Dan Gray (@credistick) / X

Dan Gray

17.6K posts

Dan Gray

@credistick

Research Lead at @joinodin | Writing about VC at blog.joinodin.com and credistick.com | Library = Highlights

Joined February 2009

Pinned
Dan Gray
@credistick
Jun 22
Sclaed venture capital shares economic principles with two other industries. 1) The only other industry to scale without reducing fees; management consulting. 2) The only other industry to scale in a category of veblen goods; fast fashion. All three sell the confidence
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Dan Gray
@credistick
Jun 10, 2024
Replying to @brandonhli and @Airbnb
Between 2012 and 2016 I mostly lived in Airbnbs. I was a huge fan of the platform, and have some great memories from that period. I no longer use it, at all. Just too many bad experiences, and stories like yours. Hotels all day. Never would have seen that coming. 🤷‍♂️
1.3M
Dan Gray
@credistick
Aug 11, 2024
Replying to @mattparlmer
Don’t you mean…
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Dan Gray
@credistick
Dec 2, 2024
The main reason "VC is hard" is because managers insist on it being an artisanal and entrepreneurial process rather than a financial service. Instead of developing best practices on portfolio construction, and following data to avoid biases or negative patterns, they talk about
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Dan Gray
@credistick
Jul 17, 2023
Replying to @WritNelson
It’s perplexing to see a game developer telling consumers not to raise their expectations. 😅 BG3 is what happens when a game studio executes on a vision they are passionate about, without needing to compromise. That’s it. That has been true from DOS1 to today. They earned it.
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Dan Gray
@credistick
Jul 26, 2024
Replying to @EddyVinckk
Foreign nationals for whom these products are relatively much more expensive back home.
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Dan Gray
@credistick
Nov 11, 2024
Imagine if VCs spent as much time considering and debating @jaminball's Misaligned Incentives article as they did with @paulg's Founder Mode? The latter is an insightful look at leadership practices in high-performing startups, very well written — but ultimatley just
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Dan Gray
@credistick
Oct 27, 2025
"The point of venture capital is to allow a founder to run an experiment against a hypothesis that is knowable, testable, where a true dramatically changes the EV of the company. If you look over history that's when it has performed best, and that's really how it works. Using a
Dan Gray
@credistick
Oct 17, 2025
"In the early days of Valar, a lot of VC’s passed on us because they didn’t believe we could raise the money." Yes, VCs will pass on a company out of fear that other VCs will pass on it. This is institutionalised insecurity. Venture capital emerged from opportunity of frontier
91K
Dan Gray
@credistick
Oct 17, 2025
"In the early days of Valar, a lot of VC’s passed on us because they didn’t believe we could raise the money." Yes, VCs will pass on a company out of fear that other VCs will pass on it. This is institutionalised insecurity. Venture capital emerged from opportunity of frontier
Isaiah Taylor - making nuclear reactors
@isaiah_p_taylor
Oct 16, 2025
When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When you’re a VC, everything looks like a capital problem. In the early days of Valar, a lot of VC’s passed on us because they didn’t believe we could raise the money. In one way, they were totally right. We raised less than
223K
Dan Gray
@credistick
Oct 9, 2025
Repeated studies have shown that VCs overindex on shallow founder attributes, leading to predictably bad investments — and missed good investments. The reason this happens is simple: VCs convinced themselves that 'fundraising' is a desirable trait in founders. So, a product
Hadley Harris
@Hadley
Oct 9, 2025
Seed investing has always over-indexed on demographics, but it’s gotten absurd. Meet many founders with shallow AI understanding and low hustle raising massive rounds just because they’re 22/Harvard/SF. While some of most AI-native, fastest-moving founders I work with are 30+/NYC
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Dan Gray
@credistick
Dec 16, 2024
Why are so many startups pitching the same ideas? This is the result of “startup catering”, where founders work on the problems they believe VCs care about, rather than problems they are connected to. It occurs whenever there is a strong and vocal consensus amongst investors
Nichole Wischoff
@NWischoff
Dec 15, 2024
Honestly shocking how many startup pitches are nearly exactly the same. Building in a market thats saturated, similar product, similar GTM, etc. The number of companies building something that doesn't exist or that is truly unique is far less than 1%.
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Dan Gray
@credistick
Dec 30, 2024
Should VCs bet on the 'horse' or the 'jockey'? Broadly speaking there were three theories behind early venture investing: • Tom Perkins (@kleinerperkins) focused on tech. • Don Valentine (@sequoia) focused on markets. • Arthur Rock (Davis & Rock) focused on people. This
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Dan Gray
@credistick
May 22, 2025
Hypothesis: investors are now struggling to underwrite OpenAI to a decent return, so Altman is looking for gimmicks to sell a bigger vision. In return, Ive gets to clean $1-2B and be ‘Hardware Rick Rubin’ at OpenAI for a year or two. Next is probably the Worldcoin integration
FT Technology News
@fttechnews
May 22, 2025
Jony Ive and Sam Altman take on Apple on.ft.com/436F8xU
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Dan Gray
@credistick
Oct 11, 2024
The theoretically highest potential VC manager is one that is the best at selecting within an entirely unconstrained pool of opportunity. No specialsiation, no stage focus, no pattern-matching on founder attributes or company characteristics. With every bound a manager adds
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