CapitalG
also referred to as: capital g
64 statements across 9 episodes · 21 bullish · 7 bearish · 7 people on the record · first statement Apr 24, 2017 by Laela Sturdy · said 114 times in 22 episodes since 2017 · across every show →
Mentions by year
brought up most by Harry Stebbings (101), Laela Sturdy (7), Fabien Pinckaers (2), Derek Zanutto (2), Sarah Cannon (1), Daniel Dines (1)
tap a year for its mentions
2026 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2025 2 mentions in 1 episode
2024 13 mentions in 2 episodes 7 per episode
2022 5 mentions in 2 episodes 3 per episode
- 20VC: Startups Fail Because They Do Not Take Enough Risk, Why A/B Testing is Inefficient and Slows You Down, Why It is Impossible To Hire Good PMs so Stop Trying & 3 Key Signals The Best Engineers Present with Grant LaFontaine, Founder & CEO @ Whatnot
- 20VC: The Biggest Mistakes Startups Make Hiring, The 2 Reasons Startups Fail and How to Avoid Them, Why Most Startup Equity Plans are F****** and Why You Should Scrap Titles From Your Company with Eddie Vivas, Founder & CEO @ Curated
- every mention in 2022, scene by scene →
2021 19 mentions in 4 episodes 5 per episode
- 20VC: CapitalG's Laela Sturdy on The Current State of Growth with Crossover, PE and Hedge Funds All Entering, How To Think Through Upside and Downside Scenario Planning at Growth & The Biggest Challenges Startups Face Post Product-Market-Fit but Pre-Scale
- 20VC: Crowdstrike Founder, George Kurtz on Scaling to a $60Bn Market Cap, How to Acquire and Retain the World's Best Talent & The Right Way to View Competition in Today's Market?
- 20VC: a16z's David George on Leading a16z's Growth Fund Today, The Biggest Misconceptions of Growth Investing, How a16z Think Through Portfolio Construction, Investment Decision-Making and Scenario Planning & How The Entrance of New Players Has Changed Th
- 20VC: Twilio's Jeff Lawson on What It Takes To Create a Tribe, How To Create Anti-Fragile Organisations Through Decentralised Decision-Making and Why Values Are Nice But Principles Are Better
- every mention in 2021, scene by scene →
2020 24 mentions in 3 episodes 8 per episode
- 20VC: Lessons from Investing in Uber and Airbnb, How To Think Through Bundling vs Unbundling, Late Stage Funds Moving Earlier, Early Stage Funds Moving Later& The Mechanics of Venture That Founders Should Know with Derek Zanutto, General Partner @ Capital
- 20VC: Gusto Co-Founder, Tomer London on Why Most Founders Approach Fundraising With The Wrong Mindset Today, How To Construct A Values/Motivation Alignment Test To Determine The Right Investors For You & Why Delight Is So Crucial To The Success of Any Con
- 20VC: Notion's Fundraise with Index: The Most Anticipated Deal in The Valley: How It Came To Be | The Future of Remote Work |How Notion Approach The Balance of Growth and Profitability
- every mention in 2020, scene by scene →
2019 2 mentions in 1 episode
2018 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
- 20VC: Lessons From Scaling Trulia to IPO, How To Maximise Your Impact within Your Organisation and Why No One Is Ever 100% Ready For The Next Job with Heather Fernandez, Founder @ CEO @ Solv
- 20VC: Thumbtack's Marco Zappacosta on The 3 Core Elements To All Board Meetings, Raising $250m from Sequoia and Why You Have To Win Supply Side Acquisition First For Marketplace Success
- every mention in 2018, scene by scene →
2017 44 mentions in 5 episodes 9 per episode
- 20VC: Inside Google's Growth Fund & The 3 Criteria They Look For With Potential Investments with Laela Sturdy, General Partner @ CapitalG
- 20VC: Duolingo's Luis von Ahn on How CEO's Can Scale With The Company, How VC Herd Mentality In The Valley Really Works and How Chatbots & AI Play A Role In The Future of EdTech
- 20VC: The Blurring of Early & Late Stage, Why Your Go To Market Strategy Is More Important Now Than Ever & Why Venture Is The Academia Of Tech with Roseanne Wincek @ IVP
- 20VC: Raising Over $700m From The World's Best Investors, How To Innovate In Highly Regulated Markets & The 3 Superpowers of Insurance Companies with Mario Schlosser, Founder & CEO @ Oscar
- 20VC: VC of The Year: Forerunner's Kirsten Green on 2 $Bn+ Exits in 1 Year, Why We Are In The Very Early Innings For Commerce & How Brand Has Fundamentally Changed Over The Last Decade
- every mention in 2017, scene by scene →
Everything said about CapitalG, oldest first
Apr 24, 2017 positive
Apr 24, 2017 neutral
Apr 24, 2017 neutral
Apr 24, 2017
Scaling customer acquisition channels often substantially inflates CAC
“One of the big challenges a lot of companies face is they'll get Some sort of product market fit. They'll get one or two customer acquisition channels going, but when you really dive into the details, it's quite hard to scale those customer acquisition channel…”
Apr 24, 2017 positive
Apr 24, 2017
Brand equity is difficult to underwrite in growth-stage startup investments
“We find at times in our stage of investing, it can be harder to underwrite, but it's something that we think about the company sort of continuing to build on over time. And the reason I say it's harder to underwrite at our stage is often still the channels tha…”
Apr 24, 2017 neutral
CapitalG defines growth investing by proof of customer love and unit economics
“The way that we choose to define growth investing is to define it as the point where the, we have some data that gives us strong conviction. It doesn't have to be a lot of data, but some data that gives us strong conviction that there is both a product that cu…”
Apr 24, 2017
Apr 24, 2017
CapitalG makes only five or six investments per year
“We only make five or six investments a year, so we have a very focused approach to the companies that we work with, and beyond the Google Capital team, we bring these hundreds of advisors within Google that can help on a very wide range of operational and tech…”
Apr 24, 2017
Apr 24, 2017
CapitalG does not set minimum market size thresholds for growth investments
“We've never defined, it has to be, you know, XYZ billion or trillion in market size. What we typically look at when we make a decision is we want to understand what our multiple of money will be in our IRR from an investment perspective.”
Apr 26, 2017 neutral
Frantz: Late-stage private liquidity allows companies to delay going public
“To go public, I would say, you know, it seems like companies need to be a bit larger and a bit more developed than would have been the case 20 years ago. But I think a great deal of the consideration whether they go public Is driven by management teams who may…”
Apr 26, 2017 positive
Frantz: Alphabet's patient capital allows CapitalG to avoid IPO timeline pressure
“We have in our LP here at Google, Alphabet, the ultimate and very patient capital. And so, if we can find companies to invest in that we can be in for a very long period of time, That are growing and doing the things that they want to be doing and building val…”
Apr 26, 2017 bullish
Frantz: Stripe is a revolutionary payments company with extraordinary traction
“I think our most recent public investment, most recent investment in a private company that, that, that's been publicly disclosed is Stripe, which is a revolutionary company in the payment space with an extraordinary team and traction that's quite unlike what …”
Dec 20, 2019 positive
Oct 8, 2020
CapitalG operates as an investment club where partners make individual decisions
“At the core of it is kind of the decision process, and for us, which is extremely unusual for a growth equity fund, we make the investments individually. The group can and does hopefully help inform that, but it's more of an investment club than kind of an inv…”
Oct 8, 2020 neutral
Oct 8, 2020 positive
Oct 8, 2020 positive
David Lawee: CapitalG Targets 25-30% IRR With Low Loss Ratios
“I think our funds are still going to perform in the same IRR neighborhood as venture funds, but the distribution, so we're a three X IRR could be 30% depending on how long it takes you to get the three X. So the IRR for the fund is going to be the same, but th…”
Oct 8, 2020 positive
Oct 8, 2020
Winning growth rounds requires pre-built theses and pre-set target valuations
“The rounds in growth are extremely competitive, just like any segment. And the way to compete is by being in the ready position, like already having your thesis, already kind of knowing what price you would invest, already kind of being able to activate dilige…”
Oct 8, 2020 negative
Lawee: Experience with market cycles causes risk aversion disadvantage in bull markets
“I do feel that there's a little bit of a disadvantage in protracted bull markets of having lived through these cycles, because your experience has taught you to be more risk-averse, and as you're kind of living through a bull market, that's kind of a negative.”
Oct 8, 2020
Larry Page convinced David Lawee to launch CapitalG internally at Alphabet
“At that point, I was in the mindset of leaving Google, and I talked to Larry Page, and the idea was, for me, in that conversation, was to see if he wanted to invest his own capital in my firm, and he said, why don't you do this within Alphabet? And I thought a…”
Oct 8, 2020
Nov 9, 2020 neutral
Zanutto: Hedge funds use early checks as loss leaders for pre-IPO allocation
“Frankly, a lot of these hedge funds manage such enormous pools of capital relative to the size of the traditional VC fund. That for them, you know, writing a 25 or fifty million dollar check into an A or a B round is a rounding error, right? So for them, they …”
Nov 9, 2020
Derek Zanutto: Pursuing market breadth over depth in expensive markets fails
“What I worry most about, and I think what's most challenging is if in markets like this where prices are incredibly high, going for breadth and trying to chase everything, I think is a losing strategy because then you're going to, you know, not have enough, en…”
Nov 9, 2020
Zanutto: CapitalG's Collibra thesis originated from discussions with Google engineers
“So for Clibra as an example, that initial idea around data intelligence and data management came from spending time with a number of Google engineers who had regular conversations with folks throughout Google and outside Google who are combating these challeng…”
Nov 9, 2020 negative
Nov 9, 2020
Derek Zanutto: Enterprise Data Stack Will Consolidate as CIOs Rationalize Vendors
“And I think there's a case to be made that you're likely to see a bit more consolidation down the road as CIOs and CDOs look to rationalize all the vendors are using to solve, you know, common pain points throughout the enterprise.”
Nov 9, 2020 bullish
Nov 9, 2020
Derek Zanutto: Investors must form sector theses before companies start fundraising
“And I think what that means in reality is that for investors to make informed judgments On underwriting risks and making investments, you really need to have been doing your research and your work and developing your thesis on a category well in advance of a c…”
Nov 9, 2020 negative
Zanutto: High valuations and easy money create severe downstream financing risks
“One learning that I've come away with from those conversations and experiences is if you take the money and it's at a very high price and it's easy money, there is a risk to that because you, if you take it at too high of a price, you get over your skis and th…”
Jul 8, 2021
Jul 8, 2021
Jul 8, 2021
Generational companies recruit world-class leaders years earlier than typical startups
“One of the things that I've seen in terms of commonalities of the truly generational transformative companies is that they are able to get world-class leaders to join their companies way earlier than they should.”
Jul 8, 2021
Jul 8, 2021 positive
Jul 8, 2021
Jul 8, 2021 negative
CapitalG passed on investing early in Nubank due to market unfamiliarity
“I would say one of the big, cause I looked at new bank early. That's a good example. And I think I was, while I was loved the founder and so impressed with the business traction, the risk around a new market and a model I didn't totally understand just made me…”
Jul 8, 2021
Jul 8, 2021 bullish
Jul 8, 2021
Apr 22, 2024 negative
Aug 16, 2024
Aug 16, 2024 bullish
Aug 16, 2024 neutral
Aug 16, 2024 positive
Sturdy: Non-founder CEOs are often best suited to scale growth companies
“So I would like to invest in a non-founder led company. You point out Satya, I know dozens of incredible CEOs that were not founders and have same, but different mix of special sauce that makes them The right person to lead that company, and often to lead the …”
Aug 16, 2024 positive
Sturdy: $100M revenue companies with execution discipline are viable IPO candidates
“But I don't actually think it's necessarily a scale thing. I've seen a hundred million dollar revenue companies that are operating with that level of precision have their story tight, have their execution plan really tight, and would be a good candidate to go …”
Aug 16, 2024
Sturdy: CapitalG writes $100M-$150M checks for private equity buyout partnerships
“So in the context of working with a private equity partner, if they were to do a roll up or invest in more traditional profitable assets that either trade from the public markets to the private or have been private the entire time, then we're very open to part…”
Aug 16, 2024
Aug 16, 2024 positive
Sturdy: Single-LP Model Frees CapitalG From Artificial Sales Pressures
“And that's a huge advantage for us because it means that we can invest and hold over the long term and why we're so obsessed with finding generational companies that will compound over the long term because that creates incredible Money on money and incredible…”
Aug 16, 2024 neutral
Sturdy: CapitalG only underwrites existing products in base-case scenarios
“Now when I look at an investment, almost always my base case is I'm only going to underwrite what exists today. I can get excited about the possibility of the future, and that's built into the upside case, but if there's not evidence of the launch of that prod…”
Aug 16, 2024
Sturdy: Growth Companies Wait Too Long to Diversify Before IPO
“I would say in the growth stage, more often they wait too long, particularly as they're ramping up in, in the couple of years prior to IPO, because it's almost always Needed for a strong public company to have some sort of diversification.”
Aug 16, 2024 bullish
Aug 16, 2024 bullish
Aug 16, 2024 bullish
Laela Sturdy: Stripe's 2017 Valuation Proved Fair Through Continuous Compounding
“2017 when we invested in them, nobody, or I would say lots of people didn't believe that they could compound and continue to grow at such a strong rate that actually the valuation multiple that we were paying into was more than fair because they would compound…”
Aug 16, 2024
Aug 16, 2024 positive
Sturdy: Outlier founder traits and data drive outsized venture returns
“That's one of my core investment theses is always look for outlier metrics and look for outlier personality traits in a founder. I believe that outlier data is really important to pay attention to, and that will end up having outsized impact and returns.”
Aug 16, 2024 bullish
Aug 16, 2024 positive
Sturdy: Public companies can still make major investments if accountable for results
“I think there's a bit of a myth that once you go public, you can't make the investments that you want. I don't believe that's true. I think you can make the investments you want, but you are accountable to delivering those results.”
Aug 16, 2024 negative
Aug 16, 2024 neutral
Aug 16, 2024 negative