On the morning of Wednesday, December 4th, 2024 a would-be assassin shot and killed the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, Brian Thompson, outside of a New York City hotel. The horrific atrocity shook New York City, country, and the world.

I happened to catch pneumonia the day earlier, December 3rd. So, when the sickness came on with its fury and I could hardly get out of bed, I found myself with a lot more time. So, I was able to follow the story of this incident with a lot more detail than I normally would. As the manhunt progressed from its early days on Wednesday, Thursday, and then into the weekend, I couldn’t help but notice several inescapable themes in how the story was unfolding. Specifically, how that unfolding of the story carried themes that were also present in the world of venture capital.

Now, I’m in no way making light of this situation, the death of this man, the grief of his children, family and company. I’ve lost my father a number of years ago myself and so I am very sensitive to families who are grieving a loss of a father. In this article, I am choosing to focus on the manhunt itself and how those themes from the NYPD, the good guys, is similar to the world of venture capital and startups.

With that said, let’s go back to the beginning of when this assassination on early Wednesday morning, December 4th and see five ways how the manhunt for the CEO assassin acts like venture capital.

1) Initial Information Flows Rapidly

When the shooting initially happened around 6:50 a.m. on Wednesday, December 4th, the information flow initially came out at a rapid pace.

The news media reported on what they knew and the NYPD was grappling with what exactly happened. They knew much of the same information and were trying to discern the implications simultaneously.

As the first few hours unfolded, the news media reports to consumers on several key things - the initial surveillance videos, the discovery of important findings such as that a cell phone was left in a nearby alley, the suspect fled on foot, and then used an electric bike and then disappeared in Central Park.

In startups and venture capital, when the founder meets with the investor on a Zoom call, lots of information is exchanged quickly.

There is an initial burst of information gained. But even though the initial information comes out quickly, there is only a limited amount that can be gained in such a short amount of time.

There is a feeling of that the investor is just scratching the surface of the depth of the company. They are just seeing the startup at face value.

I like to say that, at this point, the startup appears one-dimensional. Only a limited amount of data points have been exchanged, which give the investor their initial impression of what is at hand. There is a feeling of that the investor is just scratching the surface of the depth of the company.

Even though through the manhunt, or in the initial founder/investor meeting, information initially flows quickly, there is way much more to be gleaned and those are found in additional data points over time.

2) Data Points Start to Hint at a Pattern

One of the earliest questions that the news media was trying to answer was whether or not this person was a professional killer.

The assassin’s highly targeted choice of the victim seemed to initially infer that perhaps this assassin was a professional paid to do the deadly act. More data points are required to put together the mosaic of the kind of person the suspect was.

When a founder and an investor meet for the first time over Zoom or in-person, there is no background nor experience with each other.

In those moments, the fundamental question that both the founder and investor are looking to answer is, “What is this person and company like?”

The investor might to seek to learn more data points on the founder and company by asking for a data room link, specific documents, or requesting another call with the founder.

✅ Investing doesn’t happen from singular data points. Venture investing requires the investor to stitch together a story on that company. ✅

As more data points come together, it starts to hint at a pattern of what that person and company could be like. 

The data points help the founder and investor move from snapshots in time to a panorama video of the story.

3) The Information Bifurcates into Two Degrees of Insight

As Day 2 of the manhunt progressed, I observed that an inflection point happened.

It seemed that what consumers knew and what the NYPD knew bifurcated into two different degrees of insight about the situation.

In short, each one experienced a different velocity of inputs into the process…

….which created two different realities (perceived reality vs. true reality)…

…because one of the key drivers of leverage is information asymmetry.

The velocity of inputs into the process…

There was an inflection point where the news media suddenly had a drastic slowdown in the new information that they were releasing and reporting on. I observed that many of the news media outlets had possession of the same information and were simply slicing it many different ways. For a period of time, I stopped following the manhunt coverage as frequently because I wasn’t learning anything new about the story. In essence, the number of inputs the news media was receiving into their news process, was dramatically lower than it was when the incident initially was reported.

But, the information flow that the NYPD was receiving was accelerating - rapidly. At their press conferences, the NYPD was talking about how they were combing through hundreds of hours video surveillance footage, that they were getting hundreds of tips through anonymous phone calls, picking up all these clues across New York City, etc.

The velocity of inputs each one was receiving bifurcated into two different degrees of insight about the exact same incident.

…create two different realities…