
Original Bessemer Investment Memos for Shopify, Twilio, LinkedIn, Pinterest - sethbannon
https://www.bvp.com/memos
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tschwimmer
Extremely valuable to see how VCs thing. It's interesting to see how the
different partners approach the memo differently (some focusing on metrics,
others focusing more on product) and also how it evolves over time. Thanks to
Bessemer for making this available.

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dpifke
I would love to see the same for some of their investments which didn't pan
out.

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texasbigdata
Might be optically, legally and reputation ally difficult. In addition they
might not bother papering rejections.

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OJFord
I think GP means failed rather than rejected investments. Still optically and
reputationally difficult though, but could cherry-pick (as they surely have
here) ones that were very cautiously optimistic that the company had a slim
chance of being very successful or whatever. (I mean, more than that's true of
all of them.)

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0xDEEPFAC
Nice to see projections and figures for these companies but...

I wonder when reality will hit these non-earning tech stocks. The P/E ratios
are just absurd. Surely the FED can't hold the dam for much longer?

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shakezula
The thing is - it might never hit.

If the market has assumed the risk, the model of a tech stock might have
fundamentally changed.

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0xDEEPFAC
Hmm, I suppose it's different this time?

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samnwa
Are these memos redacted in some way? Would there be a separate diligence memo
or is this the sort of final summary on why an investment would be made?

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gumby
They look like the letters to the LPs as opposed to the memo a partner writes
when they want their partners to approve the investment.

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hartem_
Did any VC ever publish similarly detailed analysis of companies that they
didn’t invest in and regretted later?

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staysaasy
It's not quite as detailed, but BVP actually published their "anti-portfolio"
from back in the day which is exactly you're asking about:
[https://www.bvp.com/anti-portfolio/](https://www.bvp.com/anti-portfolio/)

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anujabro
Great find!

Rarely get to see how others think on deals. Led me to try this out with my
own substack.

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bsder
Nominally successful companies--However, when I find myself (generally
unwillingly) interacting with any of these companies currently, I find myself
wishing for the vengeful fires of a thousand suns to burn them painfully into
microfine ash.

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luxpir
I had a similar thought, if not so colourful.

Patting themselves on the back for supporting _these_ companies (aside from
Twilio) seems short-sighted to me. More gatekeepers, more bloat, more greed.
Just what the internet needs.

> In retrospect, the early products themselves are barely recognizable today.
> Rather, passionate, analytical and relentless founders zigged and zagged
> their way to that elusive “product-market fit”

I wonder to what extent the founders' early visions had to be eroded to the
lowest common denominator.

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dpflan
Do you think that founders’ change in equity could be a proxy for the “vision
erosion” you’re thinking about? I’m trying to think of others data point other
than the founders stating their perspective (which may not happen publicly).

