential investments. That allows him to just say no to certain meetings and not feel FOMO when they turn out to be marquee opportunities.
I relate to this – as the stock market serves up way too many opportunities than any investor has time for. Moreover, it serves up way too many opportunities that may seem enticing but are too complicated for me. Thus having a focus on yield securities (whether high or low yield, public or private) helps narrow the field dramatically. I also try to avoid business models that are single product / business focused – and look for diversified entities. Without this simple focus I’d be wholly overwhelmed and playing a game that others can do 1000x better than me.
