20VC: Why Valuation Is Of Critical Importance At Seed, How To Understand Innovation Cycles & Having 3 CEOs and Burning $10m a Month with Lee Hower, Co-Founder @ NextView Ventures

Lee Hower is a co-founder and Partner at NextView Ventures, one of the East coast's leading early stage funds with investments in the likes of Dia & Co, Sunrise, TaskRabbit and GrabCad just to name a few. As for Lee, prior to being a VC with NextView, Lee started his career as an early employee of PayPal in product and business development roles, through the company's 2002 IPO and sale to eBay. After PayPal, Lee was a co-founder of LinkedIn (NYSE: LNKD) and served as head of corporate development.

In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Lee made his way from the early days of PayPal with Elon Musk to the founding team of LinkedIn with Reid Hoffman to founding NextView and being a VC?

2.) What were Lee's biggest takeaways from his time working with Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman in the early days of PayPal? How has that experience affected how he invests today?

3.) Unlike other Paypal mafia members, Lee decided not to pursue the multi-stage investing strategy. Why was this? How does Lee evaluate the current seed environment?

4.) Why does Lee believe it is fundamental to study the history of VC and innovation? How does this affect his mindset when investing?

5.) What would Lee advice to a junior VC or someone looking to move into the industry in terms of differentiation and personal branding? What is key? How should this be approached?

Items Mentioned In Today's Show:

Lee's Fave Book: The Globalisation Paradox

Lee's Most Recent Investment: Optimus Ride

As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Lee on Twitter here!

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