Look, I like your investment strategy and want to see how it plays out.
That said, your post does imply that the weak returns of the VCs last decade lend your approach merit when you point out their weak returns and then say:
"to be more specific: if we look at the #'s, on average it's more likely that high-volume, spray & pray investing -- which i will going forward refer to as "a quantitative investment strategy" -- is likely to be successful than a "focused, low-volume" investing strategy."
(Of course I assume you measure success by expected value, not the chance of being in the black after a small number of investments)
yeah, guess i'm intentionally taking on the "spray & pray" haters, but to me more specific -- i'm combining that strategy with other filters, domain-specific expertise, selective follow-on investment. the combination of all of these is more like an index fund for initial selection, then active management and time-weighted averaging of future funds into the winners.
little bit complex to describe, adn we're still developing it so even i'm not final on which parts add most value.
but we are trying some new shit. some of it hopefully works ;)
One has to believe that with the variety of startups coming out that seed-level spray and pray, coupled with selective follow-on will likely get you in on big things.
Worst case, you have an existing relationship with a large number of startups, a percentage of which will undoubtedly go on to bigger things or exits -- the trick is of course in how big that percentage is.
This is evidenced somewhat by the increasingly large number of teams getting accepted by YC.
That said, your post does imply that the weak returns of the VCs last decade lend your approach merit when you point out their weak returns and then say:
"to be more specific: if we look at the #'s, on average it's more likely that high-volume, spray & pray investing -- which i will going forward refer to as "a quantitative investment strategy" -- is likely to be successful than a "focused, low-volume" investing strategy."
(Of course I assume you measure success by expected value, not the chance of being in the black after a small number of investments)