Tom West

There's a distinction I keep coming back to that I think matters more than most people give it credit for. Knowledge and intelligence are different things. Aristotle drew this line precisely.

It costs seven cents to find out if a venture idea is worth thinking about. That is not a metaphor.

I was honored to be in Cambridge last week to present findings at the first annual venture builder symposium.

A venture studio builds twelve companies over four years. Three reach meaningful scale. The studio points to its process.

The Cobb-Douglas function has anchored growth economics for a century. AI may be breaking its core assumptions about how capital and labor relate.

Three exits don't prove pattern recognition. Venture capital's feedback loop is too long, too noisy, and too confounded to distinguish expertise from luck.