Disclaimer: Dear partners, if you wish to share the information in this letter, please only use the public version available on our website. Our partners shared this information with us in confidence, so we must prevent leaks by treating this document as confidential and privileged. We appreciate your understanding.
Perplexity Partial Liquidity Event
Dear Partners,
Since we started DVC, we've had a very clear idea of what we look for in a founder. After all, when we invest we don't just partner for many years — we welcome them into the collective, into our family. But we'd never put it in writing. A recent conversation with Sequoia Partners prompted us to finally do that, and we found the exercise remarkably useful. We're sharing it with you here.
The founders others miss — until the traction becomes undeniable.
A DVC founder is a repeat builder with battle scars. Some of their companies exited, some broke, some were beautiful failures — but they never stopped. They are curious and relentless. They take things apart and put them back better. They care more about long-term compounding than short-term hype, and they are almost never a consensus Silicon Valley deal before the numbers speak for themselves.