1.) How did Charles made his way into VC from working with the CIA? What were Charles biggest takeaways from his operational experience?
2.) Why have we seen the rise of the solo GP fund? What tools and services can be used by solo GPs to make their lives easier?
3.) Chris Sacca said, 'you have to be a moron to launch a solo VC fund'. What does Charles think about this and what was it about Precursor that made him want to leave SoftTech?
4.) How does Charles' market requirements change now as a pre seed investor, a 100m exit is excellent. Do you you still need unicorns?
5.) How does Charles look to differentiate with Precursor in the sea of emerging VC funds? What is the most important thing for him about pr-seed investing?
6.) What is Charles' vision for Precursor? What would success look like for him?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Episode:
Charles' Fave Book: Alec Ross: Industries of The Future
Charles' Fave Blog: The Information
As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Charles on Twitter here!
1.) How did Chris come to found one of the hottest fashion startups, Lyst? What was the interview process with Benchmark like?
2.) Why did Chris become a VC first before an entrepreneur? What does being a VC allow you to become a better entrepreneur with?
3.) Chris has said before that we have not scratched the surface of e-commerce, so why have we not? What is the vision and what are the challenges that stand in the way? Question from Harry Briggs: Will we see physical retail stores largely disappear?
4.) Lyst place heavy emphasis on data collection and usage. Why is this? What does it power to Lyst to do? What interesting consumer trends and behaviours have been revealed from the data?
5.) How was the fundraising process for Chris? What did being in VC teach him about the process that he could implement in entrepreneurship? What were the challenges? What would he do differently if he were to raise again?
Brian O’Malley is a Partner @ Accel Partners, where he spearheads Accel's work with next-generation marketplaces and consumer-focused companies. He led the firm’s investments in Amino, Gametime, HotelTonight and Luma, as well as disruptive software-as-a-services businesses Duetto and Narvar. Brian joined Accel from Battery Ventures, where as a general partner he led investments in companies like Dollar Shave Club, BazaarVoice (public), Coupa, Skullcandy (public) and TradeKing (acquired by Ally). Prior to Battery, Brian led sales efforts and built some of the first web service-based API integrations for Bowstreet, Inc. (acquired by IBM).
1.) How did Brian make his way into one of the world's leading VC firms? What were Brian's biggest takeaways from being in the trenches during the bust of the dot com bubble?
2.) What is the macro economic view to value compression? How should startups being approaching and dealing with this?
3.) How can startups maintain growth as the priority whilst maintaining investor expectations on burn rates? What is Brian's approach to the growth vs retention theory?
4.) What retention metrics would Accel look for indifferent products? How does this vary from category to category? What are the commonalities Brian has seen in products that have insane retentive ability??
5.) Where does Brian stand on market size and the potential for market transition down the line? Does the market even need to be there today for it to be investable today?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Episode:
Brian’s Fave Book: Zero To One By Peter Thiel
Brian’s Most Recent Investment: Luma: Fast, Reliable Wifi
Byron Deeter is a Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. Prior to being a VC, Byron himself was a veteran cloud CEO & Founder returning to venture capital in 2005 to lead Bessemer’s global cloud practice where he has been actively involved with over 100 cloud investments representing a third of the market cap of all public cloud companies. Byron has lead investments in the likes of Box, Twilio, Intercom, Cornerstone On Demand and many many more. Byron's pedigree is recognised globally as he is consistently ranked one of the top global investors across all industries.
1.) How did Byron make his way into VC from being a veteran cloud CEO and Founder?
2.) What are the commonalities angst the truly exceptional operators that Byron has worked with? What is it that makes the likes Aaron Levie so special?
3.) We saw a $63bn drop in late stage SaaS valuations, so what does this really mean for the early guys? In these markets should founders be placing greater emphasis on unit economics?
4.) With the increasing importance of customer retention will we see further increased growth in the field of customer success? How important is it really now for startups?
5.) How does Byron define efficient growth, what does cash is king mean? Where does Byron stand on the bottoms up sales approach, is this the new sales method of the 21st century?
6.) What have been the biggest takeaways for Byron of watching Box, Sendgrid, Twilio go into hyper growth mode and scale into the rocketships that they are
Items Mentioned In Today’s Episode:
Byron’s Fave Book: The Everything Store
Byron's Fave Productivity Tools: Clutter
Byron's Fave Blog: Bleacher Report, Techcrunch
Byron’s Most Recent Investment: Rainforest QA
1.) How did Mike come to found one of the hottest new audio startups, Anchor?
2.) Why have we seen such a renaissance of podcast listening? Will this continue in the long term future and if so, what will drive the long term future growth?
3.) How did Mike use the beta testing phase to learn and iterate on customer behaviour? Following this, how did he implement this feedback to create a community that could be harnessed on launch?
4.) When examining alongside Sarah Tavel's hierarchy of engagement, how does Mike address retention and the creation of virtuous loops within Anchor?
5.) How does Mike fundamentally attempt to menthes Anchor? At what level of growth can the cash taps be turned on? How can Anchor be made to be revenue generating for both the platform and content creators?
Items Mentioned In Today's Episode:
Mike's Fave Blog: The Skimm
Mike's Fave Book: Cat's Cradle
John Frankel is the founding partner of ff Venture Capital and has been an early-stage investor since 1999. He has served on the boards of more than 35 companies and has led investments in more than 80 companies, including Cornerstone OnDemand (CSOD), Indiegogo, Ionic Security, Unikey, Socure, Skycatch, Plated, 500px, Distil Networks, and Bottlenose. Prior to founding ffVC, John worked at Goldman Sachs for 21 years in a variety of roles that involved technology development, reengineering and capital markets. At Goldman Sachs, he worked closely with some of the world’s leading hedge fund managers and developed a keen understanding of emerging technologies and portfolio risk/return management.
1.) How did John make the move from Oxford grad to NYC venture capitalist?
2.) How has the massive decrease in startup costs affected the seed funding environment? How does David identify the startups he invests in with the plethora that are now available?
3.) How much of an extent is portfolio a branding tool for VCs? In recent years we have seen the rise of the operational VC model with the likes of Andreesen, will this continue as a prominent model in VC?
4.) How as a seed investor does John advise his founders when chasing a valuation that will only lead to a down round? What is John's views on the dreaded down round?
5.) Many companies pivot in the process? Does John like to see pivots? If pivoting what is it important for founders to remember and focus on?
Items Mentioned In Today's Episode:
John's Fave Book: The Accidental Superpower
John's Most Recent Investment: Wade and Wendy
1.) As Europe’s youngest venture partner, is venture capital a viable career going forward? What makes James say this? Has there been a time when you doubted this thesis and why?
2.) So it is a viable career, where do we go from here? Why should we choose venture in Europe over venture in the US? What are the inherent pros and cons? Does James get the itch to head to the Valley?
3.) So VC in Europe is the place to be, so why did James choose Balderton? There are a plethora of great and emerging funds in Europe, what attracted James to Balderton?
4.) What does the next 10 years of VC look like? Where we are heading? Although a viable career now, will this continue to be with increasing power of crowd sourced financing and decreasing startup costs?
5.) What advice would James give a young individual looking to get into the industry? How can an individual show their passion and inherent interest for VC and startups in a tangible way?
Items Mentioned In Today's Episode:
James' Fave Blog: The Morning Paper by Adrian Colyer, Nathan Benaich Newsletter
James' Fave Book: Score Takes Care Of Itself: Bill Walsh, Nick Bostrum: Superintelligence
James' Most Recent Investment: Magic Pony
1.) How did Jonathan make his way into tech and come to found the likes of Friendster and Nuzzel? What were his biggest lessons from working at Netscape?
2.) How did Algolia go about crafting their company culture and how have they approached maintaining it as they have gone into hyper growth mode?
3.) What des Nicolas think are the most common challenges with regards to the building and maintenance of a company culture? What pitfalls and advice would Nicolas give to an early stage founder looking to build that culture from the offset? How can investors determine the strength and sustainability of the company culture when viewing startups?
4.) How was the fundraising process for Nicolas? How did the rounds differ from round to round? What elements surprised or challenged him? For Algolia, an incredibly hot startup, how did Nicolas go about about selecting which investors to have?
5.) Talking of the highly competitive round and the very excitable startup community, how do you respond to all of this insane hype and positivity. How do you ensure that you do not fall into the trap of drinking your own cool aid and remain grounded and humble?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Episode:
Nicolas' Fave Blog: SaaStr
Nicolas’ Fave Book: Creativity Inc
1.) How Logan made his way into the wonderful world of venture capital?
2.) So as young chap entering the industry, I would love to hear how you have gone abut trying to build your brand and identity? What are the key personal marketing strategies for you? How important do you think the brand of the VC is? How do you address the juxtaposition of branding and marketing yourself and battery?
3.) How does Logan approach the deal sourcing aspect of the job? What is his approach to this vital thesis?
3.) Moving to more financial matters I want to address both the seed end and the later stage end of the market today. So starting with the seed funding environment, in recent years we have seen a massive drop in the cost of company creation in conjunction with a large rise in seed funding,. What is the effect of this for you as a Series A-B investor, potentially located in what some may call the funding gap?
4.) You are very much located in the B2B space, d I am intrigued wht kind of ARR do you look for at the stage you are investing and what price point per customer do you believe allows for that ARR metric to be hit within a reasonably short amount of time?
5.) Moving to the later stages of the market I have seen in a slide of yours from the past that you stated that more institutional investors have made their way into the private markets and startups are staying private longer. You followed up by staying that this is a win win for all? Why do you think that is? Does it not mean later stage VCs are priced out of rounds due to the inflow of public money? Does it not mean later stage startups attain inflated valuation that will only lead to a down round at follow on or IPO?
Items Mentioned In Today's Episode:
Logan's Fave Book: Gang Leader For A Day
Logan's Fave Blog Or Newsletter: Dan Primack: Term Sheet
1.) How Neeraj made his way into the world of VC?
2.)Question From Logan Bartlett: 'What is your thought process on what makes a good vs a bad deal? Also, how have you developed your ability to process deals and poke holes in logic?'
3.) How can early stage Saas founders determine the extent to their product market fit??
4.) What is it like to back rocketships like GlassDoor or Marketo and helping scale operations when you’re in hyper growth mode? Does Neeraj agree with Sheryl Sandberg’s statement, it doesn’t matter where you sit, as long as you have a seat on the rocketship?
5.) Neeraj previously stated in a Nasdaq article that it is all about the team and the market. So I am intrigued what are Neeraj's thoughts on VC founder alignment? Neeraj also places emphasis on the market, so how does Neeraj view the juxtaposition between current and future market?
6.) One hurdle preventing some companies from growth is the ability to attain later rounds of funding so as a largely Series B investor, why is raising a Series B so tough? Is it the embodiment of the funding barbell?
Items Mentioned In Today's Episode:
Neeraj's Fave Blog: Brad Feld, Jason Lemkin
Neeraj's Most Recent Investment: Pendo.io
1.) How did Jonathan make his way into tech and come to found the likes of Friendster and Nuzzel? What were his biggest lessons from working at Netscape?
2.) How can founders determine the customer stickiness and value proposition in the early days of product testing with friends and family?
3.) How does Jonathan view the competitive landscape for news aggregation? Why is consumer app such a competitive space?
4.) Question From Matt Mazzeo: How does Jonathan compare this moment in time to previous points in the innovation curve?
5.) Having worked with both the old and the new guard of VC, how does working with Lowercase, Homebrew and Softtech compare with the old guard of Benchmark and Kleiner Perkins?
Items Mentioned In Today's Episode:
Jonathan's Fave Book:
Roy Bahat is the head of Bloomberg Beta, a new venture fund backed by Bloomberg L.P. Prior to Bloomberg, Roy was chairman of OUYA, a new kind of game console, where he was the first investor. Before that Roy spent five years leading News Corporation’s IGN Entertainment, an online media company with a monthly audience of 70 million people, a top 10 YouTube channel, and the leading website in its category in almost every market globally. Roy served on the board of Revision3 (acquired by Discovery) and was a board observer at Flixster (acquired by Warner Bros). Before joining News Corp., Roy was in the public sector in the office of New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and at New York’s 2012 Olympic bid.
1.) How Roy made his way into the world of VC from working alongside Mayor Michael Bloomberg?
2.) What do all these definitions within AI mean? What does artificial intelligence include? What is machine learning? What is deep learning?
3.) When we talk about AI are we talking pure AI , with the likes of Watson and DeepMind or are we talking consumer centric software with elements of AI?
4.) With data playing such a huge role in the efficiency of AI, do large incumbents like Google and Facebook not have a massive advantage? How can startups get access to datasets? Is AI not fundamentally an acquihire industry?
5.) How important has open source in allowing and encouraging the progression of the machine intelligence ecosystem? What more can be done to further it's growth?
6.) With the rise of machine intelligence, what does the future of work look like? How will we live in a world where 47% of white collar jobs will be replaced by machines and AI?
Items Mentioned In Today's Episode:
Roy's Fave Book:
Roy's Fave Blog or Newsletter:
1.) How Aydin made his way into the world of VC from being a Senior Manager @ Google?
2.) What does Aydin suggest to all those looking to make the move into VC who have potentially, an unconventional background??
3.) What caused Aylin's shift from angel investor to VC ? What was Aydin's investment strategy look like at the beginning and how has that evolved over time? How does Aydin look to differentiate Felicis from the plethora of seed funds?
4.) How does Felicis' stage agnosticity work in practicality for Aydin and the fund itself? How much of a role does valuation play in Felicis' investment decision making?
5.) Question from Rob Hayes @ First Round: How did the Rovio investment come about? Why do you say you are most proud if it?
6.) Question From Hiten Shah: How do you approach the topic of growing the organisation, whilst still supporting founders with the same time and quality?
Items Mentioned In Today's Episode:
1.) What was the origin story for Sprig? What was the aha moment?
2.) Question from Josh Elman: What lessons have Sprig and Gagan learnt from Chipotle, both in terms of their growth and their food?
3.) What are the coolest things that Gagan has learnt about foods that have learnt and not worked from user and product testing?
4.) On TWIST Gagan stated that the food delivery market is a winner take all market , so what makes Gagan believe that and what will ensure that Sprig is the startup that will be victorious?
5.) How do Sprig address expansion theory? Are they the Uber or the Lyft in terms of aggressive market expansion? How do Sprig choose which new market to enter? Is there a scientific approach?
6.) From having raised 9 rounds of VC and angel funding, what are Gagan's biggest tips and takeaways to anyone entering the VC or funding process?
Items Mentioned In Today's Episode:
Gagan's's Fave Book:
1.) How Sarah made her way into the world of VC from selling ads in college?
2.) What is the deal sourcing story behind your sourcing of Pinterest for Bessemer? What made Sarah so excited about the product? At what stage did Sarah realise the huge potential Pinterest did have?
3.) How did Sarah decide Greylock was the right VC to choose over the plethora of other options?
4.) How does Sarah try and appeal to the inner founder? What does she do to make sure she is the first person they call? What forms of communication does Srah like to communicate with?
5.) What is Sarah's attitude to VC's personal brand? How has Sarah seen the personalisation of VC in recent years? Why the shift from blog to Medium?
6.) What is the most important attribute for a consumer product to have? Does it have to be both 10X better and cheaper?
Items Mentioned In Today's Episode:
Sarah's's Fave Book:
Sarah's Fave Blog or Newsletter:
1.) How Josh made his move into the VC world from Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook?
2.) What were the biggest takeaways of watching fb, Linkedin and Twitter to hyper growth mode?
3.) Question from Jeff Seibert: What would Josh do with the Twitter product today??
4.) How would Josh apply his principles of the on boarding process to Twitter? What does he mean when he refers to the ladder of engagement?
5.) How does Josh respond to Fred Wilson's out on the consumer downturn? Is consumer really as hard as Fred makes it out to be? What sort of metrics really get Josh excited when viewing consumer startups?
6.) How has Josh's own investment decision making process been honed and refined since joining Greylock?
Items Mentioned In Today's Episode:
Josh's Fave Book:
Josh's Most Recent Investment:
Baiju Bhatt is the Co-Founder and CEO at RobinHood, the wildly successful stock market trading app with absolutely no commission fees. Since launching RobinHood there have been many amazing milestones including being awarded an Apple Design Award (first Finch company ever to achieve this), funding from the likes of Index, Google Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and even movie star Jared Leto. They were also nominated for best mobile app at The Crunchies by TechCrunch this year.
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Baiju made his way into the world of tech and came to found RobinHood?
2.) How did Baiju deal with the regulatory hurdles heading into the fintech and trading world?
3.) How did Baiju go about building the waitlist for RobinHood to 1m people? What were the defining strategies and channels that made the difference?
4.) What is the thesis behind the design of RobinHood? Will this design enable previously untouched markets to tap into the growing trading market?
5.) What are the biggest challenges for Baiju and RobinHood going forward? What keeps Baiju up at night? What is Baiju's biggest piece of advice to a founder scaling their startup?
6.) How can early stage founders really determine whether they have product market fit and what does this look like? What re the metrics required to suggest serious traction?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Baiju's Fave Blog or Newsletter: TechCrunch
Baiju's Fave Productivity Tool: Slack
Baiju's Fave Book: The Case For Mars
Paige Craig is a Founder and General Partner of Arena Ventures. He is an experienced angel investor who has invested in over 110 startups in the last seven years, including companies like Lyft, AngelList, Wish, Postmates, Twitter, Styleseat, Zenpayroll, Quizup and more. Paige spent the first half of his career in the Marine Corps and US Intelligence Community and later launched a defense contractor, driving alone into Iraq in 2003 with just $10,000 and expanding operations across the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Africa and Southeast Asia.
1.) How Paige made his way into the wonderful world of VC?
2.) What were Paige's biggest takeaways from his previous career in the military? How did this shape his investment thesis?
3.) Arena VC have both the fund and the AngelList syndicate, why did Paige choose this dual model? What have been the drivers of it's success?
4.) What does Paige believe makes a great VC? What aspects of himself would he like to improve upon? Is an inherent fight mode common among VCs?
5.) What advice would Paige give to someone looking to start a syndicate? What would Craig recommend to someone looking to join a syndicate?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Episode:
Paige’s Fave Book:
Satya Patel is a Partner @ Homebrew alongside Hunter Walk. Prior to Homebrew, Satya was VP Product at Twitter, building and leading the Product Management and User Services teams. Before Twitter, Satya was a Partner at Battery Ventures, where he co-led the seed and early stage investing practices. In 2003, Satya joined Google and was responsible for AdSense product management and partnerships. Before heading to Silicon Valley for Google, I worked for DoubleClick, in venture capital and as a strategy consultant.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Satya made his way into the world of tech and came to Partner with Hunter @ Homebrew?
2.) Is hustle the key component of a great VC? What does Satya believes makes a great investor?
4.) How can startups present emotion and depict their narrative to the VC? What are the benefits of doing so? What founder is most
5.) From Satya's experience, what are the most common reasons startups fail at the seed stage? What can they do to maximise their chances of survival?
6.) We always hear that products should focus on a niche but how then do you attract VC money that is looking for a broad opportunity that can return the fund?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Satya’s Fave Blog or Newsletter: CB Insights, Fred Wilson, Brad Feld
Satya’s Fave Book: A Fine Balance
Branko Cerny is the Founder and CEO at Immediately, the mobile platform for modern sales professionals whose mission is to elevate sales back to it’s core foundation, a relationship driven craft. Immediately has some of the US’s finest backing in terms of investment with the likes of Naval Ravikant @ AngelList, Ryan Holmes @ Hootsuite, Jonathan Abrams @ Friendster and Nuzzel and previous guest Kate Shillo @ Galvanize.
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Branko made his way into the world of tech and came to be CEO @ Immediately?
2.) How does Branko find being one of the youngest enterprise CEO in the business? What are the challenges and what are the benefits?
3.) What can enterprise companies learn from the likes of Tinder and Equinox? How important is brand building for emerging enterprise sales companies?
4.) To what extent will we see the bottoms up sales process continue in enterprise sales? How does this change Immediately approach to UX, UI and brand building? Why did Branko choose to focus on a mobile platform with Immediately?
5.) How did Branko come to meet his stellar lineup of investors? What value add was he looking for when assembling the lineup? Is he concerned by the large number of investors Immediately has at an early stage?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Branko's Fave Blog or Newsletter: First Round Review, Nir Eyal
Branko's Fave Productivity Tool: Intercom, Moleskin Notebook (Harry's Productivity Tool too!)
Branko's Fave Book: American Gods by Neil Gaiman
1.) How Rebecca made her way into the wonderful world of VC?
2.) Maveron have shown their belief in the consumerisation of IOT. What are Rebecca's thoughts on the space, how it is progressing, barriers that are preventing mass adoption?
3.) What is your take on the integration of messaging and chat with IOT? Whis there a recent broader market positivity towards chat interfaces at the moment?
4.) Maveron have also shown their likeability towards hardware investments so why is this? Why do Maveron not feel the broader VC market concerns of shipping, logistics? Are we seeing a shift in investing patterns in hardware?
5.) How do Rebecca approach the common problem with consumer startups transtioning from an early adopter market to a mass market product? What does Rebecca feel is the tipping point? What is necessary to make the transition from SF hipster client to everyone?
6.) What are the benefits are of having a narrow investing thesis (only consumer)? How has Rebecca found it? Is it challenging when finding companies you would like to invest in but are outside the mandate?
Items Mentioned In Today's Episode:
Rebecca's Fave Book:
Rebecca's Most Recent Investment:
Rob Hayes is a partner at First Round Capital where he opened up the firm's San Francisco office. Over the past eight years, he has led investments in companies such as Mint.com (acquired by Intuit), Gnip (acquired by Twitter), Square, Uber, eero, and Planet Labs. Prior to joining First Round, Rob became the first venture investor at Omidyar Network, the investment firm started by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. While there, he led most of the initial venture capital deals and later built and ran the technology investing group. Before that, Rob worked at Palm, where he product managed Palm OS and started the company's corporate venture fund.
1.) How Rob made his move into the VC world from working with Palm in the heyday?
2.) Question From David Hornik : How did Rob's seed investment in Uber originate? What made Rob invest? Did Rob realise the potential for Uber when he invested? When did Rob realize it was going to be huge?
3.) Has the investment in Uber changed how Rob views seed investing? Talking of the Uber’s of the world, how do you ensure that you find and decide to invest in the next Uber, when it raises a seed round?
4.) In terms of deal closing, how does Rob approach that element of the deal and what was the competition and closing environment around the Uber deal?
5.) Question from Satya at Homebrew: Stepping back and looking at First Round, what has changed in FRC’s approach as the firm has grown? How does the firm think about managing generational transition?
Items Mentioned In Today's Episode:
Rob's Fave Book:
Rob's Most Recent Investment:
Puneet Mehta, Founder @ Msg.ai, an artificial intelligence startup for conversational commerce and for an AI founder you don’t get much better than starting your career at IBM's TJ Watson Center, which is exactly what Puneet did. He then went on to build predictive platforms to power large-scale trading systems aka bots on Wall St. It is clearly not joust us who think he is awesome as Advertising Age named Puneet to the Creativity 50 list in 2014, honoring the most creative and innovative thinkers and doers.
1.) How Puneet made his way into the world of AI and came to be the founder of YC's latest, Msg.ai?
2.) How has the YC experience been for Msg.ai and for Puneet as a founder? Have YC been able to keep the same quality of mentorship with the largely expanding number in their latest batch?
3.) VC funding is usually very available to YC alums graduating, how will Puneet go about picking his investors? What are the fundamental determinants?
4.) What have been the biggest takeaways for Puneet? What has been the highlight? What has been tough? What was surprising and unexpected? How did Puneet deal with the requirement for 10% weekly growth?
5.) Taking a step back now, Puneet has stated before about building the Turing test for money. So what does he mean by this and how does he look at AI as a key driver for conversational commerce?
6.) What is it about messaging that makes Puneet believe this is the platform of the future? What is it that bots provide that has never been possible before?
Items Mentioned In Today's Episode:
Puneet's Fave Book:
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.
Ciaran O'Leary is the General Partner at one of Europe's newest funds, BlueYard. A $120m fund located at the early stage, centring around 3 key areas: The decentralisation of markets, the democratisation of capabilities, and the liberation of data. Prior to BlueYard, Ciaran was a Partner at Earlybird with investments in the likes of Peak Games (emerging markets social gaming), 6Wunderkinder (productivity apps), Moped (private messaging), B2X Care Solutions (outsourcing platform), madvertise (mobile targeting network) and simfy (digital music distribution company). Before Earlybird, Ciarán co-founded a startup and gathered operational experience at others.
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 Ciaran made his way into startups and the investing industry?
2.) What is the thesis with BlueYard? What is the preferred cheque size, sector and geography?
3.) With the mass of VCs emerging, how can startups at the early stage determine whether a VC really is early stage? Are there any defining characteristics?
4.) For startup founders out there who always hear from fellow founders that everything is going gangbusters, how should they react to that? How can you determine whether a startup really is doing well?
5.) Say the startup really is going well and they are looking to scale and hire, we always hear we need a world beating, world class X? How can they communicate that hire better to their current team and their board? What should the CEO or Head of Talent be focusing on when viewing talent? Is there anything they should look out for in particular?
6.) Now when a startup really scales, board meetings become a big part of a CEO’s life. So how can CEO’s turn useless board meetings into very useful value added meetings? How can they optimize that time? What should they look for? What should they ask for?
Items Mentioned In Today's Episode:
Ciaran's Fave Book: The Road
Ciaran's Fave Blog: The Economist Espresso
Matt Mazzeo is Managing Director at Lowercase Capital, alongside legendary angel investor, Chris Sacca. At Lowercase Matt leads a seed and series A investment strategy managing a portfolio of over forty investments including Uber, Twitter, Stripe and Optimizely just to name a few. Prior to joining Lowercase Capital, Matt spearheaded many of the digital and venture efforts at Creative Artists Agency (CAA). Matt helped shape the agency’s seed stage investment strategy and played an integral role in the founding of CAA’s incubated start-up companies, including Funny or Die, WhoSay, and Moonshark. Matt has been recognized as an innovative force across technology, entertainment, and advertising for which Fast Company named Matt one of the Most Creative People in Business. In addition to making Forbes Midas Brink List in 2014, Matt has been recognized on both Ad Age’s 40 Under 40 List in 2013, and The Wrap’s Inaugural Innovators List.
1.) How Matt made the transition from the world of celebrity management to the world of venture capital?
2.) How have we seen the personalisation of VCs in the emerging eco-system? Are VCs themselves brands now? How does Matt look to establish his brand?
3.) What are the required KPI's to make a successful investor? What is Matt pleased with in himself and what would he like to improve?
4.) Why will we see the decentralisation of VC away from the traditional Sand Hill Road? How does being in LA affect the operations and deal flow of Lowercase?
5.) What are Matt's biggest learnings from being partner with Chris? What has Matt founded the most challenging in making the transition from CAA to VC?
Items Mentioned In Today's Episode:
Matt's Fave Book:
Matt'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.
