Great founder in small market vs good founder in mega market
“But market size is always first.”
the best immediately incredible founders? I know that's a really shitty question to ask and forgive me for it. But I've actually learned that a good founder in a fucking great market almost trumps a great founder in an average market. Yeah. No. I think the founder is incredibly important. Right? You go back to the example of Databricks.
Most founders in that situation, they would have been handed well, not handed. They would have built an incredible company in that first wave. But maybe they wouldn't have found their way to wave two and three and four. And it's again, it's why we like this type of company that we call a platform company, right, which is the has shown the ability to skip TAMs, to have multiple TAMs over time. And I think that founder is tied to the market, you know, is tied to that market dynamic, and they're they're equally important. But market size is always first. A great founder in a small market with a wedge that is not easily able to expand, I think will build an incredible business. But without having that core market and that core trend, it's hard to get to a 100,000,000,000.
About this clip
Lucas Swisher argues that market size trumps founder quality when building massive companies. He explains why even great founders struggle to reach $100B valuations in small markets, while good founders in mega markets can achieve extraordinary outcomes by building platform companies that can "skip TAMs" across multiple waves.
Why this clip
Provides a contrarian framework that challenges the conventional wisdom of "founder-first" investing by prioritizing market size over founder quality for achieving massive outcomes.
What they said next
Why Coatue invested in both Snowflake and Databricks before they competed
23:54 - 39s · market insight
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