Investors’ list

Stanford just revealed which investors are best at picking unicorns.
The data is fascinating!

Professor Ilya Strebulaev – whose work on venture capital I’ve followed and respected for years – ranked investors by their odds of backing a billion-dollar company.
His research genuinely deserves a separate shelf in the library of human economic history.
The top firms are reportedly 4.1x more likely to back a unicorn than a random VC.
But here’s the funny part nobody talks about:
The “best” investors are often not really playing the same game.
Fidelity (18.5x) and T. Rowe Price (16.3x) top the rankings.
Sounds incredible.
Until you realize many of these firms invest very late – sometimes when the company is already worth $900M 🤡
That’s less “visionary seed investing” and more:
“arriving 5 minutes before the fireworks.”
The real difficult sport is early-stage conviction. Our market.
That’s why Y Combinator’s 3.4x is actually kind of insane.
Because betting on thousands of chaotic founders with half-broken decks, identity crises, unfinished products and no traction…
is very different from writing checks after everyone already agrees the company is hot.
That’s where venture capital still becomes human.
Not spreadsheets.
Conviction.
Taste.
Pattern recognition.
The ability to see something before consensus forms around it.
And honestly, founders should remember this too:
The best investor is not always the one with the highest Stanford score.
It’s often the one who understands your strange vision when everyone else thinks you’re slightly delusional 😅
Data explains the past beautifully.
But venture is still a people business trying to predict the future.
Curious – if you were fundraising, would you choose:
the prestigious late-stage giant,
or the weird early believer who actually “gets” you?
#VC #startups #investing

Additional
Post 1

I increasingly feel there is an ideological split happening between the American and European view of business, investing, and startups.
America keeps moving toward giant corporate organisms.
Bigger.
Faster.
More optimized.
More shareholder-driven.
And honestly, sometimes it feels like the individual human inside those systems matters less and less.
You smile in Zoom calls.
Hit KPIs.
Perform culture.
Join beautiful offsites.
And one morning you’re removed from Slack.
Maybe with full benefits if you’re lucky 🤡
Meanwhile the machine keeps moving without you.
And Europe – slowly, imperfectly – is trying to move somewhere else.
Toward smaller ownership.
Private businesses.
Regional ecosystems.
Family-scale entrepreneurship.
Sustainable companies that should never become unicorns.
but directly feed families, employ communities, and create long-term stability around themselves.
Not every startup needs to become an AI-powered monopoly eating the planet.
Some businesses only need to work well in one city.
One region.
One industry.
And still be deeply valuable for the community around.
Honestly, I think Europe is starting to understand this more and more:
startups are not only “venture-scale rockets”.
They are infrastructure for human life too.
Yes, maybe America builds the rocket.
And maybe Europe sometimes builds a slower carriage.
But the carriage probably won’t throw you out at full speed while calling it “organizational restructuring.”
That part matters to me.
I know many people will disagree and say:
“Go work for a big conglomerate first.”
“Join Big Tech.”
“Optimize your career.”
“Think bigger.”
Maybe they’re right.
But I still believe there is something deeply important in building smaller, human-scale things that genuinely improve life around you.
Even if they never become unicorns.
Curious where others stand on this.
Should ambitious people still aim for the giant machine…
or is there real value in building smaller, independent, more human businesses now? Talk to me about that, let’s co-create.
#FutureOfWork #SustainableStartups #HumanCenteredTech

POST 2

Old man post 😅
One of the most interesting startup studies I've seen found that the average age of founders of the fastest-growing startups is not 22.

It's 45!
Researchers from MIT looked at millions of companies and found that a 50-year-old founder is almost twice as likely to build a successful high-growth startup as a 30-year-old founder.
Which is funny.
Because startup culture still behaves like if you're over 35, you're already supposed to be mentoring people, not competing with them.
At the same time...
The older I get, the harder it becomes to understand Gen Z.
Not because they're less talented.
Actually, probably the opposite.
But because we grew up in different operating systems.
For example, I'm 37.
I still struggle to care about the difference between a Story, a Short, a Reel, a TikTok, a Clip, or whatever new format appeared this week.
I've learned the difference but… my ADHD brain simply refuses to store this information as important 😅
To me they're mostly just: "videos."
Meanwhile some Gen Z users consume short-form content so naturally that it feels like checking messages or drinking water.
On the other hand, I've met graduates from excellent universities who can edit videos at lightning speed, build personal brands, and navigate social media perfectly...
but have never properly used Google Calendar.
Or don't know advanced Google search.
Or never learned how to organize information systematically.
And somehow both groups think the other one is weird.
The interesting part is that Gen Z will probably build companies differently.
Less martyrdom.
Less "work until burnout."
Less fighting windmills for 10 years because a founder promised investors a revolution.
More focus on personal freedom, leverage and quality of life.
Honestly, there is something healthy about that.
Maybe every generation solves the problems created by the previous one, creating a new one for their children.
Also would like to hear the story how do you deal with an age gap as co-founders, is there a thing for you?
#startups #founders #generations

POST 3

Elizabeth Holmes.
The name became a symbol.
And still causes a small shiver among private investors 😅
Because every investor secretly asks themselves the same question:
"What if I'm looking at the next Theranos right now?"
Funny thing – Holmes wasn't funded because investors moved too fast.
She was funded because too many people in the room had impressive titles... and too few had the ability to evaluate the technology itself.
That part matters.
Because startup investing is not only finance.
It's product.
It's technology.
It's ethics.
It's human psychology.
Is it if the founder, a trustworthy person, puts their skin in the game or not?
And honestly, this is where I see a big divergence emerging between the US and Europe.
America keeps optimizing for bigger funds, bigger rounds, bigger outcomes. Guys, the planet is limited!
Europe is slowly experimenting with something else:
more founder proximity,
more domain experts,
more practitioners,
more stakeholder capitalism.
Less:
"Can this become a $100B company?"
More:
"Does this solve a real problem and can it survive?"
"Will local communities accept it?"
The next generation of startup investing will not be built by people reading decks from offices.
It will be built by people willing to meet founders in real life.
See the product. Touch it.
Talk to customers.
Learn.
Understand the technology.
Shake hands.
And yes, perform due diligence on the founder as a human being.
Not only on the spreadsheet.
Private capital especially should pay attention.
Because many family offices, entrepreneurs and private investors are now entering venture without startup experience.
And ironically, they are often more exposed to the next Elizabeth Holmes than experienced operators.
My conclusion is simple:
Both VCs and private investors increasingly need hands-on accelerators and venture operators around them.
People who see founders every day.
Who test products.
Who talk to customers.
Who understand technology.
Who can bridge the gap between capital and reality.
That's exactly why organizations like InspireXchange exist.
Not just to help founders.
But to help investors stay connected to what is actually happening on the ground.
If you're private capital and want to understand startups before writing checks, meet real founders, explore innovation, and maybe add something genuinely future-proof to your portfolio...
Check out our deal room for the actual opportunities:
https://www.inspirexchange.nl/register
The next big opportunity for YOUR business can be built just here, and… without you.
#VC #startups #investing

POST 4

Reverse engineering is becoming the new founder trap.
Not lack of funding.
Not lack of AI.
Not lack of tools.
Too many founders are now spending months reverse engineering products instead of validating problems.
They watch competitors.
Clone features.
Study prompts.
Analyze screenshots.
Buy courses from people who reverse engineered someone else who reverse engineered someone else 😅
And suddenly they're stuck in an infinite loop.
Building.
Rebuilding.
Vibe-coding.
Re-vibe-coding.
Burning through AWS credits, Google credits, accelerator credits, investor money and most importantly...
their own life.
Funny thing – AI made building 10x faster.
But it also made wasting time 10x faster.
The real risk is not that AI will replace founders.
The real risk is that founders start confusing activity with progress.
A recent study by CB Insights found that the biggest reason startups fail is still the same as it was before AI:
No market need. Not bad code. Not bad prompts. Not insufficient GPU capacity.
Nobody wanted the thing!
That part stubbornly refuses to change.
And honestly, no amount of reverse engineering will save you from talking to customers.
Or talking to other founders.
Or learning from mistakes that already cost someone else €100K.
That's why I increasingly believe founder communities matter more in the AI era, not less.
Because AI gives answers.
Founders give context.
AI gives options.
Founders give scars.
And scars are surprisingly difficult to scrape from GitHub.
At InspireXchange we've accumulated years of founder mistakes, pivots, failures, fundraising disasters, product disasters and occasionally successes too 🤡
Not just as documents.
As conversations.
As mentorship.
As people who have already stepped on the landmines.
So if you're currently sitting on a pile of unused cloud credits, half-finished AI workflows and an increasingly existential roadmap...
talk to somebody.
Preferably before the next pivot.
If you want access to founders, mentors, startup operators and the mistakes database humanity paid for already - shortcut in the first comment.
#startups #AI #founders

1st Comment!

Your startup probably doesn't need another framework.
It probably needs reality-check:
https://calendly.com/inspirexchange/30min-crashtest