242. Structural Disadvantages in Venture, Investing in the "Overlooked," and Open-Sourcing the VC Fund Raise and Investment Playbook (Check Warner)

Check Warner of Ada Ventures joins Nick to discuss Structural Disadvantages in Venture, Investing in the "Overlooked," and Open-Sourcing the VC Fund Raise and Investment Playbook. In this episode, we cover:

• Background / Path to Venture
• The thesis at Ada Ventures
• Is it tough getting the up-rounds from Tier 1 VCs when the profile of the founders doesn't look like the standard, obvious profile that's been funded for the past couple of decades?
• You look for founders and markets that have been mis-priced… what are the three that you believe to be underpriced?
• Novel scout program -- how many scouts and who are they?
• How did you recruit them and how are they incentivized?
• Talk about your recent fundraise…
  • How did you determine how much to raise?
  • Walk us through the timeline of the fundraise.
  • What resonated most w/ LPs?
  • What was the biggest surprise?
  • How did you create urgency and get LPs to move from a maybe to a yes?
  • What will you do differently next time?
• You and I have discussed your seed investing framework -- how you make decisions on investments. Can you give us the broad strokes?
• You have an incredibly transparent approach… from your fundraising to your sourcing to your evaluation. Are there any concerns about revealing too much about your strategy?
• You publicized your investment process and shared some of your funnel data. Have you noticed any differences or changes (relationships with founders, LPs, brand, PR) from when you shared the inner workings?
• Many issues w/ racial and gender diversity in the news… what message would you like to share re. Diversity?
• "3 Data Points"
  • Let's say you are approached to invest in a consumer user-growth company with 30k DAUs, and has a 10% WoW growth rate for the last 4 months.
  • Catch is you can only ask for 3 data points to make your decision.
  • What 3 questions do you ask for?

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