Cem Sertoglu is one of the great venture investors of the last decade. Cem is famed for writing the first check into UiPath and over several rounds turning $16.5M into $2.1BN. Cem recently started Bek Ventures, a $250M fund that was 3x oversubscribed.
In Today’s Show with Cem Sertoglu We Discuss:
1. Has Venture Capital Been Commoditised:
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Why does Cem believe that VC has not been commoditised?
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Why does Cem believe many VCs today are not even VCs anymore?
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How does Cem advise founders who have offers from large multi-stage firms? What questions should they ask them pre-working with them?
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How do the best founders select the VC they choose to work with?
2. Price, Reserves, Loss Ratios:
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Why does Cem believe that price does not matter?
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How does Cem approach reserves and reserves management?
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What does Cem know now about reserves that he wishes he had known when he started investing?
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Does Cem care about loss ratio? Does he do scenario planning when making investments?
3. Making $2.1BN on UiPath:
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How did Cem meet Daniel for the first time? Was it obvious he was incredible?
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Why did they only write a $1M check and not take the whole round with $1.5M?
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Why did 40 of the best investors in Europe all turn down UiPath for the Series A?
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What did doing the bridge round for UiPath teach Cem about reserves?
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When was it obvious UiPath was going to be a mega hit?
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How did they continue to concentrate capital with each round?
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When did they first start to sell shares in UiPath?
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What was their approach to the selldown of their position?
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When the company IPO’d, how much of it did they have?
4. AMA with One of Europe’s Best:
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Does signalling exist? How does Cem advise founders on this?
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What has been his biggest loss? How did that change his mindset?
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What has been Cem’s biggest miss? What did he not see?
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Why does Cem always believe you should manufacture arguments with founders before investing?
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Why does Cem believe a high GP commit can actually misalign the GP and the LP?
