Tank Talk: Reid Christian (General Partner @ CRV) - Investing in SaaS for the Next 50 Years

On today’s Tank Talk! We welcome our guest Reid Christian, General Partner @ CRV (Charles River Ventures).

On today's Talk, we ask Reid about his journey starting out on the investment banking and private equity side at RBC Capital Markets and Symmetric Capital in Boston. Next, we dig into his transition to venture capital with his role at Battery Ventures and the challenges he faced moving from the corporate banking side over to traditional venture capital. We dig into his lead investment into OpsGenie’s $10M Series A raise and his role in the quick acquisition that followed by Atlassian two years later for almost $300M.

Up next, we ask Ried about his decision to join CRV as a Partner at the 50-year-old Venture fund and how the firm is investing in SaaS for the next 50 years. We discuss his predictions for SaaS over the next decade and what areas he’s most excited about that he has yet to invest in. Finally, we ask Reid about his firm's thoughts on holding investments post-IPO and the recent push towards Direct Listing and SPACs in the tech space.

This Tank Talk really makes you appreciate the long-term vision firms like CRV have towards investing and their ability to stay focused on early-stage ventures while seeing half of their portfolio companies go on to be public or get acquired.

Books Mentioned In The Show:

-The Four - The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google

- Startupland - How Three Guys Risked Everything to Turn an Idea into a Global Business

- Good to Great - Why Some Companies Make the Leap...and Others Don't

Reid’s words of inspiration - “There’s almost no better time to be an entrepreneur”

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