Masters in Business · Friday, July 3, 2026
Mamoon Hamid explains Kleiner Perkins' practice of reviewing missed deals from peer firms weekly to ensure they are seeing relevant opportunities. He emphasizes the importance of in-person meetings over Zoom for better founder assessment, citing a missed investment in Anthropic due to a virtual-only initial interaction.
“So, actually, one of the things that I did when I got to Cline Perkins in twenty seventeen was that we would look every week at the that week's series as that got done by our peer firms about thirty forty firms, and whether we had seen the company that was invested in or not, and as simple heuristic of like, are we seeing the things that matter because they seem to matter because our peer firms invested in those companies.”
“The Series B was a sort of non consensus, non obvious round, and we actually met with the founders and but we met them over zoom and we played with the product. But you don't get the same visceral feeling about a company and the founders and their ambitions and aspirations and what they're trying to do with with their with their with their company, and so what a miss right.”
“I want to meet people in person, and if it's worth a thirty minute Zoom, it should be worth a thirty minute in person meeting.”