Saluting The 'Misses'

As the market chasing has come back in vogue and ‘return envy ’ is back, I wanted to take a few minutes to salute my mistakes and misses. There are some doozies.

I have major ‘return envy’ these days. In 2008, things were easy. I was out of the market and having a big hedge fund year. I was investing in web start-ups and buying a few stocks when the VIX was 90. Soren and I started Stocktwits in October, 2008. To borrow from a baseball analogy…’The Ball Looked FAT’.

In 2009, I worked 24 hours/day and missed a 60 percent stock market year. The individua misses were right in front of me… Apple $AAPL , Google $GOOG , Priceline $PCLN, Coffee $GMCR….oy.

In 2010, I am just plain confused. Biotech, social gaming and geo-location are in, three areas of zero interest and investment for me. There is ‘hot money’ back in the stock market and hot deals in venture land .

In the last few years I have managed to pass on the following very early financings:

1. Twitter2. Zynga3. Foursquare

It has gotten so bad that entrepreneurs feel good about being passed over by me. I heard one of the entrepreneurs at ‘Y Combinator’ say to another:

‘If Lindzon passes….we are a lock!’

For the moment, I am the Cliff Claven of angel investing, but as a long-time stock market participant, I know that it’s mostly about ‘misses’. You need to stay in the game so you can keep swinging and do whatever you can to stay in the flow.

This week I tried to stay in the flow by attending Y Combinator and helping Tech Stars in their selection process.

While I may be cold, I know that the people who I consider my true competitors were not in the room, and have not been in these rooms for a long time.

Missing is part of the long process of winning.