Andy McLoughlin is a Partner with SoftTech VC, where he primarily invests in B2B, SaaS, developer tools and mobile applications. Prior to joining SoftTech, Andy was co-founder of London-based Huddle, under Andy’s leadership, Huddle became one of Europe’s most awarded and well-known technology startups, raising over $80M of venture funding to date. Since 2010 Andy has been a prolific angel investor building a portfolio covering 35 startups, mostly in the SaaS / B2B space. Just to name a few of the investments from his incredible portfolio Andy was an angel in the likes of Buffer, Intercom, Pipedrive, Postmates, Secret Escapes, just to name a few.
1.) How Andy made his startup as an entrepreneur and then VC?
2.) What was it that made Andy make the move from the world of entrepreneurship to VC?
3.) As a seed stage investor, what does Andy make of the Series A crunch? How prevalent has it been for him as an investor? What is the optimal amount of runway founders should raise for?
4.) What does Andy think of the size and cadence of the first funding rounds that we are seeing now? What does he make of the rise of the second seed or the bridge round? Is it an indication of trouble?
5.) SoftTech are near the closing of Fund V, so what is the thesis and the mission going forward? What themes and spaces is Andy most excited by and why?
Items Mentioned In Today's Episode:
Andy's Fave Book:
Andy's Most Recent Investment:
This episode was supported by Wunder Capital, the leading online investment platform that allows individuals to invest in large scale solar projects across the U.S. Wunder’s solar investment funds allow you to earn up to 11% annually, while diversifying your portfolio, curbing pollution and combating global climate change. Do well by doing good and sign up for a free account here and join the thousands of people that are already achieving their investment targets.
Gary Liu is the CEO @ Digg, the incredibly famous platform that allows users to find, read and share the most talked about stories on the internet. Prior to joining Digg, Gary was an early employee at Spotify holding numerous positions including, Head of Spotify Labs and Global Director of Ad Product Strategy. Gary joined Spotify from AOL, where he was the Director of Sales Strategy and Operations at Patch. Before joining AOL, Gary was a business and sales operations leader at Google and Clickable.
We would like to say a special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data used in the show today and you can check out Mattermark Search here!
1.) How Gary made his entry into the world of tech and later became CEO at Digg?
2.) What were Gary's biggest takeaways from his time at Google and being an early employee at Spotfiy? How has he adapted those learnings to his role now at Digg?
3.) What really happened at Digg? What went wrong? Why did Digg not live up to the early hype of being the darling of the internet age? How are Digg evolving to change this?
4.) In the vastly competitive space of content creation and distribution, how do Digg stand out and differentiate themselves from the plethora of options available to consumers?
5.) How do Digg try to engage and unite the community through the commenting process without alienating people through the potential for malicious posts and trolling?
6.) How does a platform like Digg plan to monetize content with the ever disappearing ad dollar? Does it concern Gary or does he see potential in other avenues?
Items Mentioned In Today's Episode:
Gary's Fave Book: J.D Salinger, The Catcher and The Rye
Gary's Fave Blog: Jon Russell, Asia Tech News Review
Adam Draper is a fourth generation venture capitalist and the Founder & CEO @ Boost VC, a specialised seed stage accelerator that invests in blockchain and virtual reality startups. Before starting Boost, Adam angel invested in 20 companies including Coinbase, Plangrid and Practice Fusion. During his angel investment period, Adam was also the Founder of Xpert Financial in his aim to revolutionise the financial markets for private companies.
We would like to say a special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data used in the show today and you can check out Mattermark Search here!
1.) How Adam made his way into startups and the investing industry?
2.) Why is Adam so bullish on the topics of bitcoin and virtual reality?
3.) What are the fundamental use cases for bitcoin and why have we not seen mass adoption on a global scale so far? What are the barriers to adoption?
4.) What is the investment attitude to the bitcoin and VR space? Does the volatility of the price in bitcoin affect the level of investment going into the sector?
5.) What would Adam like to see more of in the space? What is he most excited for and where does he see the most potential?
Items Mentioned In Today's Episode:
Adam's Fave Book: The Name Of The Wind
Adam's Fave Blog: Mugglenet
Adam's Most Recent Investment: Joystream
Tim Draper is the founding partner of leading venture capital firms Draper Associates and DFJ. Some of his Venture successes include Skype, Baidu, Tesla, Hotmail, Twitch.tv, and hundreds of others. Fun fact about Tim, it was his original suggestion to use viral marketing in web-based email to geometrically spread an Internet product to its market was instrumental to the successes of Hotmail, YahooMail, and Gmail and has been adopted as a standard marketing technique by thousands of businesses. His prominence is evident through his being named 100 most influential Harvard Alumni, and seven on the Forbes Midas List. He was named Always-On #1 top venture capital deal maker.
We would like to say a special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data used in the show today and you can check out Mattermark Search here!
1.) How Tim made his way into startups and the investing industry?
2.) Having founded Draper Associates in 1985, how has Tim seen the investing landscape develop over time?
3.) Draper obviously invests across a variety of stage, but what is Tim's preferred stage? Where does he see the most opportunity for venture returns? Why?
4.) Of all the companies Tim has seen, which was the best pitch? Why? Which founder inspired Tim the most? Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently?
5.) What is DraperU? What are the plans for the future? What is the vision? Why did Tim choose to do a reality show in StartupU? Has it been a very different experience being the lead in a TV show compared to investing in startups?
6.)Why is behind Tim's immense belief in Bitcoin. Why is this? When did Tim realize the potential? How long will adoption take?
Items Mentioned In Today's Episode:
Tim's Fave Book: The Startup Game by William Draper, Michael Rothschild: Bionomics
Tim's Most Recent Investment: Laurel and Wolf, Favor Delivery
Niccolo De Masi is the CEO & Chairman @ Glu Mobile, one of the world's hottest gaming companies with title including the current No 1 Game in the App Store with the Kendall and Kylie Game, Glu is also the maker of the Kim Kardashian game and the likes of Deer Hunter and many more. Prior to Glu, Niccolo was CEO at mobile entertainment company Hands On Mobile and before that Niccolo was the CEO at London listed mobile entertainment company, Monstermob Group Plc.
We would like to say a special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data used in the show today and you can check out Mattermark Search here!
1.) How Niccolo came to be CEO at one of the world's hottest gaming companies, Glu Mobile?
2.) How did Niccolo make the transition from feature phone business to smartphone business with Glu so successfully? How did Glu's public market status affect the transition?
3.) How important is transparency within organisations as a leader, whether it be Founder or CEO? What are the important elements to communicate with your team and your investors?
4.) Why are private market valuations so misaligned with the public market? What will happen to the plethora of newly made unicorns?
5.) How does Niccolo source potential acquisition targets, what does he look for in, so called 'well valued assets'? What makes them well valued?
6.) What is Niccolo's turnaround strategy for his acquisition targets? How can Glu's platform elevate companies that are in distress?
Items Mentioned In Today's Episode:
Niccolo's Fave Book: The Rise and Fall Of The Great Powers
Tyler Willis is probably one of the best angel investors around and has invested in seed stage companies that have gone on to raise from the likes of Index Ventures, Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures and others. Some of these investments include the likes of wildly popular ride sharing app Lyft, the incredible Patreon (now delivering 2m a month to creators) and Change.org which now has over 80m users.
We would like to say a special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data used in the show today and you can check out Mattermark Search here!
1.) How Tyler made it into startups and the investing industry?
2.) Where does Tyler sit on investor specialisation? Is it best to have preferred sectors and round sizes?
3.) What elements are essential for Tyler pre investment and what can be tweaked later down the line?
4.) Question from Arielle Zuckerberg: How does Tyler evaluate customer acquisition so well? What is his approach to this with potential investments and portfolio companies?
5.) Why are people so negative on the future of innovation? Is Founders Fund's 'we expected flying cars and instead got 140 characters' fair?
Items Mentioned In Today's Episode:
Tyler's Fave Book: Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen
Tyler's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Mattermark Daily
Arielle Zuckerberg, Partner @ Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers. Arielle Zuckerberg joined KPCB in 2015 and focuses on early-stage investments in the firm’s digital practice as part of the venture team. Arielle joined Kleiner from Humin, where she led product for the company’s mobile apps. She started her career as a product manager by day and Hackathon host by night at Wildfire Interactive, Inc., which was acquired by Google in 2012. After the acquisition, Arielle worked as a product manager on social ads at Google. Outside of KPCB, Arielle has made several angel investments across the food tech and health sectors in the likes of Partender, Bitty Foods and The Ticket Fairy, just to name a few.
We would like to say a special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data used in the show today and you can check out Mattermark Search here!
1.) How Arielle made it into startups and the investing industry?
2.) What has the move been like from angel to VC? What theories and investment theses are adjustable? How doe the fiduciary responsibility to your LP's adjust your risk profile when investing?
3.) Questions from Tyler Willis: How does Arielle evaluate new products? How does Arielle learn and how does Ariele come down on the learning curve on new things so quickly (new investor to KPCB in ~2 years, for example).
4.) Arielle has now spent her first few months in venture, what have been the biggest surprises? Biggest challenges? What is Arielle's fave part and what is her least fave part?
5.) How does Arielle see the AI space now? Where does she see room for innovation? Is there anything Arielle is concerned about?
6.) Now when doing research for this interview I came across Arielle's New Years Resolution list from 2012! So what are your new years resolutions for 2016? What are the goals you are aiming for?
Items Mentioned In Today's Episode:
Arielle's Fave Book: The Symposium by Plato
Ryan Caldbeck is the Founder & CEO @ CircleUp, the online investing platform that allows you to invest in innovative consumer companies. They have raised funding from some of the best including USV, Maveron and Canaan Partners (all past guests). Before Ryan founded CircleUp, he worked in consumer product and retail-focused private equity at TSG Consumer Partners and Encore Consumer Capital exposing him to many great consumer and retail businesses that were too small to obtain funding through the customary private equity channels. As a result, he decided to make funding available to these promising companies through CircleUp.
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Ryan made the move from the world of VC to founding his own tech startup?
2.) Why is CircleUp marketplace investing, not crowdfunding? What does Ryan believe are the misnomers around the term crowdfunding?
3.) Where do you see this sector making sense and where does he think it is not so efficient? Why is it wrong for tech companies?
4.) One manjor aspect in the UK that this segment has struggled with is it’s ability to attract institutional investors to the sector. So with CircleUp, how are institutional investors getting into this market and is there anything more Ryan would like to see with this regard?
5.) To what extent does Ryan think this is disrupting private capital formation? Should VCs be concerned? What sector of the funding environment is most vulnerable to being disrupted by the rise of marketplace investing?
6.) How was the funding process for Ryan? CircleUp raised over $30m over several rounds with investors from our friends at USV and Maveron, how that came about and what Ryan would advise founders entering the process?
Items Mentioned In Todays Show:
Ryan's Fave Blog: AVC, Jeff Jordan, Bill Gurley
1.) How Dustin made it into startups and the investing industry?
2.) What were Dustin's major takeaways from his operational experience and how has he applied them to his role investing with Maiden Lane?
3.) Where does Ryan you democratisation of funding going in the next five years? What direction does Dustin believe we are moving in?
4.) Dustin has said that 'capital is a crappy differentiator' so what value add should founders look for in their VCs? How are we seeing the VC value add evolve over time?
4.) How does Dustin sell Maiden Lane in the sea of seed funds that have emerged over the last few years? How important does Dustin think it is for VCs and funds to have personal brands? What is bigger the brand of the VC or the fund?
5.) What is it Dustin looks for in products? Are there any must haves? Any design requirements?
Items Mentioned In Today's Episode:
Dustin's Fave Book:
Dustin's Most Recent Investment:
1.) How Gil made it into startups and the investing industry?
2.) Why did Gil choose numerous syndicate approach over one huge syndicate? What are the benefits of having numerous specialized syndicates?
3.) What is included in Gil's sell of Flight as an investor? What is the driving force behind the success of Flight? What is the biggest challenge within this job as founder?
4.) How does Gil try and convince the startups that the syndicate method of investment is better for them? How does Gil portray his value add to startups?
5.) Does Gil insist on pro-rata rights? Should founders always grant them to early stage investors?Which VCs does Gil like to work with and what makes them a good VC?
6.) Where does Gil see the future of first AngelList? Will it replace the archaic system of VC? What are Gil's plans for his syndicates? Is Gil looking to move into Series A and B rounds? How do you plan to become the Fidelity of this asset class?
Items Mentioned In Today's Episode:
Gil's Fave Book:
Gil's Most Recent Investment:
This episode was supported by Wunder Capital, the leading online investment platform that allows individuals to invest in large scale solar projects across the U.S. Wunder’s solar investment funds allow you to earn up to 11% annually, while diversifying your portfolio, curbing pollution and combating global climate change. Do well by doing good and sign up for a free account here and join the thousands of people that are already achieving their investment targets.
1.) How Kelly made it into startups and what was the origin story for NextGenVest?
2.) How has the Fintech ecosystem evolved over the last 5 years? What does Kelly mean by Fintech 1.0 and the next phase of Fintech?
3.) How can emerging brands and in particular fintech brands build loyalty with the emerging millennial generation? What is the attention graph for millenials looking like?
4.) What does Kelly mean when she states a shift from financial organisation with Mint to financial efficiency today?
5.) What key determinants that have made Uber so successful can be used within Fintech startups to build the same trust and relationship?
6.) What is Kelly's view of startups taking a platform dependent approach? What are the benefits and what are the concerns?
Items Mentioned In Today's Episode:
Kelly's Fave Book:
1.) How Hadley made it into startups and the investing industry?
2.) What does an engineering degree provide when investing? Why did Eniac decide to focus solely on mobile?
2.) How has Hadley seen the NY venture and startup scene develop over the last years? Does an ecosystem need anchor companies to be great? Ex-Googlers, and ex-Facebook, ex-LinkedIn, ex-Sun, etc. are so important to the Bay Area ecosystem. What are New York's anchor companies? How has that affected the ecosystem?
3.) What is it like helping companies like Soundcloud and Airbnb scale when in hyper growth mode? At the seed level, how important a role does valuation play when determining whether to invest or not?
5.) Why is raising a Series B so tough? Is it the embodiment of the funding barbell? Has NYC, like London, seen a rise in the second seed round?
6.) What are Hadley's thoughts on VC founder alignment? What are the common characteristics of the best founders that Hadley has worked with and invested in?
Items Mentioned In Today's Episode:
Hadley's Fave Book:
Hadley's Most Recent Investment:
1.) Where did it all start for Martin? What is the Martin Mignot story?
2.) How does Martin view venture as a career vs coming into it later on? Why does Martin think venture is now a viable career from the offset?
3.) Does Martin agree with Sheryl Sandberg’s statement, it doesn’t matter where you sit, as long as you have a seat on the rocketship? How important is valuation for Martin when making the decision?
4.) How Martin goes about sourcing the latest and greatest startups from the European ecosystem?
5.) How does Martin evaluate founders and consider their ability to execute on their plan, prior to making the investment?
6.) Talking of difficulty for startups attaining funding, what are your thoughts on VC founder alignment? You have said to focus before on the business and not the team, unless exceptional cases prevail, this is very strange for me to hear. Why is it you have adopted this stance and why do you feel it is best?
Martin's Fave Book: