252. Decentralization of VC, Why Your Fund Size is Your Strategy, and Why Startup Formation is the Most Important Contributor to Economic Growth (Erik Torenberg)

Erik Torenberg of Village Global joins Nick to discuss Decentralization of VC, Why Your Fund Size is Your Strategy, and Why Startup Formation is the Most Important Contributor to Economic Growth. In this episode, we cover:

• Walk us through your background and path to VC
• What were the biggest lessons learned from Product Hunt that you took to investing?
• Recently had Ben Casnocha on... anything specific you'd like to add about the thesis behind Village Global?
• How do you think about working with experienced vs non-experienced angels?
• How do you think about portfolio construction for VG?
• Fast forward... some angels have strong early signals of success, others don't -- do you cull the herd or amplify those that are good pickers?
• Considering this, why do you think so many VCs have concentrated portfolios?
• How do you think about follow on investing?
• What is the role of a pre-seed firm?
• If there's a weakness in the Village model... what is it?
• Part of your model is to increase the amount of founders and investors.  What do you say to those that argue there's too much capital already?
• What’s does the future look like for Venture?
• What’s your advice for people getting into venture?
• Three data points
  • Let’s say you’re approached to invest in an early seed stage SaaS startup...
  • The founder is a technical serial entrepreneur with two solid 8-figure exits.  And she has a credible co-founder that is more business/commercially focused;
  • An MVP of the product has been launched and was the top product of the day on Product Hunt, when it launched;
  • and The Product launched two months ago and currently has $5k of MRR.
  • The catch is, you can only ask 3 questions for 3 specific data points, in order to make your decision.  What three questions do you ask?