Over the last decade, a majority of Venture Capital firms have chosen to define their identities through focused investment theses. As a result, two patterns have emerged: some firms have adopted a generalist approach, spreading investments across sectors, while others have doubled down on specific industries, seeking an edge in areas of deep expertise. So, which is better?
The following essay dives into generalist and specialist strategies through an examination of their advantages, disadvantages, and adaptability across different market conditions and investment stages.
The Case for the Generalist
There are a variety of distinct advantages to being a generalist investor. These advantages can be synthesized into three categories: flexibility, broad knowledge, and access to outliers.
Flexibility in investing is one of the most important advantages a generalist investor has over a specialist. Industries, themes, and trends are constantly changing and incredibly unpredictable. By being unconstrained in the industries, verticals, etc., where you can invest as a generalist, you are better suited to invest in the areas where opportunity is emerging. As Will Robins put it in his essay Why generalist investors will always win, “The eternal relevance of generalism in venture comes down to two simple and easy-to-prove facts: (1) Revolutionary tech companies are thematically unpredictable, and (2) transcendent founder talent is still needed even in the most fruitful spaces.”
Generalist investors are also more immune to the ebbs and flows of different market conditions. For example, in a high interest-rate environment, a generalist may stay clear of industries negatively impacted or double down on a founder they believe can weather the storm. Specialist investors are often constrained to invest in their chosen vertical regardless of market conditions. A specialist’s capital deployment strategies are limited in flexibility, making it more challenging to adapt to market cycles.
The advantages of being a generalist investor extend beyond their innate flexibility and into the scope of their knowledge. Being a generalist does not equate to being a lazy or uninformed thinker; it’s the opposite. Generalists have a broad knowledge source to pull from and can often pull together disparate themes and trends into unique insights because of their exposure to such a breadth of industries. In other words, generalist investors usually know little about a lot. It makes them uniquely positioned to deploy capital in areas where they can see opportunities, patterns, and use cases as they emerge across industries. Navigating uncertain times is generally more challenging for a specialist who draws from a narrow but deep knowledge pool.
The final point of advantage for a generalist is access to outliers. The pool of investable opportunities is much more extensive for a generalist investor than a specialist. With fewer constraints, generalists have a larger pool of selection that, in theory, increases their probability of picking a winner. Specialists are expected to hit the same amount of bullseyes on a much smaller target.
The Case for the Specialist
Specialist investors move quickly; they know what they want and where areas of opportunity lie, bringing radical efficiency to their deal flow. A vital advantage of the specialists is their knowledge. Many specialists have spent years operating within their specified investment verticals. Conviction is high within these selected industries, and they quickly make investment decisions. A specialist knows previous market trends and cycles and who has “been there, done that.” The narrow but profound knowledge a specialist has unlocks the ability of the investor to ask the right questions and be efficient in their dealmaking process. A generalist often cannot get “in the weeds” as quickly as a specialist, leaving them reviewing deals slower in unfamiliar markets and relying on outsider insights.
Outside of industry/vertical knowledge, specialist networks provide a considerable advantage to their portfolio companies. The concentrated networks allow specialists to give their founders highly relevant resources, filtered insights, and arguably the best intros to early customers, hires, or other investors. Compared to a generalist, who may be able to offer a portfolio company similar resources, but the network/connection may be different from what the founder wanted.
In their specified industry, specialists have a clear case for why they deserve allocations on a founder's cap table. Specialists can point to a clear knowledge base, network, and examples of where they’ve added sector-specific value to their previously invested companies. Examples can be the difference between getting allocation in a round or not; without curated offerings, a founder may choose to add a specialist fund to their cap table over a generalist if there are no specialists in the round.
The Superior Strategy
Specialist investors have superior access to curated deal flow, a shorter decision timeline, and more targeted networks. It seems logical that they would outperform the generalists equipped with broader but less specialized networks and knowledge. Statistically, though, that is not the case.
In 2022, PitchBook analyzed the performance of 451 VC funds across the US with vintages from 1995 to 2015 and found no significant performance differences between generalist and specialist funds after accounting for general market and industry performance. The coefficients (betas) for targeted and specialist funds reflected expected differences in average IRR relative to the generalist baseline. Still, neither significantly differed from zero, indicating performance across fund types once market conditions and fund size were considered. The report concluded that LPs "should be skeptical of any claims that industry specialization leads to superior performance.”
While Pitchbook’s findings showed no significant difference in performance between specialist and generalist funds, other studies have gotten more granular on how the specific advantages of each strategy play out. Economists Paul Gompers, Anna Kovner, and Josh Lerner analyzed the performance of over 800 venture capital firms and more than 3,500 individual venture capitalists by examining the IPO and acquisition success rates of over 11,000 portfolio companies between 1975 and 2003.
Their findings revealed a strong correlation between specialization and success. Specialist firms outperformed their generalist counterparts, mainly when individual venture capitalists specialize in a single industry. Generalist firms, conversely, showed poorer performance in cross-industry capital allocation and were less effective in selecting profitable investments within sectors.
However, generalist firms performed equally as well as their hyper-specialized counterparts when individual investors within the generalist firm were specialists. In other words, the hyper-specialists win in equal proportion to generalist firms with partners who have some specialized perspectives.
This is why Tier 1 funds have remained generalists over time. Even as fund sizes have ballooned, these firms recognized that staying generalist thematically while building small, focused teams of specialized investors could continue to drive outlier returns at any stage. Accel coined this trend as the “Prepared mind” approach, an investment method inspired by the Louis Pasteur quote, “chance only favors the prepared mind.” Accel emphasizes proactive exploration and thorough industry research, enabling the partners at the firm to identify and dig into specific categories, tap into network insights, and track emerging trends to spot potential leaders. By the time Accel invests, the team has developed a firm conviction and alignment with the entrepreneurs, replicating a specialist fund's speed, network, and confidence without becoming one.
Does Stage Matter?
In 2011, Economists Sharon Matusik and Markus Fitza conducted an in-depth analysis of the performance effects of diversification in VC, focusing on 4,583 VC firms and nearly 7,500 VC firm-year observations. The researchers used data from 1960 to 2000 to examine how diversification (defined as the depth of knowledge within the firm) impacts VC performance, particularly in uncertain environments.
The findings revealed a U-shaped relationship between diversification and performance. VC firms achieved higher success rates with either low or high levels of diversification, while moderate levels of diversification resulted in poorer performance. This means a super-specialized specialist performed equally as well as a generalist firm composed of investors with diversified knowledge, and those in the middle performed the worst.
Matusik and Fitza also found that flexibility is crucial for both specialist and generalist funds, particularly regarding early-stage investments. High portfolio diversification in early-stage investing generated the highest IPO success rate at over 40%, with more flexibility in the early stages and more success than their less adaptable counterparts.
In early-stage investments, high diversification (i.e., being more generalist) proved advantageous, allowing firms to adapt to market cycles. For late-stage investments, the impact of diversification on performance was less significant. They also found that firms co-invested with other VCs could achieve similar performance outcomes without needing high diversification, as co-investors contributed additional industry knowledge. Performance results can be manufactured by partnering with a mix of specialist and generalist investors. For this reason, founders are often encouraged to diversify their cap tables to include a mix of generalist investors, who bring wide networks and broad industry knowledge, alongside specialist investors, who offer targeted insights and valuable, niche-specific connections.
Why We Choose the Generalist Path
At Redbud VC, we have seen the advantages of a generalist approach flourish at the earliest stages. By choosing to be a generalist, we’re keeping our eyes open for the best talent, building solutions wherever they might emerge, whether in fintech, proptech, sustainability, or an area not yet fully defined. It’s not just about being flexible; it’s about having the curiosity and humility to say that the next billion-dollar company might come from a place we hadn’t anticipated.
The advantages of being a generalist at the early stages are abundantly clear. The ability for us to have exposure to a comprehensive set of founders building in diverse industries helps increase the chances we invest in a generational company. As a small fund, we leverage the networks and expertise of each of our team members to help us replicate some of the advantages that a specialist firm has. Where we can’t, we help our portfolio companies source funds that can be the specialists on their cap tables.
Given our ability to be adaptable as generalists, our team explores different industries or verticals where we want to find opportunities to build or deploy capital. For example, digging into challenges community banks face led to our investment in Braid’s Pre-Seed Round, and investigating sleepy areas in prop-tech led us to incubate Village.
As we work towards building a VC brand from Middle America, Redbud is adopting our approach to investing with a prepared mind, equipping us to recognize and support outlier founders in whatever they are building.
In Summary
Generalist investors excel in adaptability and have unparalleled flexibility positioning themselves to seize opportunities across sectors as they emerge, a crucial advantage in early-stage investing.
With a broad knowledge base, generalists can identify cross-industry patterns and insights, often uncovering unique investment opportunities that specialists may overlook.
Specialist investors with deep industry expertise and networks can bring high conviction and rapid decision-making within their focus areas, often providing highly targeted support to portfolio companies.
Studies reveal that generalist funds perform on par with specialists, challenging the notion that deep industry focus is necessary for strong returns.
In early-stage investing, diversification and flexibility have been linked to higher success rates, while specialization can enhance performance in later-stage investments.
Redbud VC embraces a generalist strategy, valuing adaptability, wide-ranging networks, and a prepared mindset to identify and support exceptional founders across various sectors.
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