“Our biggest misses were ones where we liked everything except the price. And then we passed because of the price. And then years later, it's like, you know, a multi-billion or sometimes $10 billion company.”
How I Invest with David Weisburd · Startups & Venture · October 2026
Asked what he has learned from mistakes as a seed investor, Polovets says his tactical lesson is not to pass on a company because of price. His fund's costliest misses were deals it turned down only on valuation.
Transcript
If you could go back 13 years ago, right before you started SUSE Ventures, and you could give yourself one timeless piece of advice, just one piece of advice, what would that be?
So there's like a tactical one and like a philosophical one. So I'd say the tactical one is like, don't pass because of price. Because I think kind of
our biggest misses were ones where we liked everything except the price. And then we passed because of the price. And then years later, it's like, you know, a multi-billion or sometimes $10 billion company.
How do those play out?
I'm happy to throw out a couple of examples. Like we were interested in investing
in Checker in the first round. We were investing in FAIR in the first round. But I think both of those essentially like skipped the seed and went to A. Right. And so, and we were a seed investor. We're like, hey, we'd love to invest. Here's like a seed price that we're pretty comfortable with. And…
More from How I Invest with David Weisburd
