I've been investing in networks for most of my career. The Internet is the world's largest network. Everything that connects to it, that leverages it, that enhances it — that's what I care about.
The most important thing I've learned is to stay in your lane. Invest in what you know, what you believe in, and what you can add value to.
We lost a fund in the dot-com crash. I'm not proud of it, but I'm not ashamed of it either. We learned from it and built something much better afterward.
I believe that the blockchain is the next great network. The same thesis that led us to Twitter and Etsy led us to Bitcoin and Coinbase.
Venture capital is a game where you lose most of the time. The question is whether your wins are big enough to cover your losses and then some. Ours have been.
Publishing your thesis publicly is not a risk. If your thesis is right, it attracts the right founders to you. If it's wrong, you should know about it sooner rather than later.