A few years ago I asked a security chief at dinner which company excited him most. He did not hesitate. He named one, and called it the best technology purchase of his career: fast to deploy and useful immediately.
I had spent my career selling security software to people like him. I knew how rarely anyone says that. His answer told me more than any deck could have.
Where access comes from
The rounds worth owning at the later stage are rarely offered widely. They go to people the founder already knows and wants on the cap table. There is no shortcut to being one of those people.
I spent my operating career in enterprise technology, the longest stretch of it at Proofpoint, through its IPO and its sale. The relationships from those years are the reason Inflection sees what it sees.
Some of it is proximity. I watched one company from the day it was founded, because it competed with my employer. Some of it is time. I advised one founder for most of a year before we invested, long enough to understand the problem he was solving before the market had a name for it.
Judgment is the other half
Access gets you the meeting. It does not tell you whether to invest. For that we rely on having done the job.
When a company shows us its sales model, we read it as people who have carried a number. When a security company hires its first senior revenue leaders, we know what that says about where it is. When a company says it can manufacture, we go and look.
Saying no
Judgment also means passing. We have turned down famous companies when the price or the terms did not hold. We waited two years on nuclear until one company fit. A scarce name is not a reason to invest, and we try hard not to rationalize a price because the logo is hard to get.
When we are right about a company, we usually say so more than once. We have invested in several of ours repeatedly as they grew, one of them four times. We invest our own money alongside our partners'.
The challenge in this business is rarely conviction, it's timing. Access and judgment are how you get the timing right.
This note reflects the views of Inflection Ventures as of the date written. It is not investment advice or an offer to sell securities.