20VC: The Memo: How to Raise a Venture Capital Fund (Part I) | The Core Lessons from Raising $400M Over The Last Four Years| The Biggest Mistakes VCs Make When Fundraising | How To Find and Build Relationships with New LPs
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch11 Tammi 2023

20VC: The Memo: How to Raise a Venture Capital Fund (Part I) | The Core Lessons from Raising $400M Over The Last Four Years| The Biggest Mistakes VCs Make When Fundraising | How To Find and Build Relationships with New LPs

How To Raise a Venture Capital Fund

Over the last 4 years, I have raised around $400M across different vehicles from many different types of investors. Today I am going to break down the early stages of how to raise a venture capital fund and then stay tuned for a follow-up to this where we will break down a fundraising deck for a fund, what to do, what not to do etc. But to the first element.

Your Fund Size is Your Strategy:

The most important decision you will make is the size of fund you raise. So much of your strategy and approach will change according to your fund size target (LP type, messaging, documentation, structure etc). Remember, your fund size is your strategy. If you are raising a $10M Fund, you are likely writing collaborative checks alongside a follower, if you are raising a $75M fund, you will likely be leading early-stage seed rounds. These are very different strategies and ways of investing.

MISTAKE: The single biggest mistake I see fund managers make is they go out to fundraise with too high a target fundraise. One of the most important elements in raising for a fund is creating the feeling of momentum in your raise. The more of the fund you have raised and the speed with which you have raised those funds dictate that momentum. So the smaller the fund, the easier it is to create that heat and momentum in your raise.

LESSON: Figure out your minimum viable fund size (MVFS). Do this by examining your portfolio construction. In other words, how many investments you want to make in the fund (the level of diversification) and then alongside that, the average check size you would like to invest in each company. Many people forget to discount the fees when doing this math and so the traditional fund will charge 2% fees per year and so across the life of the fund (usually 10 years), that is 20% of the fund allocated to fees.

Example:

We are raising a $10M Fund.

20% is allocated to fees for the manager and so we are left with $8M of investable capital.

A good level of diversification for an early-stage fund is 30 companies and so with this fund size, I would recommend 32 investments with an average of $250K per company. That is the $8M in invested capital. Big tip, I often see managers raising a seed fund and are only planning to make 15 investments, this is simply not enough. You have to have enough diversification in the portfolio if you are at the seed stage. No one is that good a picker. Likewise, I sometimes see 100 or even 200 investments per fund, this is the spray-and-pray approach, and although works for some, your upside is inherently capped when you run the maths on fund sizes with this many investments.

A big element to point out in this example is we have left no allocation for reserves. For those that do not know, reserves are the dollars you set aside to re-invest in existing portfolio companies. Different funds reserve different amounts, on the low end there is 0% reserves and on the high end some even have 70% of the fund reserved for follow-on rounds.

In this example, given the size of the fund being $10M with a seed focus, I would recommend we have a no-reserves policy. Any breakout companies you can take to LPs and create SPVs to concentrate further capital into the company. This is also better for you as the manager as you then have deal by deal carry on the SPVs that are not tied to the performance of the entire fund.

So now we know we know $10M is our MVFS as we want to make at least 30 investments and we want to invest at least $250K per company. Great, next step.

Set a target that is on the lower end, you can always have a hard cap that is significantly higher but you do not want the target to be too far away that LPs question whether you will be able to raise the fund at all. This is one of the biggest reasons why many do not invest in a first time fund, they are unsure whether the fund will be raised at all.

The Team:

Alongside the size of the fund, the team composition is everything, simply put, LPs like managers who have invested in the stage you are wanting to invest in moving forward. They like to see track record.

IMPORTANT: I see so many angels write checks into breakout Series B companies and then go out and try and raise a seed fund with this as their track record. Do not do this, this does not prove you are a good seed investor but merely shows you have access at the Series B. These are very different things.

With regards to track record, in the past, TVPI or paper mark-ups were enough, now there is a much greater focus on DPI (returned capital to investors). LPs want to see that you have invested before at that stage and they also want to see that the team has worked together before. You want to remove the barriers to no. If you have not worked with the partners you are raising with before, LPs will have this as a red flag, and as team risk, it is that simple.

Navigating the World of LPs (Limited Partners)

The size of the fund you are raising will massively dictate the type of LPs that will invest in your fund.

MISTAKE: You have to change your messaging and product marketing with each type of LP you are selling to. A large endowment fund will want a very different product to a Fund of Funds.

Example: If you are a large endowment, you will invest in early funds but you want the manager to show you a pathway to them, in the future, being able to take not a $10M check but a $50M check from the endowment. Whereas the Fund of Funds will likely want you to stay small with each fund. So when discussing fund plans, it is crucial to keep these different desires in mind.

If you are raising a $10M fund, you will be too small for institutional LPs and will raise from individuals and family offices. An LP will never want to be more than 20% of the LP dollars in a fund and so the size at which an institutional LP (really the smallest fund of funds) would be interested is when you raise $25M+ and they can invest $5M. Generalisation but a good rule of thumb to have.

LP Composition of Your Fund:

Speaking of one LP being 20% of the fund dollars, it is helpful to consider the LP composition you would like to have for your fund. The most important element; you want to have a diversified LP base. A diversified LP base is important in two different forms:

  1. No LP should be more than 20% of the fund at a maximum. That said you do not want to have so many investors in your fund it is unmanageable. LPs need time and attention and so it is important to keep that in mind when considering how many you raise from. Some LPs will want preferred terms or economics for coming into the first close or being one of the first investors, if you can, do not do this. It sets a precedent for what you will and will not accept and then for all subsequent investors, they will want the same terms and rights.
  2. You want to have a diversification of LP type (endowments, fund of funds, founders, GPs at funds etc). Why? In different market cycles, different LPs will be impacted and so if you only raise from one LP type, if a market turns against that LP class, then your next fund is in danger.

Example:

We will see the death of many mico-funds ($10M and below). Why? The majority raised their funds from GPs at larger funds and from public company founders. With the changing market environment, most GPs are no longer writing LP checks and most public market founders have had their net worths cut in half by the value of their company in the public market and so likewise, are no longer writing LP checks. In this case, the next funds for these funds will be in trouble as their core LP base is no longer as active as they used to be. We are seeing this today.

Prediction:

  • 50% of the micro-funds raised in the last 2 years will not raise subsequent funds.

Going back to the question of diversification, my preference and what we have at 20VC, the majority of dollars are concentrated from a small number of investors. Of a $140M fund, we have $100M invested from 5 large institutions. These are a combination of endowments, Family Offices, a High Net Worth Individual and a Fund of Funds. The remaining $40M originates from smaller institutions or individuals, for us we have over 50 making up that final $40M. For me, I really wanted to have a community around 20VC Fund and so we have over 40 unicorn founders invested personally in the fund as LPs.

Bonus Points: The best managers select their LPs to play a certain role or help with a potential weakness the manager has. For example, I was nervous I did not have good coverage of the Australian or LATAM startup market and so I was thrilled to add founders from Atlassian, Linktree, Mercado Libre, Rappi and Nubank as LPs to help in regions where I do not have such an active presence. If you can, structure your LP base to fill gaps you have in your ability.

Status Check In:

Now we know our minimum viable fund size, we know the team composition we are going out to raise with, we know the LP type that we are looking to raise money from and we know how we want our desired fund cap table to look.

Now we are ready to move to the LPs themselves.

Fill Your Restaurant with Friendlies:

As I said, the appearance of your raise having heat and momentum is important.

Mistake: The biggest mistake I see early fund managers make is they go out to large institutional investors that they do not have an existing relationship and spend 3-4 months trying to raise from them. They lose heat, they lose morale and the raise goes nowhere.

Whatever fund size you are raising, do not do this. Fill your restaurant with friendlies first. What does this mean? Go to anyone you know who would be interested in investing in your fund and lock them in to invest. Create the feeling that progress is being made and you have momentum.

BONUS POINTS: The best managers bring their LPs with them for the fundraise journey. With each large or notable investor that invests in your fund, send an email to the LPs that have already committed to let them know about this new notable investor. This will make them feel like you have momentum, they are in a winner and many will then suggest more LP names, wanting to bring in their friends.

MISTAKE: Do not set a minimum check size, some of the most helpful LPs in all of my funds have been the smallest checks. Setting a minimum check size will inhibit many of the friendlies from investing and prevent that early momentum.

The bigger the name the incoming investor has the better. You can use it for social validity when you go out to raise from people you know less well or not at all. Different names carry different weight, one mistake I see many make is they get a big name invested in their fund but it is common knowledge to everyone that this LP has done 200 or 300 fund investments, in which case, it does not carry much weight that they invested in your fund. Be mindful of this as it can show naivety if you place too much weight on a name that has invested in so many funds.

Discovery is Everything:

The world of LPs is very different to the world of venture. 99% of LPs do not tweet, write blogs or go on podcasts. Discovery is everything. When I say discovery I literally mean finding the name of the individual and the name of the organization that is right for you to meet.

This can take the form of several different ways but the most prominent for me are:

  1. The Most Powerful: Create an LP acquisition flywheel. What do I mean by this? When an LP commits to invest in your fund. Say to them, "thank you so much for your faith and support in me, now we are on the same team, what 3 other LPs do you think would be perfect for the fund?" Given they have already invested, they already believe in you and so 90% of them will come back with 3 names and make the intro. Do this with each LP that commits and you will create an LP acquisition flywheel.

Bonus Point: The top 1% of managers raising will already know which LPs are in the network of the LP that has just committed and will ask for those 3 specific intros. They will then send personalized emails to the LP that has just committed. The LP is then able to forward that email to the potential LP you want to meet. You want to minimize the friction on behalf of the introducer and so writing the forwardable email is a great way to do this.

  1. The Most Likely to Commit: LPs are like VCs. When one of their portfolio managers makes an intro and recommendation to a potential fund investment, they will place a lot more weight on it than they would have otherwise. So get your VC friends to introduce you to their LPs, it is that simple. Remember, you have to remove the friction from the introducer. So, make sure to send the email they can forward to the LP. Make this personalized and concise.

Mistake: Many VCs do not like to introduce other managers to their LPs as they view it as competition. This is moronic. If the manager asking for the intro is really good, they will raise their fund with or without your intro. If they are not good, then you can politely say it would not be a fit for your LP and move on. Do not be too protective of your LPs from other managers.

  1. The Cold Outbound: I am not going to lie cold outbound for LPs is really hard. Here is what I would suggest:

  • Pitchbook: It is expensive and many cannot afford it but if you can, it is worth it for LP discovery. They have thousands of LPs of different types on the platform all with their emails and contact details. Those are less useful as a cold email to an LP is unlikely to convert but just finding their names and the names of their organization is what is important. You can then take that to Linkedin to then find the mutual connections you have with that person and ask for a warm intro.
  • Linkedin: Many LPs have the funds that they have invested in on their Linkedin profiles with the title "Limited Partner". If they are invested in a fund that is aligned with the strategy that you are raising for, there is a strong chance they might be a fit. For example, I invest in micro-funds and have invested in Chapter One, Scribble, Rahul from Superhuman and Todd's Fund, and Cocoa Ventures, so you see this and see I like sub $25M funds with a specific angle.
  • Clearbit: Often you will know the name of the institution but not the name or position of the person within the institution that you are looking to raise from. Download a Google Chrome Plugin called Clearbit. With Clearbit you can simply insert the URL for the organization you would like to speak with and then all the people within it will appear and you can select from title and their email will be provided. Again, if you do not want to cold email, you now have their name which you can take to your community, to ask for the intro.

MISTAKE: LPs invest in lines, not dots. Especially for institutional LPs, it is rare that an institution will meet you and invest in you without an existing relationship and without having followed your work before. A mistake many make is they go to large institutions and expect them to write a check for this fund, it will likely be at best for the fund after this one or most likely the third fund. This does not mean you should not go to them with your first fund but you should not prioritize them and you should not expect them to commit. I would instead go in with the mindset of we are not going to get an investment here, so I want to leave the room understanding what they need to see me do with this first fund, to invest in the next fund. The more detailed you can get them to be the more you can hold them to account for when you come back to them for Fund II.

Example: If they say, we want to see you are able to price and lead seed rounds and we are not sure you can right now. Great. Now when you come back to them in 12 months' time, you can prioritize the fact that you have led 80% of the rounds you invested in, and their core concern there has been de-risked.

In terms of how I think about LP relationship building, I always meet 2 new LPs every week. I ensure with every quarter, I have a check-in with them and ensure they have our quarterly update. This allows them to follow your progress, learn how you like to invest, and communicate with your LPs. It also really serves to build trust. Doing this not in a fundraising process also removes the power imbalance that is inherent within a fundraise and allows a much more natural relationship to be created.

Jaksot(1390)

20VC: From Netscape To Friendster To Nuzzel: Jonathan Abrams on A Silicon Valley Adventure

20VC: From Netscape To Friendster To Nuzzel: Jonathan Abrams on A Silicon Valley Adventure

Jonathan Abrams is the founder & CEO of the social news service Nuzzel. Jonathan is also co-founder and Managing Partner of Founders Den, a shared office space and private club for experienced entrepreneurs and their friends. Previously, Jonathan was the founder & CEO of Socializr, Friendster, and HotLinks, and a software engineer at companies such as Netscape and Nortel. Jonathan is a board member at Girls in Tech, an advisor to CodeNow, and has previously been a mentor in Steve Blank's entrepreneurship classes at Stanford and Berkeley, a top-rated mentor at The Founder Institute and a member of the advisory board of the Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs. Jonathan is also an angel investor in over 50 startups including AngelList, Docker, Front, HelloSign, Instacart, Sapho, Seed, Slideshare, Socialcam, and Vouch. Click To Play In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Jonathan make his way into tech and come to found the likes of Friendster and Nuzzel? What were his biggest lessons from working at Netscape? 2.) How can founders determine the customer stickiness and value proposition in the early days of product testing with friends and family? 3.) How does Jonathan view the competitive landscape for news aggregation? Why is consumer app such a competitive space? 4.) Question From Matt Mazzeo: How does Jonathan compare this moment in time to previous points in the innovation curve? 5.) Having worked with both the old and the new guard of VC, how does working with Lowercase, Homebrew and Softtech compare with the old guard of Benchmark and Kleiner Perkins? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Jonathan's Fave Book: Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure, Jerry Kaplan As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Jonathan on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

15 Huhti 201629min

20VC: Why Machine Intelligence Will Eat The World Of Software with Roy Bahat, Head of Bloomberg Beta

20VC: Why Machine Intelligence Will Eat The World Of Software with Roy Bahat, Head of Bloomberg Beta

Roy Bahat is the head of Bloomberg Beta, a new venture fund backed by Bloomberg L.P. Prior to Bloomberg, Roy was chairman of OUYA, a new kind of game console, where he was the first investor. Before that Roy spent five years leading News Corporation’s IGN Entertainment, an online media company with a monthly audience of 70 million people, a top 10 YouTube channel, and the leading website in its category in almost every market globally. Roy served on the board of Revision3 (acquired by Discovery) and was a board observer at Flixster (acquired by Warner Bros). Before joining News Corp., Roy was in the public sector in the office of New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and at New York’s 2012 Olympic bid. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Roy made his way into the world of VC from working alongside Mayor Michael Bloomberg? 2.) What do all these definitions within AI mean? What does artificial intelligence include? What is machine learning? What is deep learning? 3.) When we talk about AI are we talking pure AI , with the likes of Watson and DeepMind or are we talking consumer centric software with elements of AI? 4.) With data playing such a huge role in the efficiency of AI, do large incumbents like Google and Facebook not have a massive advantage? How can startups get access to datasets? Is AI not fundamentally an acquihire industry? 5.) How important has open source in allowing and encouraging the progression of the machine intelligence ecosystem? What more can be done to further it's growth? 6.) With the rise of machine intelligence, what does the future of work look like? How will we live in a world where 47% of white collar jobs will be replaced by machines and AI? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Roy's Fave Book: Watershed Down Roy's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Media ReDefined by Jason Hirschhorn, Asim Azar, the exponential view As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Roy on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

13 Huhti 201631min

20VC: Felicis' Aydin Senkut on Scaling Felicis From $4m to $120m, Doing Venture Differently and Why Being A VC Is Like A Jamaican Bobsled Team!

20VC: Felicis' Aydin Senkut on Scaling Felicis From $4m to $120m, Doing Venture Differently and Why Being A VC Is Like A Jamaican Bobsled Team!

Aydin Senkut is the Founder and Managing Director of Felicis Ventures. An original “super-angel” investor, he was named to Forbes’ 2014 and 2015 Midas List and previously appeared as one of the top 15 tech angels by Businessweek. Aydin is well-known as an early backer of a number of iconic companies including Shopify (NYSE:SHOP), Fitbit (NYSE:FIT), Adyen, Clearslide, Credit Karma, and Rovio. More than 55 Felicis companies such as Brightroll, Climate Corp, Dropcam, Twitch, and Meraki, have been acquired by industry leaders such as Google, Amazon, Cisco, Apple, Microsoft, AT&T, Disney, Yahoo and Ebay. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Aydin made his way into the world of VC from being a Senior Manager @ Google? 2.) What does Aydin suggest to all those looking to make the move into VC who have potentially, an unconventional background?? 3.) What caused Aylin's shift from angel investor to VC ? What was Aydin's investment strategy look like at the beginning and how has that evolved over time? How does Aydin look to differentiate Felicis from the plethora of seed funds? 4.) How does Felicis' stage agnosticity work in practicality for Aydin and the fund itself? How much of a role does valuation play in Felicis' investment decision making? 5.) Question from Rob Hayes @ First Round: How did the Rovio investment come about? Why do you say you are most proud if it? 6.) Question From Hiten Shah: How do you approach the topic of growing the organisation, whilst still supporting founders with the same time and quality? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Aydin's Fave Book: Anti-Fragile Aylin's Most Recent Investment: Diffbot As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Aydin on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

11 Huhti 201630min

20VC: Sprig's Gagan Biyani on The 3 Principles Of Fundraising and Building The World's Largest Restaurant

20VC: Sprig's Gagan Biyani on The 3 Principles Of Fundraising and Building The World's Largest Restaurant

Gagan Biyani is the CEO and Co-Founder @ Sprig, on a mission to build the world's largest restaurant providing healthy and sustainable food. Sprig has attained funding from the likes of Greylock Partners, Accel and Battery Partners. Prior to Sprig, Gagan was the Interim Head of Marketing @ Lyft, where he wrote the first Lyft new market launch playbook and launched Lyft LA. Before that Gagan, was the Co-Founder and CEO of the world's largest online teaching and learning marketplace with the founding of Udemy. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) What was the origin story for Sprig? What was the aha moment? 2.) Question from Josh Elman: What lessons have Sprig and Gagan learnt from Chipotle, both in terms of their growth and their food? 3.) What are the coolest things that Gagan has learnt about foods that have learnt and not worked from user and product testing? 4.) On TWIST Gagan stated that the food delivery market is a winner take all market , so what makes Gagan believe that and what will ensure that Sprig is the startup that will be victorious? 5.) How do Sprig address expansion theory? Are they the Uber or the Lyft in terms of aggressive market expansion? How do Sprig choose which new market to enter? Is there a scientific approach? 6.) From having raised 9 rounds of VC and angel funding, what are Gagan's biggest tips and takeaways to anyone entering the VC or funding process? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Gagan's's Fave Book: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Gagan on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

8 Huhti 201628min

20VC: Greylock's Sarah Tavel on What Founders Need From A Good Investor and Why Products Need To Be 10X Better & Cheaper

20VC: Greylock's Sarah Tavel on What Founders Need From A Good Investor and Why Products Need To Be 10X Better & Cheaper

Sarah Tavel is a Partner at Greylock Partners. Prior to Greylock, Sarah was a product lead at Pinterest. As one of the first 35 employees, her first order of business was to launch Pinterest internationally and close the Series C financing. Sarah then moved into product, becoming Pinterest’s founding PM for search and discovery, and launching Pinterest’s first search and recommendations features. She also led three acquisitions as she helped the company scale through a period of hyper-growth. Sarah joined Pinterest in 2012 after co-leading the Series A investment while at Bessemer Venture Partners. She spent six years at Bessemer, investing in a wide range of businesses from Quidsi to Cornerstone OnDemand. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Sarah made her way into the world of VC from selling ads in college? 2.) What is the deal sourcing story behind your sourcing of Pinterest for Bessemer? What made Sarah so excited about the product? At what stage did Sarah realise the huge potential Pinterest did have? 3.) How did Sarah decide Greylock was the right VC to choose over the plethora of other options? 4.) How does Sarah try and appeal to the inner founder? What does she do to make sure she is the first person they call? What forms of communication does Srah like to communicate with? 5.) What is Sarah's attitude to VC's personal brand? How has Sarah seen the personalisation of VC in recent years? Why the shift from blog to Medium? 6.) What is the most important attribute for a consumer product to have? Does it have to be both 10X better and cheaper? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Sarah's's Fave Book: Creating The Kingdom Of Ends Sarah's Fave Blog or Newsletter: A Crowded Space by Josh Breinlinger As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Josh on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

6 Huhti 201628min

20VC: Greylock's Josh Elman on Why We Are Not In A Consumer Downturn, The Next Wave Of Social and What Twitter Should Do Next

20VC: Greylock's Josh Elman on Why We Are Not In A Consumer Downturn, The Next Wave Of Social and What Twitter Should Do Next

Josh Elman is a Partner at Greylock Partners, which he joined the team in 2011 and invests in entrepreneurs building new consumer products and services. Josh specializes in designing, building, and scaling consumer products, having been part of multiple companies that have grown to more than 100 million users. Before joining Greylock, Josh was the product lead for growth and relevance at Twitter, growing Twitter’s active user base by nearly 10x. Prior to Twitter, Josh worked on the platform at Facebook and was an early employee at LinkedIn helping establish models for user growth and launched v1 of LinkedIn Jobs. Josh currently serves on the boards of Medium, Meerkat, Operator, Discord, and Jelly. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Josh made his move into the VC world from Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook? 2.) What were the biggest takeaways of watching fb, Linkedin and Twitter to hyper growth mode? 3.) Question from Jeff Seibert: What would Josh do with the Twitter product today?? 4.) How would Josh apply his principles of the on boarding process to Twitter? What does he mean when he refers to the ladder of engagement? 5.) How does Josh respond to Fred Wilson's out on the consumer downturn? Is consumer really as hard as Fred makes it out to be? What sort of metrics really get Josh excited when viewing consumer startups? 6.) How has Josh's own investment decision making process been honed and refined since joining Greylock? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Josh's Fave Book: Built To Last: Successful Habits Of Visionary Companies Josh's Most Recent Investment: Discord: Free Voice and Text Chat For Gamers As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Josh on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

4 Huhti 201625min

20VC: RobinHood's Baiju Bhatt on The Importance Of Design in Fintech and Having A 10X Better Product

20VC: RobinHood's Baiju Bhatt on The Importance Of Design in Fintech and Having A 10X Better Product

Baiju Bhatt is the Co-Founder and CEO at RobinHood, the wildly successful stock market trading app with absolutely no commission fees. Since launching RobinHood there have been many amazing milestones including being awarded an Apple Design Award (first Finch company ever to achieve this), funding from the likes of Index, Google Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and even movie star Jared Leto. They were also nominated for best mobile app at The Crunchies by TechCrunch this year. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Baiju made his way into the world of tech and came to found RobinHood? 2.) How did Baiju deal with the regulatory hurdles heading into the fintech and trading world? 3.) How did Baiju go about building the waitlist for RobinHood to 1m people? What were the defining strategies and channels that made the difference? 4.) What is the thesis behind the design of RobinHood? Will this design enable previously untouched markets to tap into the growing trading market? 5.) What are the biggest challenges for Baiju and RobinHood going forward? What keeps Baiju up at night? What is Baiju's biggest piece of advice to a founder scaling their startup? 6.) How can early stage founders really determine whether they have product market fit and what does this look like? What re the metrics required to suggest serious traction? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Baiju's Fave Blog or Newsletter: TechCrunch Baiju's Fave Productivity Tool: Slack Baiju's Fave Book: The Case For Mars As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Baiju on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

1 Huhti 201624min

20VC: 'The Best Seed Investors Hunt' with Paige Craig @ Arena VC

20VC: 'The Best Seed Investors Hunt' with Paige Craig @ Arena VC

Paige Craig is a Founder and General Partner of Arena Ventures. He is an experienced angel investor who has invested in over 110 startups in the last seven years, including companies like Lyft, AngelList, Wish, Postmates, Twitter, Styleseat, Zenpayroll, Quizup and more. Paige spent the first half of his career in the Marine Corps and US Intelligence Community and later launched a defense contractor, driving alone into Iraq in 2003 with just $10,000 and expanding operations across the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Africa and Southeast Asia. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Paige made his way into the wonderful world of VC? 2.) What were Paige's biggest takeaways from his previous career in the military? How did this shape his investment thesis? 3.) Arena VC have both the fund and the AngelList syndicate, why did Paige choose this dual model? What have been the drivers of it's success? 4.) What does Paige believe makes a great VC? What aspects of himself would he like to improve upon? Is an inherent fight mode common among VCs? 5.) What advice would Paige give to someone looking to start a syndicate? What would Craig recommend to someone looking to join a syndicate? Items Mentioned In Today’s Episode: Paige’s Fave Book: Ender's Game Paige’s Fave Blog or Newsletter: Mattermark Daily As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Paige on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

30 Maalis 201622min

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