Ann Miura-Ko

Notes from Ann Miura-Ko's podcast interviews from 2018 - 2023

Author

Monica Black
March 08, 2024

Ann Miura-Ko is a co-founding Partner of Floodgate. She is a repeat member of the Forbes Midas List.

Table of Contents

Founder Attributes

“I'm always investing in a set of people who are committed to a process of uncovering secrets.”

20VC: The Lyft Memo

At inception, Ann believes a company needs 1) a super builder and 2) a super thinker.

  • A super builder can build fast (rapid cycles) but can also unemotionally throw away the code base if it's not working.

  • Ann defines a super thinker as a voracious learner who is entirely dedicated to navigating the idea maze.

    • They'll know everything there is to know about the business today and the history of the space. They can tell you what's been tried and why it won't work or can be disrupted.

    • If they don't know the answer, within another 4-6 weeks they'll know 10x more than anyone else on that piece, because they'll have chased it down.

Other key founder attributes Ann looks for:

  1. Authenticity: Are they truly obsessed with the idea? During boom times, when it's attractive to be a founder, it can be hard to identify who really believes.

  2. Absolute commitment to the customer: Fanatical desire for customer development and how customer needs translate into product.

  3. Powerful narratives: Why should people join the company and why should customers trust them?

To uncover all of this, Ann focuses on getting to know teams over at least a month, if not longer. She's comfortable missing deals if they are moving too fast. I really respect this.

“Is this a team I want to be co-conspirators with for 10 years?”

Path to Conviction

Seed Insights & Secrets

“These aren’t companies yet. They’re a set of insights — a development of a set of secrets.”

20VC: The Lyft Memo

At the seed stage, Ann looks for very specific insights resulting from an inflection that changes what can be built.

She buckets inflections into 3 main categories + a 4th catch-all:

  1. Technical breakthrough that enables you to do something you couldn’t before

  2. Regulatory changes

  3. Societal behavior changes catalyzing adoption (i.e., mass adoption of smartphones)

Or, a team could be revisiting an industry from first principles and realize that the industry’s core assumptions are wrong, enabling them to build a new company based on new assumptions.

These inflections create two types of insights:

  1. Startup insight: a new type of product, business model, and/or distribution path

  2. Growth insight: when the startup insight is manifested, it will result in either:

    1. massive pull from the industry, or

    2. will enable you to use the extra margins you’re generating to invest in customer acquisition and compete unfairly

This all culminates for Ann in a key question — what is the unique, secret insight you have about something that’s about to change? Without the articulation of the secret, it’s too early for seed (and founders should instead raise a small, <$1M pre-seed round to find it).

Another excellent definition Ann provides of the secret is a non-consensus belief that gives you an acceleration into the market that will provide exponential growth

Ann talks about the current AI wave in her most recent interview on Turpentine VC. The secret is even more important with AI. Founders really need to articulate something they know, but most people under-appreciate or don’t understand. There is no moat in the APIs to LLMs — anyone who can code can access them.

Post-Investment: Finding Product Market-Fit

Ann spends all her time post-investment helping companies identify signs of product-market fit (PMF). What is PMF, in her view?

  • Product is a value proposition — a promise that the experience will be orders of magnitude better than anything customers would have expected

  • Market is an ecosystem — the user, the person who pays, manufacturers, distributors — all the stakeholders that need to buy in to what you’re doing in order for you to succeed

PMF has to fit within the context of a business model, which is as important as product & market.

“Success isn’t just about making something people love, it’s also about extracting value.”

Ann Miura-Ko

When product, market, and business model are locked in, you’re ready for growth. Solve for and demonstrate value before you lean into growth.

Ann encourages founders to have a strategy to win vs. a strategy not to lose. “Not losing does not equal winning.”

  • Winning = you’re on offense. You’re thinking about what to double down on.

  • Losing = you’re hedging. You’re maybe going after 2 different customer segments at the same time vs. doubling down on one.

“When you raise your seed, you’re setting a timer and saying GO. Within 2 years, you need to raise a successful Series A, which means you need to have a certain level of traction and success in alleviating risks within the business.”

Turpentine VC

On Being an Investor

Here are a collection of other great quotes from Ann on being an investor that don’t fit neatly into the above categories.

“A great VC cares deeply about the company they’re partnering with; they’re a co-conspirator, not just an investor.”

Path to Conviction

“The point of venture is to invest in something that has the potential to really change how society acts within a particular area or change the nature of work itself.”

Turpentine VC

“You make money by being non-consensus, finding unproven assets that people have under-valued, where you have proprietary information allowing you to value them correctly.”

Turpentine VC

“I’m not an investor that has universal appeal. I’m a bit of a maniacal truth-teller.”

Turpentine VC

Ann is spending her lifetime honing the craft of decision-making. It’s important to be explicit about how you’ve come to a decision and the impact it had.

“VC is a series of decisions you make.”

Modern Meditations

Life Perspectives

“Be world class in everything you do.”

Tim Ferriss Show

Ann’s father told her constantly to be world class in everything she did. Related quote: “Greatness is a decision and one that you constantly make.”

“You don’t just get luck, you create these opportunities for yourself. You have to create enough surface area so that when the luck suddenly drops to the ground, you’ve created a wide enough net to catch it.”

Tim Ferriss Show

Being world class in everything you do expands that surface area.

“Networking is having a deep curiosity about the person you’re talking to.”

Tim Ferriss Show

Sources

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