The Migrant Gene. Is it real?
#144 - Reflections on investing and life from building my holding company
3 Paragraphs to think
America’s greatest advantage isn’t capital or scale—it’s risk tolerance. It’s what built Silicon Valley, venture capital, and half the modern world. That edge didn’t emerge by accident; it’s the product of selection.
The Europeans who boarded ships to the New World weren’t average. They were the restless few—discontent, ambitious, desperate, or brave enough to leave everything behind. Migration selected for risk takers. Those who stayed in Europe optimized for stability. Those who left optimized for possibility. Sociologists later called it the “frontier effect”: societies built by migrants internalize risk as virtue. It becomes culture, then infrastructure, then GDP.
America’s economy is the compounding of that inheritance. A nation founded by people who gambled everything for a better life naturally built Silicon Valley, venture capital, and Wall Street. Fortune doesn’t just favor the bold—it descends from them.
2 Resources to pro
1. WOW, What a stock :)
2. Answering the right questions at the right time. Cheat sheet for founders (and angels).
Pre-Seed. Why you? Why Now? What is your distribution Wedge? In pre seed it is all about the team, your insight into the market, why now is the best time to build and how do you get your first batch of customers (distribution wedge).
Seed. Do the right customers love the product? Have you found scalable channels? Credible path to > $3M arr in < 18months? Seed is all about showing some initial signs of Product Market Fit, some initial distribution channels that are kind of working, and having a credible plan to Series A metrics.
Series A Is there solid PMF? Will S&M Spend blow up the numbers 3-5X? Credible path to > $10M ARR in < 18 months? At Series A Investors expect solid PMF with highly referencable customers, sales channels that just need money to crank sales up over $10M so the Series B guys get jacked.
1 chance to smile
This is my quant …
Have a great weekend,
Simone