"Marc Andreessen on the dangers of VC's error of omission"

"Venture doesn't run on leverage. It's asymmetric. You could only lose 1x, but you could potentially make 1000x. There's two errors in venture: there's the error of commission - where you invest in the thing that fails - and the error of omission - where you don't invest in the thing that succeeds." Marc Andreessen on venture math and how the error of omission is the far more impactful of the two. Some struggle to understand this.

🚨 Some plays don’t announce themselves loudly, but they attract the right kinds of people, move faster than you'd expect, and quietly start bending the market around them. RaceFor.AI is one of those. The signal is in who's leaning in early, how fast the momentum is compounding, and who isn’t talking publicly about it, yet. In #VC, everyone worries about backing the wrong thing. But missing the right one? That’s the kind of omission that quietly reshapes the board and your future. The kind you only recognize in hindsight. There’s a window here where the upside is still massively asymmetric, and the cap table still tells the right story. That window won’t stay open long. Invest in the ones that don't need to shout. Invest in RaceFor.AI, or AI will race ahead of you. 🗣️

To not have understood this, is why the German economy is in decline while the US is growing 4% per year.

"Venture doesn't run on leverage. It's asymmetric. You could only lose 1x, but you could potentially make 1000x. There's two errors in venture: there's the error of commission - where you invest in the thing that fails - and the error of omission - where you don't invest in the thing that succeeds."

This has been the hardest thing to explain in VC, surprisingly even to experienced investors from Angel to PE. Most of the risk in VC is backing away from your initial commitment after some initial headwinds or failures. You’re creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure or low returns by making fewer bets.

9 out of 10 new investors lose money in their first year. New investors make the same mistakes. They look for a quick win.  They hear a hot tip, get excited, and put their money in without asking necessary questions. These are the mistakes new investors make: 1. They follow the crowd Everyone's talking about AI? They invest in AI. By the time everyone knows about it, the easy money is already gone. 2. They don't understand what they are investing in. If you can't explain the business in simple words, you shouldn't invest in it. 3 . They fall for the pitch, not the proof.  If a founder's pitch gets you excited, but there are no customers and no revenue, you are funding a dream that never becomes a business. 4. They don't do the math.  How does this company actually make money? When will it make money? What needs to happen for my investment to grow? If you don't know these answers, don't invest. At IQUE CAP, we are trying to change that. By giving everyday investors access to tools, insights, and guidance that were once reserved for the elite. What is the hardest lesson you learned as a new investor?

9 out of 10 new investors lose money in their first year. Why? Because they make the same mistakes:✅ They follow the crowd ✅ They don’t understand what they’re investing in ✅ They fall for the pitch, not the proof ✅ They don’t do the mathExro Technologies is a real-world example. Many retail investors jumped in during the EV hype without asking: How does the company make money? When will revenue scale? What proof exists beyond prototypes?When the strategic review and asset sale process hit, those who invested on excitement rather than fundamentals faced painful losses. Lesson learned: If you can’t explain the business model in simple terms, pause before investing.What’s the hardest lesson you learned as a new investor?#ExroTechnologies #RetailInvestors #InvestingWisdom #FinancialLiteracy #EVTech #CleanEnergy #StockMarketTips

There’s no manual for building something that doesn’t exist yet. Every startup founder has a mental blueprint. Investors think it’s a hockey stick curve. Advisors think it’s a checklist of milestones. Customers think it’s a polished product. But here’s what mine actually looked like in the early days of CORDAX: Scraps of paper. Half-built prototypes. Late-night calls with builders saying, “This will never work.” No clear walls. Just framing. No certainty. Just conviction. That’s the real blueprint. You build one floor at a time, with duct tape, belief, and people crazy enough to care. Today, the lines are clearer. The walls are straighter. But the foundation? Still the same: do the work, learn from every miscut, and keep showing up. Because you can’t precast conviction. You’ve got to pour it yourself.

Most founders chase investors. We make investors chase founders. Here's how we do it. Step 1: Audit your business model. Find what’s broken before someone else points it out. Step 2: Financial Planning. Bring your numbers in order. Predict before you plan. Step 3: Pitch Deck Alignment. Make your story and numbers speak the same language. Step 4: Investor Thesis Mapping. Know which investor fits your business before you start pitching. Step 5: Founder Grooming. Train to answer what investors don’t say out loud. This process isn't a theory. It's battle-tested with founders we've guided. Investor readiness isn't about money. It's about maturity. And once you show that, funding becomes a byproduct. In 2025, India saw 511,000 startups but only 3,600 funding deals worth $12.6B. Yet those who built strong financial models contributed to a 15% rise in exits this year. Investors reject 85% of startups for unclear models or vague decks. But concise, data-backed pitches double the chances of funding success. When founders align structure with investor logic, capital finds them. Because investors don't fund noise, they fund clarity, conviction, and consistency.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗿𝗼-𝗥𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗦𝗣𝗩 𝗗𝗲𝗯𝗮𝘁𝗲 Venturing in Public 10/6/25 A topic we recently discussed is the decision of whether to give our pro-rata rights to other parties that are interested. Can we really monetize our position without becoming purely transactional? Is this inconsistent with our mission to be most aligned to founders at seed? At FC, we only write 2 checks - the seed and 1 pro rata check (depending on a few other dynamics). This is to stay true to our seed and seed only strategy. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘊𝘰𝘯𝘧𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘵: 𝘔𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘺 𝘷𝘴. 𝘔𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯 The tension comes when a company becomes a rocket ship and our pro-rata is highly coveted. The Founder-First Case (The "Why We Don't"): Pro-rata is often used like a one-way option, exercised often with the company least wants/needs to take it. Selling that spot to another VC to monetize our position feels like easy, internal arbitrage. However, if the VC we bring in via the SPV becomes difficult to deal with, the founder will remember who made that introduction. Moreover, what if the company does poorly or something worse? Are we at fault for bringing in the new VC? We typically make introductions, not form SPVs. The Financial Case (The "Why We Should"): Are we leaving money on the table by having pro rata in highly valued companies? Is this one of the virtues of the seed model? We have a vast network of follow on funds, LPs and others that seed out rounds like this. Sometimes I wonder if we'd actually expand the network by making this offer (and of course a little extra carry economics:). At the end of the day, we've stayed away from excessive SPVs in these situations. It has seemed to me way more transactional for the financial benefit. But, maybe its overly dogmatic? What's your firm's rule on this? I'm genuinely curious.