This episode is part of a three-part series taking listeners behind the curtain to discuss the inner workings of venture capital. Erik is joined by co-host for this episode, Adam Corey (@frumpy), partner at Village Global, and Clint Korver (@ckorver), managing director at Ulu Ventures.

They discuss Ulu’s approach to portfolio construction and how it is using data to figure out which companies to invest in. As you'll notice, Clint is a wealth of fascinating statistics about venture investing.

Clint explains why venture investing is analogous to other industries like pharmaceuticals and oil and gas extraction that follow a power law distribution. He points out that 100 venture investments out of 4,000 total in a given year create nearly all the profit in the venture industry. Clint explains how, taking cues from other industries mentioned above, Ulu uses data to predict which companies will be worth investing in.

He says that the two main tenets of their investing thesis at Ulu are: 1. Invest early, and 2. Have large portfolios. Clint runs through the rationale for these ideas and why they diverge from VC “conventional wisdom.” Erik and Adam discuss the approach that Village is taking and compare it to what Ulu and other VC firms are doing, in order to flesh out the differences in investing theses.

Clint also talks about the differences in returns between folllow-on and early stage and why Ulu doesn’t have a rigid reserve fund size. The three of them also talk about why the approaches of some of the biggest and most successful firms these days don’t scale down to smaller funds.

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Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.