Black Swan Seed Rounds

The post discusses the author's experiences with seed investing, highlighting that successful investments often come from contrarian choices rather than popular, competitive rounds. It emphasizes that many high-performing companies initially appeared to be poor ideas, suggesting that founders should not be discouraged by a lack of oversubscription in their seed rounds, as conventional wisdom can mislead investors.

Published 2014-07-28 3 min read 598 words 3 topics

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I started seed investing in 2010 (and much more actively in 2012) before becoming a full-time YC partner. In this period, I invested in about 40 companies. So far, five of them are in the “really good” category—a current

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Read the full essay on Sam Altman's blog

blog.samaltman.com/black-swan-seed-rounds

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