James Woodland's Profile

My theory is that when you’re young, you should work eighty hours a week to create a product or service that changes the world. You should not sit in board meetings listening to an entrepreneur explaining why she missed her numbers while you read email on a Blackberry and intermittently spew forth gems like, “You should partner with MySpace; I can also introduce you to a few of the losers in our portfolio.”

My theory is that when you’re young, you should work eighty hours a week to create a product or service that changes the world. You should not sit in board meetings listening to an entrepreneur explaining why she missed her numbers while you read email on a Blackberry and intermittently spew forth gems like, “You should partner with MySpace; I can also introduce you to a few of the losers in our portfolio.”

I believe thesis driven investing produces the best returns when the thesis is
directionally correct and probably also the worst returns when the thesis is
wrong. I believe thematic investing works less well because it can lead to
"bucket filling" where the firm just runs around filling the themes with deals
without much thought to why and how they will work. It also leads to a lot of
"me too" investing which is a scourge that the venture industry can't seem to
figure out how to rid itself of.

they both promote domain expertise which is critical to building a sustainable
investment advantage