Growth Science International, LLC

Like it or not, we live in a quantitative world; and it gets more so every day.  Manufacturing defects are measured with 99.99966% accuracy.  Automated trading algorithms evaluate businesses, prices, alphas, betas, libraries of ratios and make trades based on picoseconds of marginal arbitrage.  In 2006, an estimated 40% of trades on the London Stock exchange were done by robotic intelligence.  United States estimates are closer to 80%, as anyone paying attention on May 6^th got a sense for.In this world of empiricism, data and calculation, the job of a venture investor seems an anomaly indeed.  While there are some exceptions, the majority of venture investors allocate billions of dollars every year based on little more than experience and gut intuition.

This is not to, in any way, detract from successful investors; the ability to pick winners, wrestle out a deal and drive others towards a central direction can require tremendous talent and skill.  Rather, the point here is merely to pose a question.  Given the dollars at stake and lives in the balance, will venture investing inevitably evolve in a more empirical direction?  Will there be a robot uprising? More