8: Ed Colloton, Managing Partner and COO of Bessemer Venture Partners

Bessemer Venture Partners has long been regarded as one of the most successful and influential venture capital firms in Silicon Valley. The firm has invested in a number of winners over the years including: LinkedIn, Yelp, Blue Apron, Periscope, Twitch, Shopify, Twilio and others. In our ninth episode, it was fun to chat with Ed Colloton, Managing Partner and COO over at BVP. Ed has had a very successful career both in PE and VC; he served as COO of JP Morgan’s Private Equity arm before transitioning to Bessemer where he has been recognized on the annual Forbes Midas List as one of the top 100 venture capitalists globally.  Ed and I spoke about a number of topics in this one; namely, what’s the future of VC look like, why less companies are going public, and what makes Silicon Valley special. My favorite moments included: (1) his thoughts on PE vs. venture as an asset class (21:54), what the ramifications of less companies going public are for society and innovation (27:11) and given his experience in Silicon Valley how he thinks about clean sheeting a plan for a city to become an innovation hub (32:31).