There’s been a lot of discussion in recent years that the “full stack approach” is the future of startups. My friend Chris Dixon articulated the reasons for going “full stack” very well in this post from last year. But like many things, the best approaches are at both ends of the spectrum. Either go “full stack” or go “no stack.”
My partners Andy and Albert have been writing about the no stack approach this past week and it is the topic of the week at usv.com.
At USV we have never been excited by the full stack approach. It is well suited to investors who have unlimited amounts of capital to invest and a need to put all that cash to work. We aren’t that kind of investor. We like low capital requirements and low burn rates and extremely high rates of return on invested capital. So no stack seems like it will suit us well.
Our partner Brad said in an internal email about this today, “We need to think through defensibility, margin sustainability, and not having control of some infrastructure.” So that’s what we are doing now. And if anyone would like to weigh in on this, the comments here at AVC is a good place as is the usv.com topic of the week conversation.
