In this episode we deep dive into choosing the right investors, following reporting by Bronwen Clune and John McDuling from Capital Brief, about Dovetail turning down investment from Andreessen Horowitz when they raised $89million in the heady days of the Covid boom. This got us talking about how founders need to choose the right investors, and share some experiences we’ve each had with regards to the good and the bad.

We discuss an article by Paul Smith talking about how we may coming out of a VC winter, and we talk about what we are seeing in terms of deal flow and valuations. The article also talks about the customers of B2B tech companies coming under pressure from the cooling economy, and we discuss common challenges in the B2B sales cycle generally.

We talk about how Robyn Denholm is using her considerable wealth and influence to back more women led tech ventures, although she says funding for female-led tech start ups has decreased over the past 12-18 months as a percentage of investment.

As part of this discussion, we have a slight diversion talking about how structure achieves strategy, and that there are always a range of factors often not acknowledged being the  foundations for the individual successes. We discuss some of these structural factors, and why one needs to be careful when successful people tell you why they think they were successful.

Finally we close the episode discussing the upcoming Walter Isaacson biography on Elon Musk, and the various rather crazy stories that are already coming out. We tie a number of these stories back to lessons entrepreneurs and investors can learn.

As always we welcome any feedback, and would appreciate if you can leave and rating and a comment on the podcast before you go.