OM DENNE EPISODE
Chris Farmer got banned from casinos for counting cards. That same obsession with statistics and risk turned into SignalFire, the data-driven venture firm he founded in 2013.
In this episode of Very First Win, Chris tells Robert Hilmer how a lucky blackjack run in college sent him down the rabbit hole of modeling the game with a UC Berkeley professor, playing semi pro for years, and learning when to lean in on a bad beat versus when to walk away. Those lessons became his framework for startup investing: is the deck backloaded, or are you just chasing losses?
They also get into:
How to know when to double down on a struggling company vs cut your losses
The team, product, technology, timing framework for hard decisionsWhy agility is at a premium when no one can see more than a few months ahead
How AI is reshaping startup teams, entry level hiring, and what a defensible moat even looks like now
Chris previously worked at Bessemer Venture Partners and General Catalyst before launching SignalFire.
Follow Robert Hilmer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roberthilmer/
Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/very-first-win/id1896315027
Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@GoannaCapital
