The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

Alex Clayton, a Partner at Spark Capital, shares his journey from investment banking at Goldman Sachs to becoming a key player in growth-stage SaaS investments. He explores how to effectively source deals, emphasizing the significance of network-driven sourcing and the nuances between early-stage and growth investing. Alex discusses the importance of market depth in analyzing investments and shares insights on the dynamics between founders and investors. Additionally, he draws parallels between competitive sports and investment strategies, highlighting skills that translate from tennis to venture capital.

Mike Hirshland, co-founder of Resolute Ventures and former partner at Polaris, shares his journey from legal clerk to venture capitalist. He discusses the nuances of seed investing, identifying acceptable risks, and why some firms shouldn’t operate with large funds. Mike emphasizes ownership over loss ratios, advocating for strong founder-VC relationships and the need for diversification in portfolios. He also explores an exciting investment in a new SaaS startup, showcasing the essential resources that support emerging entrepreneurs.

In this discussion, Adam Pritzker, Chairman & CEO of Assembled Brands and co-founder of General Assembly, delves into the intricate dynamics of financing consumer brands. He highlights the broken VC mechanisms and the need for tailored solutions for emerging brands. Adam shares his optimism about the retail landscape's evolution and the rise of niche markets. He also sheds light on Instagram's pivotal role in modern commerce, the challenges of customer acquisition, and the importance of adaptive marketing strategies for sustainable growth.

Victoria Treyger, General Partner at Felicis Ventures, shares her wealth of experience from scaling revenue at Kabbage to her current role in venture capital. She reveals surprising challenges in transitioning from operations to VC, emphasizing the importance of trust with founders. Victoria discusses effective coaching strategies for investors and the vital role of independent board members. Additionally, she highlights disruptive trends in consumer goods, including the clean movement and innovations for underserved markets, pointing to future opportunities.

In this engaging discussion, Austen Allred, the Founder and CEO of Lambda School, dives into his transformative journey from living in his car to building a leading coding school with a unique income share model. He tackles the future of unemployment as an optimization problem and discusses the importance of thoughtful decision-making in startups. Austen also explores the shift in his perspective on venture capital and shares vital questions founders must consider before seeking funding, shedding light on resilience, risk, and innovation in education.

Jeff Richards is Managing Partner @ GGV Capital, one of the leading venture firms of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Alibaba, Slack, Square, Xiaomi, Peloton, OpenDoor, just to name a few. As for Jeff, he sits on the board of or is an observer at BigCommerce, Brightwheel, Gladly, Lambda School, Namely and Tile just to name a few. Jeff also led GGV’s investments in Buddy Media (acquired by Salesforce), HotelTonight, Flipboard and has been actively involved in GGV’s investments in Opendoor, Domo, Square and Wish. Prior to joining GGV, Jeff founded two software companies: R4 (acquired by VeriSign), and QuantumShift, backed by Texas Pacific Group (TPG). In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Jeff made his way into the world of VC with GGV from founding and scaling 2 software companies in the 90s? What were Jeff's 2 biggest takeaways from having the company he founded raise over $100m then go to $0 in the crash? 2.) How does Jeff approach and see the transition from founder to CEO today? When does this transition need to occur? How do first-time founders differ compared to experienced serial entrepreneurs when it comes to building their teams? Where do they often struggle or make mistakes? What advice does Jeff offer them? 3.) Jeff has previously said, "do not raise for the highest valuation", what is his thinking here? What specific examples does Jeff have of why it can hurt and damage both the founder and the company? How does Jeff think about his own price sensitivity today? How does he determine when a stretch is a stretch too far? From backing the likes of Alibaba, Xiaomi and Didi, what were his biggest takeaways when it came to price? 4.) Decision-making is one of the only products venture has, how does Jeff and GGV approach decision-making as a firm today? Being a slightly later stage firm, how do they think about reserve allocation? What does the re-investment decision-making process look like? How does GGV think about attribution as a firm today? What are the benefits? 5.) What advice would Jeff give to an individual that has just entered VC? What does Jeff know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning? How does Jeff think about what it takes to be a truly special board member? What one or two things can a board member do to move the needle in their relationship with their founder? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Jeff’s Fave Book: In an Uncertain World: Tough Choices from Wall Street to Washington Jeff’s Most Recent Investment: Lambda School, Electric As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Jeff on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

Rob Sadow is the Founder & CEO @ Scoop, the startup that dramatically improves your commute providing convenient carpools with co-workers and neighbours. To date, Rob has raised over $37m in funding for Scoop from the likes of Danny Rimer @ Index, Brook Porter @ G2VP, Zaw Thet @ Signia Venture Partners and BMW i Ventures just to name a few. Before founding Scoop, Rob was a Manager @ Bain & Company and before that spent time in Israel with Better Place, working to provide electric vehicle networks to help accelerate the global transition to sustainable transportation. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Rob made his way from the world of consulting and Bain to founding the future of convenient commutes with Scoop? 2.) How does Rob approach key decisions? What does Brook Porter @ G2VP mean when he says, "from a first principles perspective"? How does Rob determine when to make decisions with the head or the heart? Does Rob agree with Fred Destin, "as a founder, decisions are never perfect, it is about batting average"? Where does Rob see many make mistakes when it comes to decision-making? 3.) How does Rob find the dynamics of working with his brother as his co-founder? What are some of the core challenges? How does one make it scale and how does the relationship need to change over time? What is Rob's biggest advice to others when thinking about the person they partner with? 4.) How does Rob think about board construction? What have been some of Rob's biggest lessons in really using your board to get the most out of them? What works well for this? What does not work? How can founders create this level of relationship with their board members? Should founders direct their ask to specific individuals when soliciting help from their board? 5.) Why does Rob believe that they have next to no attrition of employees at Scoop? What have been some of Rob's biggest lessons when it comes to both culture creation and maintenance? How does Rob think leaders can invest more in their employees? What does this look like? Where do many go wrong or misallocate? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Rob’s Fave Book: The Wheel of Time As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Rob on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

Frank Chen is a Partner @ Andreessen Horowitz, one of the world's most prestigious venture firms with a portfolio including the likes of Airbnb, Coinbase, Github, Lyft, Slack and many more incredible companies. As for Frank, prior to joining the world of venture, he was a VP of Products & UI Design at HP Software and before that held the same title at Opsware. Before that, even cooler, Frank was Director of Product Management @ Netscape where he led a cross-functional team that defined, shipped, and marketed Netscape's award-winning LDAP directory and security products.  In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Frank made the move from the world of operations with Opsware and HP to being a Partner at Andreessen Horowitz? 2.) How does Frank view the current state of play for AI and machine learning? How does the rise of automation shift the economy as we know it? What does it do to class distinctions? How does Frank view it's impact on the labour market? How does Frank think about the value of truly large datasets? Where is the asymptotic moment where the utility value of data is realised? 3.) With the rise of self-driving, how does Frank perceive the future of car ownership? Who will fundamentally own and operate the vehicles? Will it be a horizontal play or a vertical play? In terms of adoption, why is Frank negative towards a driver assisted transition phase and believe in a more binary transition? 4.) How does Frank perceive the rise of automation and self-driving cars impacting public infrastructure? How will the layout of our cities change over time? How does Frank believe urban real estate could be optimised in a more efficient manner? Which nations does Frank believe will be the first to innovate here? 5.) What is the most challenging element of Frank's position as Partner @ a16z? How does Frank think about the right way to say not to an entrepreneur? How does Frank look to scale the learning curve rapidly when investigating new industries? What are the challenges here? What advice would Frank give to someone looking to scale learning curves? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Frank’s Fave Book: The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lord of The Rings Frank’s Most Recent Investment: Branch As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Frank on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

Rahul Vohra is the Founder and CEO @ Superhuman, the fastest email experience in the world. Fun fact, users get through their inbox twice as fast — and many see Inbox Zero for the first time in years! To date, they have raised funds from our friends at Boldstart, First Round, John Collison, Sam Altman, Wayne Chang, Mike Ghaffery and Yes VC just to name a few. Previously, Rahul founded Rapportive, the first Gmail plugin to scale to millions of users. Rapportive was ultimately acquired by LinkedIn. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Rahul make his way into the world of startups with the founding of Rapportive and how did that transition to changing the world of email with Superhuman? 2.) What does Rahul mean when he says, "you can reverse engineer a process to get to product market fit"? What does Rahul believe is the defining metric which determines your "product market fit score"? What is Julie Supan's framework? How did Dropbox and Airbnb use it to increase their product market fit? How can founders implement it into their process? 3.) What can founders do to expand the customer base to include users that currently are "somewhat disappointed"? What are the right questions to ask? What do we do with this feedback? How do we further segment the user base? Why should we "disregard the users whereby the primary benefit of the product does not resonate"?  4.) How does Rahul approach product roadmap and prioritisation? How can founders ensure that continuous tracking and user feedback is engrained within the organisation? What tools does Rahul do to monitor and capture this? What are some of Rahul's biggest lessons from going through this painstaking process stage by stage?  5.) Finally on fundraising, what does Rahul mean when he says, "always be raising but never be actively raising"? What are the benefits of this? How can founders transition catch up coffee into fundraising subtly? How does Rahul feel about party rounds? What are the pros? What are the downsides? How does Rahul advise founders here? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Rahul’s Fave Book: The Art of Game Design As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Rahul on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

Steve Case is Chairman and CEO of Revolution with the mission being to establish themselves as the premier venture firm outside of Silicon Valley. On the other side of the table, Steve is recognised as one of America’s best-known and most accomplished entrepreneurs as the co-founder of America Online (AOL). Under his leadership, AOL was the first internet company to go public and became the world’s largest and most valuable internet company delivering an 11,616% return to shareholders. In 2000, Steve negotiated the largest merger in business history, bringing together AOL and Time Warner. Among many other achievements, in 2014, Steve was named a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship. Steve has also been a leading voice in shaping government policy and was instrumental in passing the JOBS (Jumpstart Our Business Startups) Act. Finally, Steve is also Chairman of the Case Foundation, where he and his wife, Jean, have invested in hundreds of organizations, initiatives and partnerships. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Steve made his way into the world of technology with the founding of AOL in 1985 and how that led to his founding of Revolution and investing today in the "rise of the rest" today? 2.) Having sat on both sides of the table both as founder and VC, what does Steve thinks make the truly special VCs? How do they engage with entrepreneurs? How do they actively move the needle for their companies? How would he like to see VCs of the future change and adapt their ways? 3.) How does Steve think about market timing when investing today? What were some of Steve's biggest lessons from seeing the dot com bubble and 2008 in both the role of entrepreneur and investor? What does he mean when he says, 'it can be dangerous to have a depression mentality' when investing? 4.) How does Steve analyse and assess the current fundraising environment today? Why does Steve see an incredible opportunity in funding companies outside the 3 traditional hubs of Silicon Valley, NYC and Boston? What needs to happen to drive this equalisation of funding further? What would Steve like to see change? 5.) What does Steve think are the 3 seminal roles of the CEO? What does Steve mean when he says that the CEO 'must be a shock absorber for company morale'? How does Steve deal with s*** hit the fan moments? What are his coping mechanisms and how does he advise entrepreneurs on them? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Steve’s Fave Book: The Third Wave, Be Fearless: 5 Principles For A Life of Breakthroughs and Purpose As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Steve on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.