To paraphrase Mike Tyson: Every investor has a framework until they get punched in the face.
In the investing world, you get punched a lot, especially in an asset class like venture.
There’s a deep tension between planning and execution, and many mentors of mine have all been forthcoming with their disdain for investment playbooks, frameworks, and mental models.
I see the thrust of their objections — the world is far too complex to boil down to simple matter-of-fact statements. This is especially true in investing, where every company contends with its own version of (often) similar problems.
Similar to parenting, there are thousands of books and resources on how to be a great investor / how to build a great company. And if one of them truly worked, then it would quickly become the only book on the topic. But that’s not, nor will it ever, be the case.
Even so, I believe frameworks are incredibly underrated. They aren’t silver bullets, but they have the potential to be much more incisive and insightful than most people let on. It’s better to have a framework than nothing at all.
“Amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics.” – General Omar Bradley
The risk with frameworks is that they're overly generalizable, which means you'll only talk strategy, and never zoom down into the weeds of an issue.
But frameworks, if used right, can help you hone in on the root cause of a problem, which is where your attention should be. In other words, effective frameworks, and the effective use of frameworks, should start and facilitate a discussion around logistics, not strategy.
Also — you need a core reason for the framework's existence — a framework problem fit. You should always ask why a framework exists, and why you're using that particular framework in this particular situation.
Blitzscaling is a good example. It was a specific GTM framework useful for winner-take-all marketplaces in a low interest rate and capital rich environment. Applicable for companies like Uber and Airbnb. But this potentially useful framework was taken far outside it's original context, and was widely applied, flippantly so.
The good framework have multiple child frameworks underneath them — ways to drill down deeper and provide more concrete examples and questions. Full Stack Startups is a great parent framework by Chris Dixon, and Threading the Needle is an attempt at sharpening it. And the are multiple child frameworks I'm hoping to add to that as well.
One of the reasons I was originally drawn to venture was the level of excitement I felt with some of the frameworks people like Mike Maples Jr. have shared. They certainly have their shortcomings, but I deeply believe they offer real value. It's one of the reasons I started this blog in the first place. If done well, these frameworks should carry lessons from the past, without overfitting it to the present.
Thrive Capital has a great algorithm for this: experience is nothing more than a starting hypothesis.
Having a hypothesis gives you a starting point. And that's all the best founders need.
“Plans are worthless, but planning is everything” - President Dwight Eisenhower
