2005: Accel is raising Fund IX- a significant reduction from $1.6B to $440 million. The dotcom bubble left scars everywhere. Social networking is dead. Friendster failed. Nobody wants to touch the category. Jim Breyer invests $12.7M into Facebook anyway in May 2005. VCs whisper it's embarrassing. "College kids will graduate and forget about it." 2011: Partial sales return the entire $440M fund. At IPO, the stake is worth billions. This is consumer investing. The category looks dead. The first movers crashed. Everyone moves on. Then the real winner shows up, and it's generational. The best investors back the 3rd, 5th, and 10th companies in a "doomed" space. They have conviction when everyone else has moved on. They understand consumer doesn't work until it suddenly does. Market timing is everything, except when it isn't.