Joe Lonsdale – Entrepreneurship and 8VC (First Meeting, EP.09)
Sep 30, 2019
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Joe Lonsdale, founding partner at 8VC, talks about his journey from entrepreneurship to venture capitalism, sharing insights on the competitive landscape, due diligence, adding value to portfolio companies, and emerging ideas in the field. He discusses the benefits of a founder background, strategies for competitive advantage, navigating funding rounds, and building networks in venture capital.
Joe Lonsdale transitioned successfully from entrepreneurship to venture capital with a focus on early-stage investments and founder relationships.
8VC prioritizes sustaining company growth by providing resources, funding, and support in innovative sectors like biology and information technology.
Deep dives
Investment Platform for Private Markets
An investment platform named Ten East, founded by Michael Lefel, offers access to private markets for sophisticated investors. The platform allows members to co-invest with Michael's team, who commit personal capital to each investment. With a track record of over a decade and experience across various investments like private credit, real estate, niche ventures, and private equity, Ten East provides unique opportunities not traditionally available. The team conducts ongoing monitoring and reporting post-investment.
Exploration of Joe Lonsdale's Career
Joe Lonsdale, a founding partner at 8VC, shares insights on his transition from entrepreneurship to venture capital. Being a key figure in successful startups like Palantir and working with top founders, Joe discusses 8VC's competitive advantage, deal pricing, due diligence processes, and value addition to portfolio companies. His venture focuses on early-stage investments and leverages founder connections for strategic investments.
Venture Capital Dynamics and Competitive Landscape
Joe Lonsdale discusses the changing venture capital landscape, emphasizing the significance of backing founders who have successfully built companies. He highlights the advantage of founder-to-founder relationships in VC firms like 8VC. Joe navigates the competitive deal dynamics by focusing on early-stage investments with talented entrepreneurs, maintaining a minimum target return, and ensuring alignment with invested individuals.
Fostering Growth and Sector Focus
In sustaining company growth, 8VC emphasizes resources like talent and funding, having supported companies in raising over $10 billion post-investment. The firm strategically leverages its network of advisors and organizes various industry-specific events. By investing around 25% of its efforts in the Renaissance of biology sector, 8VC focuses on innovative opportunities in life sciences and information technology crossovers.
Joe Lonsdale is a founding partner at 8VC, a leading venture capital firm that partners with top founders and entrepreneurs to build lasting technology platforms. He began working at Peter Thiel’s PayPal while Joe was an undergraduate at Stanford, and upon graduation became an early executive at Thiel’s Clarium Capital, which became a multi-billion dollar global macro hedge fund.
From within Clarium, Joe went on to become a co-founder of Palantir, and later founded Addepar and OpenGov. After operating this series of successful start-ups, he turned to early stage venture investing for himself and then as a founding partner of Formation 8, the precursor to 8VC. In 2016 and 2017, Joe was the youngest member of the Forbes 100 Midas List.
Our conversation begins with Joe’s dive into entrepreneurship out of school, the founding of Palantir and Addepar and his shift from operator to venture capitalist. We discuss the venture landscape, 8VC’s competitive advantage, building new companies within 8VC, price competition for deals, the due diligence process, adding value to portfolio companies, and new ideas on the horizon in venture investing.
Although we were pressed for time, Joe packs the conversation with great nuggets of wisdom from his incredible success.