Toward a theory of Emergent Ventures

Tony Kulesa, a biomedical venture capitalist, has a very nice new piece up about how Emergent Ventures works.  He overrates me in particular, but the overall account is quite accurate and insightful, and the piece is based on a considerable amount of detailed research.  Here is one excerpt:

Tyler’s success at discovering and enabling the most talented people before anyone else notices them boils down to four components:

1. Distribution: Tyler promotes the opportunity in such a way that the talent level of the application pool is extraordinarily high and the people who apply are uniquely earnest.
2. Application: Emergent Ventures’ application is laser focused on the quality of the applicant’s ideas, and boils out the noise of credentials, references, and test scores.
3. Selection: Tyler has relentlessly trained his taste for decades, the way a world class athlete trains for the olympics.
4. Inspiration: Tyler personally encourages winners to be bolder, creating an ambition flywheel as they in turn inspire future applicants.

Self-recommended!  The piece is interesting throughout, and has much social science in it.