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VCs should play bridge – Alex Danco's Newsletter

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A lot of VCs play poker, and I get why. But as a metaphor for venture capital, or as a skill-honing extracurricular activity if you want to call it that, I think you can do better. Poker is a game where you’re given an incomplete set of information and you have to fill in gaps based on what you see, what you don’t, and what you think other people are thinking. Poker is a game of interpreting signals, and so is VC. But the thinking and betting and bluffing in poker is all adversarial. It’s not a game of mutual shared interest. Investing in startups isn’t like that. Individual deals are competitive, but at an ecosystem level, it’s positive-sum. As a VC, you are trying to pull off a challenging feat of economic coordination. The signals you’re sending among one another aren’t so much bluffing for individual gain as much as genuine signalling for mutual benefit. If you can pull it off, your whole squad wins. If you can’t, you get zero. There’s a better card game metaphor for venture capita

VCs should play bridge February 28, 2020 A lot of VCs play poker, and I get why. But as a metaphor for venture capital, or as a skill-honing extracurricular activity if you want to call it that, I think you can do better. Poker is a game where you’re given an incomplete set of information and you have to fill in gaps based on what you see, what you don’t, and what you think other people are thinking. Poker is a game of interpreting signals, and so is VC. But the thinking and betting and bluffing in poker is all adversarial. It’s not a game of mutual shared interest. Investing in startups isn’t

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