For those further along in their VC/PE careers: what separates average/good investors from truly great ones? What habits, mental models or hard lessons shaped how you think about investing, and what do you wish you'd known or done differently early on?
Broader perspective on how the best investors upskilled and grew throughout their careers would be especially valuable.
One obvious factor is time. Years of focus in a specific area compounds in ways that are hard to shortcut: deep industry knowledge, pattern recognition from seeing many cycles, a strong network and a reputation in your space. But beyond that, what are the more tangible and less obvious things that investors early in their careers can actually be mindful of and implement to become a standout.
Bullshit. Success in VC is about access to the hottest opportunities, which is about people, which means networking is the only differentiating factor.
Respectfully, you're in IB, not a VC. Saying networking and access is the "only" differentiating factor is laughable and actually discredits your comment For example, you're completely overlooking a massive component of the VC ecosystem - all the early-stage companies that are founded by either first-time or really any founder who hasn't had a massively successful exit which then allows them to have their pick of VC when they found their next startup. You're speaking to that subset of "highly competitive" deals.
I do agree with you though that networking is incredibly important - and that takes time and success to "unlock" more exclusive/high-value relationships.
Nah IB partner is right. It’s all about networking and getting access to the best companies. I work in GE that does some VC deals and access / networking is the hardest part of winning those deals. A lot of high flying VC deals are kinda no brainer in terms of value prop, market opportunity, and founder quality - getting the look is the hard part (unless you’re sequoia or a16z)
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