The long wave

Every cycle, the loud companies set the tempo and the quiet ones build the floor. Looking back at the last decade in tech, the floor companies — the ones nobody tweeted about — turned out to do most of the actual work.

We've started to think about portfolio construction the same way we think about a swell. Big single waves are exciting, but you build a season from the long, regular sets that keep arriving regardless of the weather. That's where most of our capital lives now.

The corollary is uncomfortable for venture: most of the returns are in the boring middle. Which is fine, because the middle is where good engineering quietly compounds.