The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

20VC: What It Takes To Be The Most Effective Coach To Startup Founders, The Biggest Surprises and Challenges About Transitioning To Venture From Operations & 3 Trends Shaking The World of Consumer Today with Victoria Treyger, General Partner @ Felicis Ven

Mar 11, 2019

Victoria Treyger, General Partner at Felicis Ventures, shares her wealth of experience from scaling revenue at Kabbage to her current role in venture capital. She reveals surprising challenges in transitioning from operations to VC, emphasizing the importance of trust with founders. Victoria discusses effective coaching strategies for investors and the vital role of independent board members. Additionally, she highlights disruptive trends in consumer goods, including the clean movement and innovations for underserved markets, pointing to future opportunities.

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ADVICE

Effective Coaching for Founders

Build trust and transparency with founders, offering both support and honest feedback.
Help founders prioritize, de-risk their company, and navigate different growth stages.

ANECDOTE

Supporting Founders Holistically

Victoria Treyger recounts supporting Asaf Wand (Hippo founder) during fundraising.
She entertained his sick son while they discussed round composition, highlighting the blended nature of work and personal life in startups.

ADVICE

Efficient Board Meetings

Limit board meeting time to 3-4 hours for maximum productivity.
Focus board meetings on strategic decisions, not performance dashboards, leveraging the board's experience.

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Victoria Treyger is a General Partner & Managing Director @ Felicis Ventures, one of the leading venture firms of the last decade backing 2 unicorns per year since founding including Shopify, OpenDoor, Flexport, Adyen, Twitch, Fitbit and many more. At Felicis, Victoria led the firm’s investments in prior 20VC guest Assaf Wand @ Hippo, Sentio, Sentilink, Blume, Floravere, and other stealth brands. Prior to joining Felicis, Victoria was Chief Revenue Officer of Kabbage. During her six-year tenure, Victoria and her team were instrumental in scaling revenue into the hundreds of millions of dollars and delivered a compound annual growth rate of over 100%. Victoria’s deep operating experience also includes leadership roles at Amazon, American Express, Travelocity, and RingCentral.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Victoria made her way into the world of VC as GP @ Felicis today having scaled revenue into the 100s of millions with Kabbage on the operating side of the table?

2.) Having just made the move from the world of operations, what are the most surprising aspects of venture? What elements have you found to be the most challenging? How does Victoria think about what it takes to be the most effective coach? What can the investor do to build that level of trust and transparency with the founder?

3.) In terms of being a board member, how involved does Victoria think the board member should be? Who is the best board member Victoria has worked with? What made them so special? What are Victoria's biggest pieces of advice to founders when it comes to how to run an efficiency board? What is the right way for founders to think about board composition?

4.) What 3 trends in the world of consumer and CPG make Victoria so excited to be investing in the space today? What has fundamentally changed about the distribution of those products that changes the way we consume the products? Does this mean Victoria would disagree we are in a D2C bubble today?

5.) Speaking of distribution, how does Victoria respond to the suggestion "there is a lack of free and open distribution today" with customer acquisition costs being so expensive? How does Victoria think about the consumer and CPG space's ability to provide venture returns at scale moving forward?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:

Victoria’s Fave Book: Mindset: How You Can Fulfil Your Potential, Personal History

Victoria’s Most Recent Investment: SentiLink

As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Victoria on Twitter here!

Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.