The Entrepreneurial Investor: An Overview

European Straits | Work in Progress

Hi, it’s Nicolas from The Family. Here’s the initial draft on a long-term project: a book about investing in the Entrepreneurial Age (likely to be written with my cofounder Oussama Ammar).

The investment world is broken in two. Like at the turning point of every technological revolution, there’s an overlap of two very different approaches to investing:

• Some investors are specialized in financing businesses in the old paradigm, and they have a hard time coping with the (literal) disruption brought about by software eating the industries they’re interested in. A good example is private equity investors confronted with the unraveling of large retail franchises—that traditional safe haven for buyout firms.

• Then there are investors, known as venture capitalists, who have been honing their craft financing businesses born in the new paradigm. The problem is that with the paradigm shift accelerating, those investors are carried toward industries that are less welcoming of the VC industry’s tradi…