Chief Accounting Officer, Vice President & Controller, Distribution Solutio Gro
Search every verified David Lambert interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. In a March 2019 roundtable hosted by 1Mby1M, David Lambert, representing Right Side Capital Management, discussed the firm's investment approach and views on early-stage startups. He stated that the firm typically invests earlier than traditional seed investors, often at the pre-seed stage, and makes hundreds of investments to manage risk, acknowledging that most of these will fail. Lambert cited PillPack, acquired by Amazon, as an example of a portfolio company exit. He emphasized the importance of managing cash burn, noting that companies burning $10,000 to $20,000 per month are more likely to pivot successfully than those burning $40,000 to $50,000. Lambert also commented on broader entrepreneurial trends, observing that building an initial product has become cheaper each year and that entrepreneurs increasingly favor bootstrapping to achieve validation before seeking venture capital. He expressed personal support for solopreneurs, contrasting this with the preferences of many accelerators. Lambert described the roundtable's feedback as direct but intended to support serious entrepreneurs, and he reiterated the firm's philosophy of "bootstrap first, raise money later or not at all."
“We basically invest usually a round or two earlier than what you would think of as traditional seed investors, and usually around earlier than what most other pre-seed investors would do.”
“Most of what we invest in is going to fail, but we do hundreds and hundreds of investments to sort of smooth out their risk at that early stage.”
“One of the companies I just mentioned earlier on, PillPack, was bought by Amazon for almost a billion dollars earlier this year.”
“Most exits happen in the sub 50 million range strategic exit, so you're going to have to manage your capital into the company to be able to make money for everybody at the sub 20 million range.”
“At these early stages, one of the things we care the most about is cash burn. If a company is burning 40 to 50 thousand a month with 10k MRR, they're probably stressed and have blinders on, but if they're burning 10 to 20 thousand a month, they're more likely to pivot and explore new opportunities.”
“The biggest trend we see is that it's gotten cheaper every year to build an initial product or prototype to get it to market and prove if you can generate revenue or not.”
“Entrepreneurs have become a bit severe about bootstrapping. People realize it's a much better deal to bootstrap first, get to a level of validation including paying customers before going out and beating on VC's doors.”
“If you like what we're doing here, this is very direct feedback and not everybody has a stomach for receiving this kind of direct feedback, but we are on your side. We want you to succeed and want people who are serious entrepreneurs to work with who will have the stamina to do what it takes to bring a product to marke...”
“We have a philosophy: bootstrap first, raise money later or not at all. You can go straight from bootstrapping to exit, that's fine. You can raise a small amount of money and blue edges, so all those permutations are considered success in our program.”
“I personally have no problems with solopreneurs. We have lots of solopreneurs doing just fine. Accelerators tend not to like solo founders, but I personally have absolutely no problem with solopreneurs.”
Do NOT Write Software Without a Business Model Hypothesis During this week's roundtable, we had as our guest David Lambert, ...
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