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Index Ventures

also referred to as: index

161 statements across 37 episodes · 62 bullish · 25 bearish · 23 people on the record · first statement Mar 16, 2015 by Luke Lang · said 451 times in 126 episodes since 2015 · across every show →

Mentions by year

brought up most by Harry Stebbings (247), Danny Rimer (33), Martin Mignot (26), Shardul Shah (14), Miles Dieffenbach (10), Mitchell Green (9), Hussein Kanji (9), Kyle Harrison (8)

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2026 30 mentions in 10 episodes 3 per episode
2025 103 mentions in 26 episodes 4 per episode
2024 92 mentions in 17 episodes 5 per episode
2023 21 mentions in 9 episodes 2 per episode
2022 16 mentions in 5 episodes 3 per episode
2021 34 mentions in 17 episodes 2 per episode
2020 45 mentions in 11 episodes 4 per episode
2019 20 mentions in 11 episodes 2 per episode
2018 17 mentions in 3 episodes 6 per episode
2017 23 mentions in 6 episodes 4 per episode
2016 44 mentions in 8 episodes 6 per episode
2015 6 mentions in 3 episodes 2 per episode

every mention, scene by scene, with the transcript →

Everything said about Index Ventures, oldest first

Mar 16, 2015 positive
Assertion Supported
Index Ventures Participated in JustPark's Crowdcube Crowdfunding Round
“We've got a company on the site at the moment, Just Park. You know, they've had investment from Index Ventures and BMW in, in the past, and Index are actually participating in this round.”
Luke Lang Mar 16, 2015 ▶ 8:39 20 VC 020: Revolutionising Investing with Luke Lang, Co-Founder of Crowdcube
Mar 16, 2015 positive
Assertion Supported
Escape the City Rejected Index Ventures to Raise on Crowdcube
“A company called Escape the City, you know, they had two term sheets from VCs, one of them index ventures on the table, and they turned them down and elected to use Crowdcube to raise the money that they were after, you know, that was back in 2012”
Luke Lang Mar 16, 2015 ▶ 7:52 20 VC 020: Revolutionising Investing with Luke Lang, Co-Founder of Crowdcube
Nov 9, 2015 positive
Opinion
Kanji: Accel and Index are the best venture firms in Europe
“Axel's a great firm. I mean, it's probably one of the best in Europe, if not the best, alongside of Index.”
Hussein Kanji Nov 9, 2015 ▶ 3:42 20 VC 086: Starting A New Venture Fund and How London Compares To The US with Hussein Kanji @ Hoxton Ventures
Nov 20, 2015
Assertion Supported
Index Ventures participated in Crowdbnk's fundraising round for Gojimo
“We just finished raising money for Gojimo, which had index ventures as their principal investors In the earlier round, and part of their next partners followed on in the round that we did.”
Ayan Mitra Nov 20, 2015 ▶ 12:26 20 VC FF 022: Crowdfunding Is Here To Stay with Ayan Mitra, Founder & CEO @ Crowdbnk
Feb 1, 2016 positive
Opinion
Mignot: FOMO is healthy and essential for venture capitalists
“I think in a way, you know, It's healthy, because that's because that's what VC is all about. That's what I think about, you know, that's what I dream about. And, you know, at night, it's like, you know, which, when I find a company that I really love, that's …”
Martin Mignot Feb 1, 2016 ▶ 17:34 Index's Martin Mignot on Sourcing Rocketship Companies, Evaluating Founders and His Attitude Towards Risk At The Early Stage
Feb 1, 2016 neutral
Disclosure
Mignot: Index uses thematic and geographic strategies across fragmented European markets
“At index, we have both a thematic and a geographical approach, especially in Europe, you know, because the European ecosystem is still quite fragmented. And if you want to do early stage in, you know, in France and Germany and in the Nordics, you kind of have …”
Martin Mignot Feb 1, 2016 ▶ 9:09 Index's Martin Mignot on Sourcing Rocketship Companies, Evaluating Founders and His Attitude Towards Risk At The Early Stage
Feb 1, 2016 bullish
Insight
Mignot: Structural risk asymmetry justifies high valuations for potential rocketships
“It's like your downside is always limited to the amount you're investing while your upside is unlimited by definition. So, so in all of these cases if you think, you know, you're truly in face of a rocket ship and something that can be worth multiple billions,…”
Martin Mignot Feb 1, 2016 ▶ 15:33 Index's Martin Mignot on Sourcing Rocketship Companies, Evaluating Founders and His Attitude Towards Risk At The Early Stage
Feb 1, 2016 negative
Disclosure
Index Ventures maintains a 'life's too short' rule for unbearable entrepreneurs
“Some of us here have a rule of what we call the life's too short category, you know, so people who are, you know, entrepreneurs who are so unbearable that even if their business is fantastic, we just like, you know, life's too short to deal with it.”
Martin Mignot Feb 1, 2016 ▶ 11:53 Index's Martin Mignot on Sourcing Rocketship Companies, Evaluating Founders and His Attitude Towards Risk At The Early Stage
Feb 1, 2016 positive
Disclosure
Mignot: Index passed on BlaBlaCar's early round before investing at growth stage
“Blah, blah, car was exactly that approach where we had passed on the previous round, but we had stayed very close to the team. And, you know, and kept an ongoing dialogue in between the two rounds. So when they felt ready to raise a growth round, then we you k…”
Martin Mignot Feb 1, 2016 ▶ 10:52 Index's Martin Mignot on Sourcing Rocketship Companies, Evaluating Founders and His Attitude Towards Risk At The Early Stage
Feb 1, 2016 positive
Insight
Mignot: Early-stage VCs should never pass on startups due to high valuation
“We've seen millions of times, every time we've tried, we've walked out of something saying, oh, it's too expensive. It's great, but it's too expensive. I think you should never say that if you do early stage investing, because that, that's where, when you make…”
Martin Mignot Feb 1, 2016 ▶ 16:29 Index's Martin Mignot on Sourcing Rocketship Companies, Evaluating Founders and His Attitude Towards Risk At The Early Stage
Apr 1, 2016 positive
Assertion Supported
Robinhood backed by Andreessen, Google Ventures, Index, and Slow Ventures
“Well, they were invested in by the likes of Andreessen, Google Ventures, Index, Slow Ventures, and many more of the world's best.”
Harry Stebbings Apr 1, 2016 ▶ 0:39 20VC: RobinHood's Baiju Bhatt on The Importance Of Design in Fintech and Having A 10X Better Product
Sep 19, 2016 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Fushman: Slack will become workplace productivity's primary operating system
“Slack is one of the fastest growing companies, I think, that's been around, and it's poised to transform how people work and communicate, and build a true operating system and platform for productivity going forward.”
Ilya Fushman Sep 19, 2016 ▶ 22:53 20VC: Index's Ilya Fushman on The Key Lessons From Scaling Dropbox To 400m Users, Is Excessive Amounts Of Capital Driving Valuations Too High In The Valley & Why Venture Is Like Being On A Swim Team Not A Soccer Team
Sep 19, 2016
Insight
Fushman: Venture capital is like a swim team, not a soccer team
“But it's a sometimes lonely job. It's like being on a swim team and not a soccer team.”
Ilya Fushman Sep 19, 2016 ▶ 19:57 20VC: Index's Ilya Fushman on The Key Lessons From Scaling Dropbox To 400m Users, Is Excessive Amounts Of Capital Driving Valuations Too High In The Valley & Why Venture Is Like Being On A Swim Team Not A Soccer Team
May 24, 2017 positive
Assertion Supported
11 of 13 Pear Launchpad Companies Raised Top 2016 Seed Rounds
“So, you know, last year we had about 13 companies 11 of them ended up raising a seed round from great people. Accel, first round, Index, just really, really top name people. And the other two went back to school.”
Mar Hershenson May 24, 2017 ▶ 5:17 20VC: The Biggest Indicators Of Success In Founding Teams, How To Balance Both Vision and Operations & Taking Money From "The Man At The Rug Store" with Mar Hershenson, Founding Managing Partner @ Pear.vc
Sep 18, 2017
Insight
Volpi: Great brands stem from exceptional customer experience, not marketing tactics
“Universally, the one common concept with anybody that's able to build a great brand is it starts with a fantastic experience for the customer. That's how the brand builds. It's not billboards and blogging and nice logos and all that stuff. It really is about d…”
Mike Volpi Sep 18, 2017 ▶ 13:50 20VC: Index's Mike Volpi on Making The Move From Player To Coach, What It Takes To Build Generation Defining Brands & How Europe Really Stacks Up To The US Venture Market
Sep 18, 2017
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Volpi: Establishing a Top Venture Firm in San Francisco Takes Ten Years
“We did not think that index ventures in San Francisco, Would become, you know, a trailblazing firm in a year. This was a ten-year effort for us, and even now, five years into it, almost six years into it, we're sort of midstream on that”
Mike Volpi Sep 18, 2017 ▶ 10:43 20VC: Index's Mike Volpi on Making The Move From Player To Coach, What It Takes To Build Generation Defining Brands & How Europe Really Stacks Up To The US Venture Market
Sep 18, 2017 positive
Disclosure
Index Ventures prefers applied AI over core machine learning algorithms
“I would generally say that we're probably more excited about the application of machine learning rather than the algorithms and the processes of doing machine learning itself.”
Mike Volpi Sep 18, 2017 ▶ 21:14 20VC: Index's Mike Volpi on Making The Move From Player To Coach, What It Takes To Build Generation Defining Brands & How Europe Really Stacks Up To The US Venture Market
Sep 18, 2017 positive
Opinion
Volpi: World-Class Venture Capital Firms Require a Silicon Valley Presence
“If we wanted to build a world-class firm, we had to have a presence in Silicon Valley. We were not going to do that remotely.”
Mike Volpi Sep 18, 2017 ▶ 9:58 20VC: Index's Mike Volpi on Making The Move From Player To Coach, What It Takes To Build Generation Defining Brands & How Europe Really Stacks Up To The US Venture Market
Sep 18, 2017 positive
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Volpi: Index Ventures will build its brand through founder service, not blogging
“To index itself, our firm, what we're trying to do is to delight our customers in some sense. And, you know, our, a lot of our portfolio companies are the customers that we serve and by delighting them over time, we're going to build a brand. And it's less abo…”
Mike Volpi Sep 18, 2017 ▶ 15:06 20VC: Index's Mike Volpi on Making The Move From Player To Coach, What It Takes To Build Generation Defining Brands & How Europe Really Stacks Up To The US Venture Market
Sep 18, 2017
Insight
Volpi: Transitioning to VC requires stepping back from being front-and-center
“Super important to understand that the people that are actually making the decisions that own the success or failure of a company are the ones that are on stage. And I think being able to make that transition and not feeling like you're the one that is front a…”
Mike Volpi Sep 18, 2017 ▶ 3:48 20VC: Index's Mike Volpi on Making The Move From Player To Coach, What It Takes To Build Generation Defining Brands & How Europe Really Stacks Up To The US Venture Market
Jan 12, 2018 bullish
Insight
Davis: Amazon won multi-brand e-commerce; new entrants must build single brands
“My thesis around e-commerce investing was that multi-brand e-commerce had already been won by Amazon, which was true then. It's even truer today. And if you wanted to play in e-commerce, you had to go the branded route.”
Henry Davis Jan 12, 2018 ▶ 4:45 20VC: Why Risk Is Misunderstood In Entrepreneurship, Why Acquisitions Are Cheap For Incumbents Today & 3 Strategies To Improve Diversity In Your Team with Henry Davis, President & COO @ Glossier
Dec 3, 2018 negative
Disclosure
Danny Rimer: Nasty Gal Was His Worst Investment to Date
“So a big lesson was in the worst investment that I've done today, which is Nasty Gal, which was an e-commerce brand that we invested in.”
Danny Rimer Dec 3, 2018 ▶ 32:48 20VC: Index's Danny Rimer on His Biggest Lessons On Price, Ownership, Board Dynamics & Building Consumer Businesses from Backing The Likes of King, Skype, Farfetch, Glossier and more...
Dec 3, 2018
Assertion Supported
Danny Rimer Clarifies Index Ventures' Founding History and Initial Investors
“Yeah, so to be clear, I wasn't one of the founders of Index, though many members with my last name were. So probably my dad gets the original credit because his investors and his bond brokerage business ended up being the first investors at Index, and two of t…”
Danny Rimer Dec 3, 2018 ▶ 3:54 20VC: Index's Danny Rimer on His Biggest Lessons On Price, Ownership, Board Dynamics & Building Consumer Businesses from Backing The Likes of King, Skype, Farfetch, Glossier and more...
Dec 3, 2018
Insight
Danny Rimer: VCs Get Paid for Finding Winners, Not Dodging Failures
“We don't get paid for dodging companies that are not successful. Most companies are not going to be successful. So the schadenfreude or The pat on the back for having missed or not invested in something that could have been a disaster, that's not really helpfu…”
Danny Rimer Dec 3, 2018 ▶ 32:02 20VC: Index's Danny Rimer on His Biggest Lessons On Price, Ownership, Board Dynamics & Building Consumer Businesses from Backing The Likes of King, Skype, Farfetch, Glossier and more...
Dec 3, 2018 bearish
Opinion
Danny Rimer: Amazon Is Poorly Positioned to Capture Niche Consumer Markets
“As much as Amazon is fantastic on the mainstream, we think that when it comes to niches, Amazon is not particularly well positioned to go after it.”
Danny Rimer Dec 3, 2018 ▶ 10:46 20VC: Index's Danny Rimer on His Biggest Lessons On Price, Ownership, Board Dynamics & Building Consumer Businesses from Backing The Likes of King, Skype, Farfetch, Glossier and more...
Dec 3, 2018
Insight
Danny Rimer: VC Partners Must Act as Temporary Stewards for Future Generations
“The mindset is that you're not here for the rest of time, but you're here for a short period of time, and you have to make it matter as much as possible. Make sure that you're not letting down your partners, and make sure that the next generation see you as an…”
Danny Rimer Dec 3, 2018 ▶ 24:18 20VC: Index's Danny Rimer on His Biggest Lessons On Price, Ownership, Board Dynamics & Building Consumer Businesses from Backing The Likes of King, Skype, Farfetch, Glossier and more...
Dec 3, 2018
Insight
Danny Rimer: Founders Passionate About General Business Rather Than Specifics Fail
“I probably would say that with me, everything starts with a passion that folks around here joke, because if someone comes to me for wanting to work at index or starting a business and they're passionate about business, they're not going to go very far. You kno…”
Danny Rimer Dec 3, 2018 ▶ 27:26 20VC: Index's Danny Rimer on His Biggest Lessons On Price, Ownership, Board Dynamics & Building Consumer Businesses from Backing The Likes of King, Skype, Farfetch, Glossier and more...
Dec 3, 2018 positive
Disclosure
Danny Rimer: Index Ventures Restructured Good Eggs After Other Investors Bailed
“The second one was, Good Eggs was an example of a company that we invested in. It basically went under. We had to restructure it. The other investors decided to bail. We brought in a new CEO who He, as Jeff Wiener talks about with Reid Hoffman, had a founding …”
Danny Rimer Dec 3, 2018 ▶ 37:32 20VC: Index's Danny Rimer on His Biggest Lessons On Price, Ownership, Board Dynamics & Building Consumer Businesses from Backing The Likes of King, Skype, Farfetch, Glossier and more...
Dec 3, 2018 positive
What-if
Danny Rimer: Startups Should Have Maximized Spend on Early Google AdWords
“And of course, at that time, all we should have done is plowed as much money as we could against that platform.”
Danny Rimer Dec 3, 2018 ▶ 13:35 20VC: Index's Danny Rimer on His Biggest Lessons On Price, Ownership, Board Dynamics & Building Consumer Businesses from Backing The Likes of King, Skype, Farfetch, Glossier and more...
Dec 3, 2018
Insight
Danny Rimer: VCs Shouldn't Prioritize Equity Ownership Over Helpful Syndicate Partners
“So that, that was a big lesson that I learned relatively recently, which is never really focused so much on ownership and make sure that you have people around the table who are going to be really helpful in the journey of making a successful company.”
Danny Rimer Dec 3, 2018 ▶ 33:26 20VC: Index's Danny Rimer on His Biggest Lessons On Price, Ownership, Board Dynamics & Building Consumer Businesses from Backing The Likes of King, Skype, Farfetch, Glossier and more...
Dec 3, 2018 negative
Insight
Danny Rimer: Excess Capital Leads to Operational Laxity and Repeated Mistakes
“In our experience, the more money you have, the more lax you are, the more likely you are to make repeated mistakes across multiple places at the same time.”
Danny Rimer Dec 3, 2018 ▶ 19:36 20VC: Index's Danny Rimer on His Biggest Lessons On Price, Ownership, Board Dynamics & Building Consumer Businesses from Backing The Likes of King, Skype, Farfetch, Glossier and more...
Dec 3, 2018 positive
Insight
Danny Rimer: Global Connectivity Causes Niche Markets to Explode in Scale
“I think that if there's something that we've gotten wrong repeatedly is underestimate the size of specific niches, and what we tend to forget is when you're connecting most of the world's population, there are going to be niches that explode in size as a resul…”
Danny Rimer Dec 3, 2018 ▶ 11:45 20VC: Index's Danny Rimer on His Biggest Lessons On Price, Ownership, Board Dynamics & Building Consumer Businesses from Backing The Likes of King, Skype, Farfetch, Glossier and more...
Dec 3, 2018 bullish
Disclosure
Danny Rimer Cares Least About Valuation and Initial Market Size
“So if my partners were around the table, they'd probably tell you that I'm probably the partner who cares least about price, that if I think that the entrepreneur and the opportunity is large enough, I just want to be an investor in that company, and that I'm …”
Danny Rimer Dec 3, 2018 ▶ 29:37 20VC: Index's Danny Rimer on His Biggest Lessons On Price, Ownership, Board Dynamics & Building Consumer Businesses from Backing The Likes of King, Skype, Farfetch, Glossier and more...
Dec 3, 2018
Insight
Danny Rimer: Generational Transition Is the Single Biggest Trap for VC Firms
“Being a student of history, it's probably, from an industry standpoint, the biggest amount of quicksand that there is there for firms that have been great and have failed over time, and so, given the fact that we're not great yet, we're going to make sure that…”
Danny Rimer Dec 3, 2018 ▶ 24:37 20VC: Index's Danny Rimer on His Biggest Lessons On Price, Ownership, Board Dynamics & Building Consumer Businesses from Backing The Likes of King, Skype, Farfetch, Glossier and more...
Dec 3, 2018 neutral
What-if
Danny Rimer: Nasty Gal Could Have Succeeded With Co-Investor Board Support
“And I often think that what I should have done was share the workload with Someone else who's super competent and who would have been really helpful in the journey, because there were a lot of reasons why nasty gal could have been a phenomenal investment, but …”
Danny Rimer Dec 3, 2018 ▶ 33:04 20VC: Index's Danny Rimer on His Biggest Lessons On Price, Ownership, Board Dynamics & Building Consumer Businesses from Backing The Likes of King, Skype, Farfetch, Glossier and more...
Dec 3, 2018 bullish
Assertion Partly supported
Danny Rimer: Etsy Scaled From 250k to Over 3M Merchants, Defying Critics
“I'll never forget investing in Etsy and folks saying, well, it's crazy. You know, they already have 250,000 merchants online, all these arts and craft stores. Like, how many more can there be? And I think we're three million plus at this point in counting.”
Danny Rimer Dec 3, 2018 ▶ 12:13 20VC: Index's Danny Rimer on His Biggest Lessons On Price, Ownership, Board Dynamics & Building Consumer Businesses from Backing The Likes of King, Skype, Farfetch, Glossier and more...
Dec 3, 2018
Insight
Danny Rimer: Board Members Should Listen More and Deliver One Key Point
“Probably what I've realized is I end up spending a lot less time talking and spending a lot more time listening and figuring out what is the one piece of key advice that I want to provide.”
Danny Rimer Dec 3, 2018 ▶ 30:52 20VC: Index's Danny Rimer on His Biggest Lessons On Price, Ownership, Board Dynamics & Building Consumer Businesses from Backing The Likes of King, Skype, Farfetch, Glossier and more...
Dec 3, 2018 positive
Disclosure
Index Ventures Approaches Fintech via Broad Portfolio Bets Over Single Picks
“Jan and Neil and Mark and our team have been very proactive in investing in fintech. And so we decided we're not going to call the company that's going to be successful, but we're going to invest across a whole roster of companies because we think that financi…”
Danny Rimer Dec 3, 2018 ▶ 9:27 20VC: Index's Danny Rimer on His Biggest Lessons On Price, Ownership, Board Dynamics & Building Consumer Businesses from Backing The Likes of King, Skype, Farfetch, Glossier and more...
Dec 3, 2018 positive
Insight
Danny Rimer: Diverse Teams Protect Scaling Startups From Groupthink
“And what I mean by diverse team is backgrounds, ages, obviously genders, experience, culture, so that you're sheltering yourself from the groupthink that sets in when you hire people from the same university or the same generation with very similar experiences…”
Danny Rimer Dec 3, 2018 ▶ 20:01 20VC: Index's Danny Rimer on His Biggest Lessons On Price, Ownership, Board Dynamics & Building Consumer Businesses from Backing The Likes of King, Skype, Farfetch, Glossier and more...
Dec 3, 2018 positive
Insight
Danny Rimer: Consumer Startups Must Measure Organic Marketing Channels Early
“In the areas that companies take for granted, because usually they found product market fit, and so there's going to be a number of elements on the marketing side that just happen, but the earlier you start measuring them and predicting them, the more successf…”
Danny Rimer Dec 3, 2018 ▶ 16:48 20VC: Index's Danny Rimer on His Biggest Lessons On Price, Ownership, Board Dynamics & Building Consumer Businesses from Backing The Likes of King, Skype, Farfetch, Glossier and more...
Dec 3, 2018
Insight
Danny Rimer: VCs Must Spend Most Time With Companies Needing Them Least
“I mean, I would say that this is the biggest difference between a venture capitalist and an operator. You have to figure out how to spend the most amount of time with the companies that need you least, and the least amount of time with companies that need you …”
Danny Rimer Dec 3, 2018 ▶ 33:54 20VC: Index's Danny Rimer on His Biggest Lessons On Price, Ownership, Board Dynamics & Building Consumer Businesses from Backing The Likes of King, Skype, Farfetch, Glossier and more...
Dec 3, 2018 negative
Disclosure
Danny Rimer: Index Ventures Lacks Top-of-Mind West Coast Entrepreneur Mindshare
“So the big challenges then are still challenges that we have today, which is we have not the type of mindshare with entrepreneurs that we'd like to have on the West Coast, that we're not the first necessarily the first name or venture firm that you think of wh…”
Danny Rimer Dec 3, 2018 ▶ 22:27 20VC: Index's Danny Rimer on His Biggest Lessons On Price, Ownership, Board Dynamics & Building Consumer Businesses from Backing The Likes of King, Skype, Farfetch, Glossier and more...
Feb 8, 2019 positive
Opinion
Midha: Index, Benchmark, and First Round operate as service providers, not financiers
“And all three of these firms, index, benchmark, and first round operate as if they're being evaluated as a service provider. Not as financiers.”
Anjney Midha Feb 8, 2019 ▶ 17:42 20VC: What Makes The Best Venture Firms Today So Special, The 3 Structural Impediments That Face Venture Today and Why The Debate on AR vs VR is BS with Anjney Midha, Founder & CEO @ Ubiquity6
Aug 2, 2019
Disclosure
Daher: Pilot's lead investor Mark Goldberg previously worked with him at Dropbox
“I mean, for us, our investors were all people that we had already known. In other words, the lead investor from Index, Mark Goldberg, we worked together at Dropbox.”
Wasim Daher Aug 2, 2019 ▶ 16:24 20VC: Why Passion Is Overrated When It Comes To Starting Companies, Why VC Is Overrated As A Financing Mechanism & Why You Should Never Sell Your Company with Waseem Daher, Founder & CEO @ Pilot
Nov 4, 2019 positive
Assertion Supported
Top Tier Capital Partners' portfolio includes Andreessen Horowitz and Index Ventures
“Included in their stellar fund portfolio is the likes of Index, Initialize, True Ventures, Andreessen, and some of my favorites in Ed and Elliot at Boldstart, just to name a”
Harry Stebbings Nov 4, 2019 ▶ 0:48 20VC: Inside The Mind of A Leading LP: How LPs Evaluate New Fund Managers on Everything from First Meeting to Portfolio Construction To Fees and Carry with Lisa Edgar, Managing Director @ Top Tier Capital Partners
Mar 2, 2020 positive
Opinion
Goldberg: Founders should meet VC associates if they can lead rounds
“I strongly disagree with the notion that it's a waste of time for a founder to meet with a non-partner, though I do think the important question to ask an investor is, are you someone who can lead a round? So irrespective of title, and titles have become so me…”
Mark Goldberg Mar 2, 2020 ▶ 10:33 20VC: Index Ventures Partner, Mark Goldberg on The Questions Founders Must Ask A Multi-Stage Fund Before Taking Their Money At Seed, Why Most Angels Will Lose Their Money & Why We Will See Our First $100Bn Neo-Bank Shortly
Mar 2, 2020 bearish
Prediction Held up
Goldberg: Founder-led late-stage financing rounds like Front's Series C are aberrations
“At the same time, I think that's a bit of an aberration and many companies will decide to continue working with institutional leads where they get just a little bit more than you could handle from a single individual.”
Mark Goldberg Mar 2, 2020 ▶ 16:40 20VC: Index Ventures Partner, Mark Goldberg on The Questions Founders Must Ask A Multi-Stage Fund Before Taking Their Money At Seed, Why Most Angels Will Lose Their Money & Why We Will See Our First $100Bn Neo-Bank Shortly
Apr 17, 2020 bullish
Opinion
Cannon: Notion Is The Third Great Collaboration Platform
“And our view is that notion is really the third great collaboration platform.”
Sarah Cannon Apr 17, 2020 ▶ 12:54 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
Aug 7, 2020
Disclosure
Loom raised Series A from Kleiner after Index rejected their seed
“Now, we ended up fundraising from Ilya, who had moved over to Kleiner at that point from Index, but we were worried, even though he individually had a ton of conviction about Loom, we weren't able to get the seed round done with Index, and so there was no guar…”
Joe Thomas Aug 7, 2020 ▶ 25:38 20VC: Loom Founder Joe Thomas on Whether To Take Multi-Stage Money at Seed, How Early Stage Founders Should Select Their VC, How Sequoia Won The Loom Deal & The 3 Rules To Operate Remote Teams Successfully
Dec 7, 2020 positive
Opinion
Reid Hoffman calls Index Ventures' Mike Volpi a top board member
“I think that one of the great board members that I've been working with is Michael Volpe, who's at Index.”
Reid Hoffman Dec 7, 2020 ▶ 41:07 20VC: Reid Hoffman on Investing in Airbnb and Passing on Stripe, The Different Styles of Truly Great Leaders, How To Think Through Ownership and Price in Venture & How To Ensure Venture Partnerships Always Have Trust and a Learning Mindset
Feb 1, 2021
Assertion Supported
Ilkka Paananen raised over $143M for Supercell prior to Tencent acquisition
“Prior to Tencent acquiring a majority stake in the company at a reported 10.2 billion dollar acquisition price, Ilka raised over one hundred and forty three million dollars for the company from Excel, Index, Atomico, IVP, LVP, Initial and Lifeline to name a fe…”
Harry Stebbings Feb 1, 2021 ▶ 0:26 20VC: Supercell Founder Ilkka Paananen on What it Means To Be "The Least Powerful CEO", His Relationship To Wealth and Risk & How To Create Environments of Safety Where Your Team Can Be Their Best and Most Ambitious Selves
Feb 26, 2021
Assertion Supported
Sonos raised over $450 million prior to its IPO
“Prior to their IPO, they raised over four hundred and fifty million from the likes of Mike Volpe at Index, Satish at Redpoint, and eVentures to name a few.”
Harry Stebbings Feb 26, 2021 ▶ 0:32 20VC: Sonos CEO Patrick Spence on His Biggest Lessons Building and Growing Blackberry, The Right Way to View Competition and Innovation Cycles & How To Make The Transition From COO To CEO Most Effectively
Mar 4, 2021
Assertion Supported
Robinhood raised $5.6 billion total, including a $2.4 billion emergency round
“To date, Vlad has raised over 5.6 billion dollars with Robin Hood, including a 2.4 billion dollar raise just this month, and some of their investors include the likes of Ribbit, Sequoia, Green Oaks, Index, IVP, Thrive, GV, and more incredible names.”
Harry Stebbings Mar 4, 2021 ▶ 0:27 20VC: Robinhood Founder Vlad Tenev on His Biggest Lessons Managing Through A Crisis, The Events of The Congressional Committee, Raising $2.4Bn Fast and Why It Was Necessary & Why It Is Ludicrous To Suggest Robinhood Put The Business Ahead of it's Customer
Apr 1, 2021 positive
Assertion Supported
Common Room raises over $50M from Index, Greylock, and 20VC
“To date, Linda has raised over fifty million dollars with Common Room, from the likes of Danny Reimer at Index, Sarah Grew at Greylock, Dylan Field at Figma, Dick Costolo, and of course, TwentyVC Fund.”
Harry Stebbings Apr 1, 2021 ▶ 0:35 20VC: How To Deliver Feedback with Compassion and Clarity, WTF Are Values Really and How To Instill Them & Raising $50M+ From Index and Greylock but Remaining in Stealth for 12 Months with Linda Lian, Co-Founder & CEO @ CommonRoom
Oct 8, 2021 positive
Assertion Partly supported
Squarespace raised over $948M prior to its May 2021 IPO
“To date, Anthony has raised over nine hundred and forty eight million dollars for the company from the likes of General Atlantic, Index Ventures, Tiger Global, culminating in their IPO in May 2021.”
Harry Stebbings Oct 8, 2021 ▶ 0:25 20VC: Squarespace Founder, Anthony Casalena on Scaling Squarespace from Dorm Room To Public Company with over $700M in ARR, The Decision to Direct List over Traditional IPO or SPAC & What Changes When You Go Public?
Oct 25, 2021
Assertion Supported
Deliveroo raised over $1.7 billion prior to its 2021 IPO
“Prior to their IPO earlier this year, Will raised over 1.7 billion dollars for the company from some of the best in the business, including Excel, Index, General Catalyst, Green Oaks and more.”
Harry Stebbings Oct 25, 2021 ▶ 0:19 20VC: Deliveroo Founder Will Shu on The IPO This Year, The Rise of Quick Commerce and The Fierce Competition with Uber Eats
Jul 28, 2023
Insight
Stephane Kurgan: Venture capital operates on an eight-to-ten-year feedback loop
“When you're an executive, especially in the digital business, you have a daily clock, right? The feedback loop is, is extremely fast. So, you know, every morning I would get a thousand data points, you know, with all the reporting, and then suddenly you go to …”
Stephane Kurgan Jul 28, 2023 ▶ 57:49 Stephane Kurgan: Lessons Scaling King from 100 Employees to 2,400; How to Find Great Talent | E1041 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 28, 2023 neutral
Insight
Kurgan: Early-Stage Venture Investments Require Marriage-Like Founder Transparency
“When you invest in a company, it's a marriage, you know, it's gonna last, if it's early stage, it's gonna last for a very long time, And you need some level of transparency. If that transparency isn't there, you know, we're not going to be effective, and we we…”
Stephane Kurgan Jul 28, 2023 ▶ 24:24 Stephane Kurgan: Lessons Scaling King from 100 Employees to 2,400; How to Find Great Talent | E1041 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 17, 2024 neutral
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Danny Rimer: Future VC will split into aggregators and artisans
“I mean, of course, we're trying to wedge ourselves in between, right? That's the plan, but I agree with you. I think there will be asset aggregators and artisans, and what we're trying to be, what we talk about internally, is scaled artisans.”
Danny Rimer Jun 17, 2024 ▶ 31:53 Danny Rimer: The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook | E1166 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 17, 2024
Disclosure
Index Ventures missed investing in Spotify, Snap, Airbnb, and LinkedIn
“One is Spotify, another one is Snap, another one's Airbnb, another one's LinkedIn. Those are the four that we had real opportunity in some fashion or another to manufacture the opportunity for Index to be in the round, and we failed for different reasons.”
Danny Rimer Jun 17, 2024 ▶ 10:39 Danny Rimer: The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook | E1166 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 17, 2024 positive
Disclosure
Index Ventures acquired significant secondary Facebook stock from Owen Van Natta
“He ended up selling us some pretty significant secondary of, and so it turned out to be a great investment for index.”
Danny Rimer Jun 17, 2024 ▶ 54:02 Danny Rimer: The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook | E1166 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 17, 2024 negative
Disclosure
Index Ventures' biggest mistakes come from holding investments too long
“The biggest mistakes that we've done as a firm is holding on too long rather than selling too early.”
Danny Rimer Jun 17, 2024 ▶ 42:33 Danny Rimer: The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook | E1166 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 17, 2024 negative
Disclosure
Index Ventures sold Etsy too early before Josh Silverman's turnaround
“Another one where we sold too early was definitely Etsy. We didn't take into consideration the fact that Josh Silverman was going to come in and totally transform the organization, and that obviously we left a lot of money on the table.”
Danny Rimer Jun 17, 2024 ▶ 43:00 Danny Rimer: The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook | E1166 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 17, 2024
Prediction Open · timeframe Jun 2034
Danny Rimer: Staying at Index in ten years indicates a failed transition
“I shouldn't be there in 10 years. If I'm still there, I'm doing something wrong, or they, or they're doing something wrong. So I'd like to see that the baton has been passed, and that the folks are taking Index to Higher and higher territory, but maintaining w…”
Danny Rimer Jun 17, 2024 ▶ 1:23:19 Danny Rimer: The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook | E1166 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 17, 2024 negative
Insight
Danny Rimer: TAM and market size are noise in startup investing
“One of our tenants is definitely that market size TAM is noise.”
Danny Rimer Jun 17, 2024 ▶ 0:07 Danny Rimer: The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook | E1166 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 17, 2024 negative
Opinion
Danny Rimer: Almost no Index Ventures portfolio companies have mainstream brands
“Very few of our companies across the portfolio, and we have a pretty significant portfolio, and we thankfully have some great entrepreneurs, very few of them legitimately have brands yet. In fact, I'm not sure that any of them truly have mainstream brands.”
Danny Rimer Jun 17, 2024 ▶ 35:49 Danny Rimer: The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook | E1166 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 17, 2024
Insight
Danny Rimer: US founders overrate their abilities due to excess polish
“In the US, folks are super confident, and so, you know, they will not only spike in certain areas, but they're actually not that good in certain areas, but they'll still think that they spike in those areas, and so the level of polish and sophistication that y…”
Danny Rimer Jun 17, 2024 ▶ 57:25 Danny Rimer: The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook | E1166 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 17, 2024
Insight
Danny Rimer: Apple and Airbnb are rare exceptions in product-driven marketing
“Most companies that have been successful, be they enterprise or consumer in the tech space, The marketing has been a byproduct of a great product or service. Really, the exception to the rule would be Apple, and probably Airbnb, and I'm, and I scratch my head …”
Danny Rimer Jun 17, 2024 ▶ 34:07 Danny Rimer: The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook | E1166 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 17, 2024 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Index Ventures' best investments have always been unanimous
“Our best decisions, our best investments have always been unanimous, which has a lot to do with the dynamic of the partnership being so varied and diverse in terms of who we are and how we approach things.”
Danny Rimer Jun 17, 2024 ▶ 8:40 Danny Rimer: The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook | E1166 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 17, 2024
Insight
Danny Rimer: European founders routinely underestimate their own extraordinary strengths
“In Europe, of course, it's the antithesis of that, right? Like, they're not even aware at How good they are in particular areas, let alone the fact that they're much better than they think they are in other areas.”
Danny Rimer Jun 17, 2024 ▶ 57:44 Danny Rimer: The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook | E1166 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 17, 2024 positive
Disclosure
Index Ventures co-invested $5M in King after Apax preempted round
“So we were going to lead with fifteen million, which at the time was a huge Series A, and they came in with twenty-five million, and we had an opportunity To put in an incremental five million at their valuation, and we decided to hold our breath and do it.”
Danny Rimer Jun 17, 2024 ▶ 46:00 Danny Rimer: The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook | E1166 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 17, 2024
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Index capped social platform valuations at $1B after Instagram sale
“At the time, we thought the peak amount that a social platform would be worth Was a billion dollars because Instagram sold to Facebook for a billion dollars.”
Danny Rimer Jun 17, 2024 ▶ 52:10 Danny Rimer: The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook | E1166 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 17, 2024 negative
Disclosure
Index misjudged Airbnb by focusing on hotel cannibalization over market creation
“When one of the big lessons on Airbnb was when we were evaluating it, we were thinking, how many hotel rooms is Airbnb going to cannibalize? Rather than thinking, actually, Airbnb is going to create an entirely new market, an entirely, entirely new amount of i…”
Danny Rimer Jun 17, 2024 ▶ 18:43 Danny Rimer: The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook | E1166 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 17, 2024 neutral
Opinion
Danny Rimer: Evan Spiegel spiked in key areas but lacked well-roundedness
“By the way, what I would say about Evan is he spiked in certain areas. I mean, he was not Great in other areas, and I'm still not sure that he's great in the other areas.”
Danny Rimer Jun 17, 2024 ▶ 56:53 Danny Rimer: The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook | E1166 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 17, 2024 positive
Disclosure
Index Ventures offered Discord a term sheet after a two-slide presentation
“Based on the retention of Discord at the time, we followed up the next day and offered them a term sheet.”
Danny Rimer Jun 17, 2024 ▶ 1:17:37 Danny Rimer: The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook | E1166 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 17, 2024 negative
Insight
Danny Rimer: Larger VC funds delay carry and shift focus to fees
“We've always been focused on getting to carry as soon as possible. And the larger the funds, the longer it will take and the more attractive the management fee is.”
Danny Rimer Jun 17, 2024 ▶ 31:05 Danny Rimer: The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook | E1166 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 17, 2024 negative
Opinion
Danny Rimer: Index Ventures portfolio company Joost was a 'shit show'
“Being an investor in Juiced, which was a shit show”
Danny Rimer Jun 17, 2024 ▶ 15:51 Danny Rimer: The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook | E1166 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 17, 2024 negative
Disclosure
Danny Rimer: Rescue attempt for Nasty Gal carried high opportunity cost
“And I did get a positive vote, but it was not the high average that I got on the first one, and so I felt responsible to the partners that I didn't put good money after bad, and not only did I put good money after bad, but the opportunity cost of spending time…”
Danny Rimer Jun 17, 2024 ▶ 1:00:58 Danny Rimer: The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook | E1166 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 17, 2024 negative
Insight
Danny Rimer: VCs should prioritize gut instinct over analytical decision rationalization
“And I'm sort of saying actually, you know, what is the first impact? What is the first reaction that you have to the founder, to the opportunity? How does it make you feel? Can you build on that? Like, all of that other stuff is actually gonna help you rationa…”
Danny Rimer Jun 17, 2024 ▶ 1:15:35 Danny Rimer: The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook | E1166 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 17, 2024 negative
Insight
Danny Rimer: VCs flawlessly price deals on current comps instead of growth
“So that's the other one, which is we always evaluate the multiple that we're paying based on the current snapshot of comps, rather than thinking out what is it going to be worth if every company continues to grow, and if this specific sector grows, what are th…”
Danny Rimer Jun 17, 2024 ▶ 21:19 Danny Rimer: The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook | E1166 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 17, 2024
Insight
Danny Rimer: VC signaling risk is largely a thing of the past
“I think there's so much money sloshing around and so many folks have so many different funds that signal risk is, is more of the past. I mean, if you look at the continuum of entrepreneurial power versus investor power over the last couple of decades, It's onl…”
Danny Rimer Jun 17, 2024 ▶ 28:29 Danny Rimer: The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook | E1166 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 17, 2024 positive
Disclosure
Index Ventures avoided expanding to China and India to maintain focus
“I think that reflecting back, not going to, not jumping on the bandwagon and going to China or India was actually a really important lesson for us in maintaining maintaining our focus.”
Danny Rimer Jun 17, 2024 ▶ 4:16 Danny Rimer: The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook | E1166 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 17, 2024 neutral
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Index Ventures will not significantly expand fund sizes over ten years
“First of all, that the partnership is not much bigger than it is today, that our funds are not much bigger than it is today, but that our returns have only gotten better”
Danny Rimer Jun 17, 2024 ▶ 1:22:25 Danny Rimer: The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook | E1166 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 17, 2024
Disclosure
Index Ventures offered Facebook $50M at a $5B valuation
“We offered them what we thought was an incredible term sheet, which was to put in fifty million at five billion.”
Danny Rimer Jun 17, 2024 ▶ 53:13 Danny Rimer: The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook | E1166 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 17, 2024
Disclosure
Index Ventures uses a 1–4 and 7–10 voting scale
“Every investor has a vote, and we have a voting system that goes from one to four, and from seven to 10, so you can't do a five or six, and you need a certain threshold of positive votes north of six, so it's more like 6.5, to get an investment, ah, passed thr…”
Danny Rimer Jun 17, 2024 ▶ 7:40 Danny Rimer: The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook | E1166 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 17, 2024 positive
Opinion
Danny Rimer: Exiting investments is Index Ventures' greatest strength
“I think probably one of the things that Index is best at is the exiting part.”
Danny Rimer Jun 17, 2024 ▶ 36:39 Danny Rimer: The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook | E1166 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 17, 2024 neutral
Opinion
Sequoia and Accel are Index's primary consumer Series A competitors
“Clearly, clearly the folks at Sequoia are a big fierce competitor, and the folks at Acceler are fierce and, you know, I would say there are a number of different players, but those come to mind for consumer stuff. Certainly Sequoia comes to mind a lot. Benchma…”
Danny Rimer Jun 17, 2024 ▶ 1:18:48 Danny Rimer: The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook | E1166 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 17, 2024 negative
Disclosure
Index Ventures avoided crypto because no partner found conviction
“We were trying to squint and figure out who was going to be the champion and was going to lead us to the promised land of being excited about crypto, and none of us could do it.”
Danny Rimer Jun 17, 2024 ▶ 1:07:05 Danny Rimer: The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook | E1166 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 17, 2024
Disclosure
Index passed on Snapchat due to fund concentration limits
“What happened there was we, to my recollection, we had the opportunity to invest, but we had a growth fund, and we were unwilling to put the amount necessary to lock in the round, and so as a result of that, we didn't do the deal.”
Danny Rimer Jun 17, 2024 ▶ 50:25 Danny Rimer: The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook | E1166 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 17, 2024 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Index limits lead partners to one vote on exit decisions
“I mean, in our winners, it's a question of, first of all, just being disciplined about when to exit, and making sure that we are not sort of falling into the trap of thinking that because they've been successful, they will naturally be more successful over tim…”
Danny Rimer Jun 17, 2024 ▶ 39:34 Danny Rimer: The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook | E1166 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 17, 2024
Insight
Danny Rimer: Great founders need a clear spike rather than well-rounded skills
“So I think it's more about having a really clear spike in a particular part of your personality or vision rather than the full product.”
Danny Rimer Jun 17, 2024 ▶ 57:02 Danny Rimer: The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook | E1166 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 17, 2024 positive
Disclosure
Index Ventures scales new offices by relocating existing partners
“When we open offices, we don't actually hire folks to open the office. We actually take partners from one office and move them.”
Danny Rimer Jun 17, 2024 ▶ 1:04:53 Danny Rimer: The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook | E1166 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 17, 2024 negative
Insight
Danny Rimer: Avoid investing in second-derivative market creation plays
“Probably more patient on the technology and the amount of time that it takes to come to fruition rather than a question of whether the market is going to be Excited, you know, that I have to, I would call that a second derivative play. Not only does the produc…”
Danny Rimer Jun 17, 2024 ▶ 25:19 Danny Rimer: The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook | E1166 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 17, 2024 positive
Disclosure
Brian Chesky calls Index the best partner that never invested in Airbnb
“Brian, Brian Chesky from Airbnb repeatedly loves to say, you know, Index is, is the team that they wish they, they're, it, Sorry. He says Index is the best partner that never invested in the company.”
Danny Rimer Jun 17, 2024 ▶ 11:17 Danny Rimer: The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook | E1166 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 17, 2024 neutral
Disclosure
Index Ventures has no sovereign wealth fund or family office LPs
“Our LPs are, we have no family offices and sovereign wealth funds. So, they're all institutions, and they're mostly non-profits, or Their customers are nonprofits.”
Danny Rimer Jun 17, 2024 ▶ 37:16 Danny Rimer: The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook | E1166 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 17, 2024 bullish
Insight
Index Ventures' mistakes stemmed from betting against Europe
“Every time we've messed up is when we over rotate a bet against Europe.”
Danny Rimer Jun 17, 2024 ▶ 1:08:30 Danny Rimer: The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook | E1166 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 16, 2024
Disclosure
Shah: Index offers to underwrite seed rounds while splitting allocation
“Generally when I meet a founder at a seed stage, I'll tell him or her, I'll underwrite the entire round. So there's no financing risk, but We should split it into three sleeves. One sleeve is for index, one sleeve is for a seed fund, and the third sleeve is fo…”
Shardul Shah Sep 16, 2024 ▶ 31:39 Shardul Shah: How Index Makes Decisions & Why Benchmarks & Averages in VC are BS | E1202 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 16, 2024 positive
Insight
Shah: VCs should buy and hold power law winners
“The goal is to buy and hold and let other people help inform like when to sell. So, and that's true for kind of the winners that make up the power law contributors, which is the business that we're in to find fund returners for like.”
Shardul Shah Sep 16, 2024 ▶ 41:40 Shardul Shah: How Index Makes Decisions & Why Benchmarks & Averages in VC are BS | E1202 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 16, 2024
Disclosure
Shah: Index Ventures requires two partners for every founder meeting
“Every meeting ideally would have two people in it. So that's a super high bar for taking Any meeting, like I'm asking to prioritize someone else's time in addition to mine, which means the threshold for a meeting is super high.”
Shardul Shah Sep 16, 2024 ▶ 6:03 Shardul Shah: How Index Makes Decisions & Why Benchmarks & Averages in VC are BS | E1202 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 16, 2024 bullish
Prediction Not publicly verifiable
Shah: Index Ventures targets 5x upside on late-stage growth investments
“It's super dangerous. I think to say there's a safe two X, there's no such thing. And you alluded to this with the memory of all of the activity from 2021. There's no such thing as a safe two X. And so what we're looking for is definitely five X plus upside, e…”
Shardul Shah Sep 16, 2024 ▶ 20:37 Shardul Shah: How Index Makes Decisions & Why Benchmarks & Averages in VC are BS | E1202 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 16, 2024 negative
Insight
Shah: Pattern recognition and VC benchmarking are exercises in psychological safety
“There's so much long tail risk in a company that I feel like the exercise around pattern recognition benchmarking as just like two examples, risk mitigation as a third are exercises in psychological safety.”
Shardul Shah Sep 16, 2024 ▶ 30:30 Shardul Shah: How Index Makes Decisions & Why Benchmarks & Averages in VC are BS | E1202 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 16, 2024 negative
Opinion
Shah: Best ZIRP founders under-grew while VCs missed liquidity windows
“For founders, like the best founders probably didn't grow aggressively enough. For investors, investors probably didn't maximize liquidity opportunities.”
Shardul Shah Sep 16, 2024 ▶ 48:35 Shardul Shah: How Index Makes Decisions & Why Benchmarks & Averages in VC are BS | E1202 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 16, 2024 positive
Disclosure
Shah: All Index investments in Datadog and Wiz were high priced
“Every investment in Datadog I was at a high price every, it's not an outcome yet, of course, but every investment in Wiz has been at a very high price. I feel great about each of those decisions.”
Shardul Shah Sep 16, 2024 ▶ 12:35 Shardul Shah: How Index Makes Decisions & Why Benchmarks & Averages in VC are BS | E1202 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 16, 2024
Disclosure
Shah: Index distributed stock position one week after $1B acquisition
“We're a large investor in a company. We invested early stage company got acquired for about a billion dollars by a public company. And within a week of receiving our proceeds I asked our team to distribute the whole position.”
Shardul Shah Sep 16, 2024 ▶ 42:25 Shardul Shah: How Index Makes Decisions & Why Benchmarks & Averages in VC are BS | E1202 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 16, 2024
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Shah: Default first meeting length is 30 minutes
“When I started my career every meeting default was an hour. Danny reminded me that I probably know the answer in 15 minutes, and so now the default first meeting I have is 30 minutes.”
Shardul Shah Sep 16, 2024 ▶ 5:24 Shardul Shah: How Index Makes Decisions & Why Benchmarks & Averages in VC are BS | E1202 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 16, 2024 negative
Insight
Shah: Assimilating to firm norms sets VC investors up for failure
“If your goal is to be the best version of yourself and your firm's goal is to be the best firm on the planet, there's no room for assimilation and confirmation, right? Conforming to other norms. So I think it's absolutely wrong. I think if you try to assimilat…”
Shardul Shah Sep 16, 2024 ▶ 2:28 Shardul Shah: How Index Makes Decisions & Why Benchmarks & Averages in VC are BS | E1202 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 16, 2024
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Shah: Index Growth Fund returns followed power law over mid-tier multiples
“When we started our first growth fund our hypothesis was probably three to five X over three to five years, right? I'd just come out of a private equity firm as had some of my colleagues. And so we had like a, we had that mentality. And when we looked at the p…”
Shardul Shah Sep 16, 2024 ▶ 19:56 Shardul Shah: How Index Makes Decisions & Why Benchmarks & Averages in VC are BS | E1202 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 16, 2024
Insight
Shah: Index Ventures' three rules to avoid missing generational founders
“The sins of omission for us distilled into three lessons. One don't be cute on price. Two don't overthink it. Three don't pass on generational founders.”
Shardul Shah Sep 16, 2024 ▶ 10:43 Shardul Shah: How Index Makes Decisions & Why Benchmarks & Averages in VC are BS | E1202 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 16, 2024
Insight
Shah: Follow-on rounds require rebuilding the investment case from scratch
“So I'm not thinking about averaging down my cost basis. I'm not thinking about incrementally increasing my ownership. I'm building a net new investment case on, can I create, you know, a fund returner? And with that, like I do all the work again. So if I think…”
Shardul Shah Sep 16, 2024 ▶ 18:57 Shardul Shah: How Index Makes Decisions & Why Benchmarks & Averages in VC are BS | E1202 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 16, 2024 neutral
Disclosure
Shah: Datadog co-founder Olivier Pomel was initially not a great fundraiser
“When we invested in Olivier and Alexi Series A at Datadog, so he was not a great fundraiser.”
Shardul Shah Sep 16, 2024 ▶ 16:45 Shardul Shah: How Index Makes Decisions & Why Benchmarks & Averages in VC are BS | E1202 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 16, 2024 positive
Disclosure
Shah: Index Ventures makes Series B investments only by exception
“If we're making a series B investment, it's by exception, like elastic. Series B investment. Terrific return. Confluent. Series B investment. Terrific return.”
Shardul Shah Sep 16, 2024 ▶ 21:29 Shardul Shah: How Index Makes Decisions & Why Benchmarks & Averages in VC are BS | E1202 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 16, 2024 positive
Insight
Shah: VCs fail by picking wrong investments, not overpaying
“But when I think about conviction in people at the earliest stages I think you can be really elastic on price. At late stage, if you have conviction, price is just a representation of like future expected, expected free cashflow, right? So you're probably not …”
Shardul Shah Sep 16, 2024 ▶ 12:02 Shardul Shah: How Index Makes Decisions & Why Benchmarks & Averages in VC are BS | E1202 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 16, 2024 positive
Insight
Shah: Team quality is far more important than market in VC
“Like, there's this canonical question, I think, in our industry. Is it the market or is it the team, right? And I think many great firms would argue that it's market. In my view, it's very clearly the team.”
Shardul Shah Sep 16, 2024 ▶ 8:03 Shardul Shah: How Index Makes Decisions & Why Benchmarks & Averages in VC are BS | E1202 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 16, 2024
Insight
Shah: There are no predictable human patterns for successful founders
“When it comes to patterns of selection and patterns within people, The only pattern is there is no pattern.”
Shardul Shah Sep 16, 2024 ▶ 9:30 Shardul Shah: How Index Makes Decisions & Why Benchmarks & Averages in VC are BS | E1202 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 16, 2024 negative
Opinion
Shah: Describing founders as 'A-plus' without substantiation is VC BS
“It really irritates me when I hear, ah, investors say it's an exceptional founder, ah, an A-plus founder, without any, like, specificity or substantiation.”
Shardul Shah Sep 16, 2024 ▶ 48:10 Shardul Shah: How Index Makes Decisions & Why Benchmarks & Averages in VC are BS | E1202 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 16, 2024 negative
Opinion
Shah: Total addressable market calculations are a trap for venture investors
“TAM is a trap. Like, go back and look at the S-ones of some of the biggest public companies today. Their market caps are bigger than what they thought the TAM would be.”
Shardul Shah Sep 16, 2024 ▶ 13:59 Shardul Shah: How Index Makes Decisions & Why Benchmarks & Averages in VC are BS | E1202 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 25, 2024
Insight
Goldberg: Investors should pay up for category winners over #2 or #3 players
“Yeah, so I think one of the lessons I learned from Index Ventures, and certainly two of my mentors, Mike Volpe, Ilya Fushman, was you want to be in the category winner, and when you need to pay up to be in a category winner, that's something that I think a lot…”
Mark Goldberg Oct 25, 2024 ▶ 16:58 Mark Goldberg: Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | E1219 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 25, 2024 positive
Insight
Goldberg: Great companies expand TAM by increasing product surface area
“I mean, if you look at, you know, I was very fortunate to see some amazing companies from index from the early days, whether it was a Figma, whether it was a whiz, whether it was a data dog companies that, you know, have been able to build TAM by just increasi…”
Mark Goldberg Oct 25, 2024 ▶ 44:57 Mark Goldberg: Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | E1219 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 22, 2025
Disclosure
Hebbia raised pre-seed from Peter Thiel and Floodgate before Index seed
“We raised a pre-seed from Peter Thiel, and Floodgate, and then our seed from Mike Volpe at Index”
George Sivulka Jan 22, 2025 ▶ 15:01 George Sivulka, Co-Founder & CEO @Hebbia: The Future of Foundation Models | E1250 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 22, 2025 positive
Disclosure
Hebbia hit $1M revenue before raising a $30M Series A from Index
“We ended up going from zero to a million dollars of revenue sometime in 2021 or 2022, and raise our series A also from Index, from Micon Index, which is thirty million bucks.”
George Sivulka Jan 22, 2025 ▶ 23:07 George Sivulka, Co-Founder & CEO @Hebbia: The Future of Foundation Models | E1250 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 9, 2025 neutral
Disclosure
Crespo: Pigment excluded Index Ventures to bring fresh perspectives
“All of the people at Index are my friends and they were already helping me. And in a way, I already knew the way they were thinking. And so for me, it was really important to bring new people, fresh ideas to the table.”
Eleonore Crespo May 9, 2025 ▶ 6:05 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment
Aug 4, 2025 bullish
Opinion
Index Ventures Has the Most Performance-Driven Culture Seen by CMU
“And they don't, they are the most performant driven culture that we see.”
Miles Dieffenbach Aug 4, 2025 ▶ 43:18 Miles Dieffenbach: Inside Carnegie Mellon’s $4BN Endowment & The Math Behind DPI, TVPI, Illiquidity · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 4, 2025 bullish
Assertion Partly supported
Index Ventures Is the Largest Shareholder in Figma, Dream Games, and Wiz
“Largest shareholder in Figma, largest shareholder in Dream Games, largest shareholder in Wiz you know, second largest shareholder in Scale.ai, Revolut.”
Miles Dieffenbach Aug 4, 2025 ▶ 42:45 Miles Dieffenbach: Inside Carnegie Mellon’s $4BN Endowment & The Math Behind DPI, TVPI, Illiquidity · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 4, 2025 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
$1B to $2B VC Funds Like Index Will Continue to Thrive
“I absolutely think they will continue to survive and thrive at that range.”
Miles Dieffenbach Aug 4, 2025 ▶ 44:10 Miles Dieffenbach: Inside Carnegie Mellon’s $4BN Endowment & The Math Behind DPI, TVPI, Illiquidity · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 11, 2025
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Mignot: Index Ventures bans 5 and 6 votes in deal approvals
“We vote one to 10. You can't vote five and six, so you have to be, you know, four against, and then it's kind of a, so it's a qualified majority, essentially, so if the average is above six, you know, the deal is approved”
Martin Mignot Aug 11, 2025 ▶ 22:24 Index Ventures Partner, Martin Mignot: Figma, Scale, Wiz: Inside Index’s Decacorn Factory · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 11, 2025
Disclosure
Mignot: Index Ventures passed on Zendesk early rounds before growth investment
“That was just before I started, but we did that with Zendesk, for example, where, you know, we passed on, on, on the seed and on DA especially You know, if you look at the memo and the valuation at the time, it's quite funny in retrospect, I don't remember exa…”
Martin Mignot Aug 11, 2025 ▶ 41:24 Index Ventures Partner, Martin Mignot: Figma, Scale, Wiz: Inside Index’s Decacorn Factory · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 11, 2025 positive
Disclosure
Mignot: Index Ventures invested in every funding round of Figma
“We invested in, you know, every round.”
Martin Mignot Aug 11, 2025 ▶ 51:15 Index Ventures Partner, Martin Mignot: Figma, Scale, Wiz: Inside Index’s Decacorn Factory · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 11, 2025
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Mignot: I will never go deep on product during board meetings
“And also, you know, I haven't been an operator and a founder, so I won't try to, you know, I will never be on a board meeting and kind of go super deep on your product.”
Martin Mignot Aug 11, 2025 ▶ 1:05:13 Index Ventures Partner, Martin Mignot: Figma, Scale, Wiz: Inside Index’s Decacorn Factory · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 11, 2025 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Mignot: Index requires double-digit exit ownership for fund-returning deals
“For us, the goal is to get double digit ownership at exit. That is the, you know, that is typically where we, if we look at the performance of the fund, most of our returns have been generated by companies where we own close to or more than double digit owners…”
Martin Mignot Aug 11, 2025 ▶ 32:41 Index Ventures Partner, Martin Mignot: Figma, Scale, Wiz: Inside Index’s Decacorn Factory · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 11, 2025 neutral
What-if
Martin Mignot: Index Ventures missed out on Qonto due to Revolut bias
“We could have invested in any, you know, in a lot of other neobanks you know, you think, I mean, Qonto would be a really good example of that. A lot of, you know, remittance and certain corridors, and so there's a lot of players.”
Martin Mignot Aug 11, 2025 ▶ 17:16 Index Ventures Partner, Martin Mignot: Figma, Scale, Wiz: Inside Index’s Decacorn Factory · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 11, 2025 bullish
Disclosure
Mignot: Index sold Robinhood shares lower but retains a large stake
“We were a very large investor in in Robinhood and we sold you know we sold quite a bit at a lower price than where it is today. You know, we still have a large stake”
Martin Mignot Aug 11, 2025 ▶ 45:41 Index Ventures Partner, Martin Mignot: Figma, Scale, Wiz: Inside Index’s Decacorn Factory · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 11, 2025 neutral
Disclosure
Mignot: Revolut operated as a negative gross margin business in early stages
“Especially in the early stages, it was kind of, You know, negative gross margin business. I mean, they were basically giving away effects that weren't charging for anything else. You had a little bit of interchange, but not that much.”
Martin Mignot Aug 11, 2025 ▶ 23:58 Index Ventures Partner, Martin Mignot: Figma, Scale, Wiz: Inside Index’s Decacorn Factory · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 11, 2025 neutral
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Mignot: LLM investments will yield lower venture multiples but huge absolute returns
“The pure venture multiple will likely be lower than some of the other categories in the past. I think that is clear. The difference is that the size of the outcome and the speed of Very importantly, the speed at which the size is gonna get reached means that y…”
Martin Mignot Aug 11, 2025 ▶ 35:55 Index Ventures Partner, Martin Mignot: Figma, Scale, Wiz: Inside Index’s Decacorn Factory · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 11, 2025
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Mignot: Index Ventures has no CEO and operates as an equal partnership
“Well, first of all, there is no one running index, and Danny doesn't have a mantle. You know, it's a pure purely equal partnership.”
Martin Mignot Aug 11, 2025 ▶ 1:18:05 Index Ventures Partner, Martin Mignot: Figma, Scale, Wiz: Inside Index’s Decacorn Factory · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 11, 2025 neutral
Opinion
Mignot: Forbes Midas list measures performance from 10 years ago
“My view on the Midas list is, it's a really good list for who was a great investor 10 years ago, and so that, that's kind of how I would describe it, because if you look at a lot of these companies, there were deals that were made, you know, 10 years ago and s…”
Martin Mignot Aug 11, 2025 ▶ 8:59 Index Ventures Partner, Martin Mignot: Figma, Scale, Wiz: Inside Index’s Decacorn Factory · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 11, 2025
Insight
Mignot: Fatherhood forces investors to stop wasting time on travel and conferences
“Having kids makes you even less tolerant of wasting time, because any moment you spend on the road, at a conference, at an event that you shouldn't be on, it's time you're not spending with, you know, with the most important people in your life.”
Martin Mignot Aug 11, 2025 ▶ 1:17:29 Index Ventures Partner, Martin Mignot: Figma, Scale, Wiz: Inside Index’s Decacorn Factory · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 11, 2025 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Mignot: Index Ventures holds nearly all investments until IPO
“I think, in, by and large, we tend to hold pretty much everything until IPO.”
Martin Mignot Aug 11, 2025 ▶ 47:57 Index Ventures Partner, Martin Mignot: Figma, Scale, Wiz: Inside Index’s Decacorn Factory · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 11, 2025 bullish
Assertion Supported
Mignot: Index Ventures returned $30B and holds $20B+ across 30 years
“So we've been around for 30 years. We invested 11 and a half billion dollars. We've returned close to 30, and we still have 20 plus in holdings. Most of that is concentrated in eight, nine companies. We invested in probably 300, close to 400 companies over the…”
Martin Mignot Aug 11, 2025 ▶ 0:18 Index Ventures Partner, Martin Mignot: Figma, Scale, Wiz: Inside Index’s Decacorn Factory · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 11, 2025 bullish
Assertion Supported
Mignot: Index Ventures never passes on early-stage deals over price
“We never lose a deal or pass on a deal because of price in the early stage.”
Martin Mignot Aug 11, 2025 ▶ 0:15 Index Ventures Partner, Martin Mignot: Figma, Scale, Wiz: Inside Index’s Decacorn Factory · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 11, 2025 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Mignot: Index sells post-IPO shares quarterly over three years
“We tend to have a very standard liquidity program when a company goes public, where we sell, you know, every quarter over three years in a very, you know, recurring, regular, preset way in many ways. We obviously have, you know, we have an, we set up exit comm…”
Martin Mignot Aug 11, 2025 ▶ 44:50 Index Ventures Partner, Martin Mignot: Figma, Scale, Wiz: Inside Index’s Decacorn Factory · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 11, 2025
What-if
Mignot: Auto-investing in every pitch would have yielded better returns
“We ran the same analysis, where if you had said yes to every single company that had come to present at the partnership, we'd have done a lot better than we have. Simply because it goes back to the power law.”
Martin Mignot Aug 11, 2025 ▶ 1:10:00 Index Ventures Partner, Martin Mignot: Figma, Scale, Wiz: Inside Index’s Decacorn Factory · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 11, 2025 neutral
Disclosure
Mignot: Index Ventures avoids detailed number crunching for scenario planning
“We don't waste cycles, go incredibly detailed into those. Yeah, we do, we, I think we focus more on, you know, sensitivity analysis, so we focus on what are the few levers that really matter for this business, and where do we think they're gonna go, but, you k…”
Martin Mignot Aug 11, 2025 ▶ 53:33 Index Ventures Partner, Martin Mignot: Figma, Scale, Wiz: Inside Index’s Decacorn Factory · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 11, 2025
Disclosure
Mignot: Index passed on Spotify multiple times due to music industry bias
“The example we always use at Index is, is Spotify. And to your point, it wasn't because of a bad investment, it was because of a mediocre investment, which is different. You know, we had just invested in Last.fm, which was a, you know, a totally reasonable out…”
Martin Mignot Aug 11, 2025 ▶ 18:06 Index Ventures Partner, Martin Mignot: Figma, Scale, Wiz: Inside Index’s Decacorn Factory · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 11, 2025
Insight
Mignot: Systematic post-IPO selling beats market timing across VC portfolios
“If we looked at, if we had taken different schedules, we would have been worse off, and so we felt that overall, if you look across a basket, a portfolio, and again, it's a portfolio approach, so you may be wrong on one or two, but if you take a portfolio appr…”
Martin Mignot Aug 11, 2025 ▶ 46:50 Index Ventures Partner, Martin Mignot: Figma, Scale, Wiz: Inside Index’s Decacorn Factory · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 11, 2025 positive
Insight
Mignot: Building venture-backed hyper-growth startups requires seven-day workweeks
“If you look at the most incredible companies in the past, you know, you look at Revolut, you look at Deliveroo, all of these companies, the amount of work that these founders and these early teams put in was tremendous. I mean, it was seven days a week, you kn…”
Martin Mignot Aug 11, 2025 ▶ 43:23 Index Ventures Partner, Martin Mignot: Figma, Scale, Wiz: Inside Index’s Decacorn Factory · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 11, 2025 neutral
Disclosure
Mignot reveals Index Ventures' latest fund sizes across stages
“We have a three hundred million dollar seed fund eight hundred million venture fund, and one and a half billion gross fund.”
Martin Mignot Aug 11, 2025 ▶ 3:40 Index Ventures Partner, Martin Mignot: Figma, Scale, Wiz: Inside Index’s Decacorn Factory · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 11, 2025 positive
Opinion
Mignot: Jan Hammer is the strongest investment picker at Index Ventures
“I'd say Jan is probably the strongest. Yeah, I mean, if you look at his track record, you know, the consistency and some of the incredible winners that he has. I think he's a great picker.”
Martin Mignot Aug 11, 2025 ▶ 1:07:26 Index Ventures Partner, Martin Mignot: Figma, Scale, Wiz: Inside Index’s Decacorn Factory · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 11, 2025 positive
Disclosure
Mignot: Index Ventures holds investments in LLM providers Cohere and Mistral
“We're in Cohere, and in and we have a seed investments in Mistral.”
Martin Mignot Aug 11, 2025 ▶ 35:30 Index Ventures Partner, Martin Mignot: Figma, Scale, Wiz: Inside Index’s Decacorn Factory · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 11, 2025 positive
Insight
Mignot: Multiple touchpoints in a short window signals exceptional startups
“Typically, when you have exceptional companies, one of the indicator is that you will have multiple touch points about that company over a very short amount of time. So, you will, I will see them at Sitcam, but someone will, you know, I will see an ad, or I wi…”
Martin Mignot Aug 11, 2025 ▶ 54:30 Index Ventures Partner, Martin Mignot: Figma, Scale, Wiz: Inside Index’s Decacorn Factory · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 11, 2025 neutral
Insight
Mignot: Early-stage investors should ignore poor gross margins
“Beware of gross margin in the early days. That's a mistake we made a couple of times. You know, you have a lot of businesses that in the early days have really bad gross margin. All the LLM providers were very clear examples of that. I think if that's the only…”
Martin Mignot Aug 11, 2025 ▶ 0:00 Index Ventures Partner, Martin Mignot: Figma, Scale, Wiz: Inside Index’s Decacorn Factory · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 11, 2025 positive
Disclosure
Mignot: Index Ventures avoids maximizing ownership during seed stage investing
“Especially at seed stage, you know, our approach to seed is, is much more collaborative. You know, the idea is we don't want to compete with people like you and, you know, and other, other seed funds and angels, you know, we want to bring them along, we want t…”
Martin Mignot Aug 11, 2025 ▶ 33:08 Index Ventures Partner, Martin Mignot: Figma, Scale, Wiz: Inside Index’s Decacorn Factory · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 11, 2025
Assertion Supported
Martin Mignot: Index Ventures splits investments evenly between Europe and US
“We consistently invest about half in Europe and half in the US”
Martin Mignot Aug 11, 2025 ▶ 26:50 Index Ventures Partner, Martin Mignot: Figma, Scale, Wiz: Inside Index’s Decacorn Factory · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 11, 2025 negative
Disclosure
Mignot: Index has backed companies at excessive valuations that caused harm
“Oh yeah, for sure. Definitely.”
Martin Mignot Aug 11, 2025 ▶ 30:43 Index Ventures Partner, Martin Mignot: Figma, Scale, Wiz: Inside Index’s Decacorn Factory · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 11, 2025 positive
Disclosure
Martin Mignot: Early Revolut success created bias against other fintech deals
“I was lucky enough to be early in Revolut, and, Then I looked at a lot of other fintech investments were like, well, Revolute can do this, so Revolute does it better”
Martin Mignot Aug 11, 2025 ▶ 16:51 Index Ventures Partner, Martin Mignot: Figma, Scale, Wiz: Inside Index’s Decacorn Factory · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 11, 2025 positive
Assertion Supported
Mignot: Seven partners generated Index Ventures' top eight fund returns
“It's a very equal partnership, and, you know, even in terms of performance, so I mentioned there's like eight companies that represent the, you know, the largest share of return, They've been there has been involvement from seven partners for these eight compa…”
Martin Mignot Aug 11, 2025 ▶ 1:18:18 Index Ventures Partner, Martin Mignot: Figma, Scale, Wiz: Inside Index’s Decacorn Factory · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 16, 2025
Disclosure
Ehrenberg: IA Ventures Held 2.2% Stake in Datadog at IPO
“Datadog's a great example of one that ended up being A fund returner, but we had 2.2% at IPO because we were in there at pre-seed and then RTP led the seed and then index led the A.”
Roger Ehrenberg Oct 16, 2025 ▶ 1:08:18 Thinking Machines Co-Founder Joins Meta for $3.5BN, Industry Venture's $665M Acquisition · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 30, 2025 negative
Opinion
Stebbings: Andreessen Horowitz is Europe's biggest Series A threat
“When we sit and look at Series A, we don't sit and be frightened by Index or Excel or the big European players. We sit and be frightened of Andreessen coming into Europe. They're the ones who beat you.”
Harry Stebbings Oct 30, 2025 ▶ 1:24:03 OpenAI Restructuring: Who Wins and Who Loses & Mercor Raises $350M at a $10BN Valuation · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 7, 2026 bullish
Opinion
Green: Sequoia, Benchmark, and Index succeed because they excel at recruiting
“I truly think that's why Sequoia and Benchmark are great and Index are great because they help founders and entrepreneurs recruit amazing talent and people want to work for those funds portfolio companies.”
Mitchell Green Mar 7, 2026 ▶ 42:56 Mitchell Green: Why 50% of VCs Should Not Exist · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 16, 2026
Assertion Supported
Stebbings: Chai Discovery raised $400M at $3.8B valuation
“Four hundred million at a 3.8 billion dollar valuation led by Index, Kleiner, Sequoia, Dimension.”
Harry Stebbings Jul 16, 2026 ▶ 1:07:24 Zuckerberg Back on X Challenging Codex & Claude Code | SK Hynix’s $26BN IPO · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 3, 2026 neutral
Assertion Partly supported
Enterprise AI Startup Town Valued at $1B by Index and Benchmark
“Consensus status as well in the B to B world, because town, which is kind of the B to B enterprise alternative has also been funded to the tune of a billion dollar price by index. And I think it was benchmark who co led that round.”
Harry Stebbings Sep 3, 2026 ▶ 34:49 NVIDIA Crushes Quarter | OpenAI Cuts Off Cursor | Instinct Hits $2.5B Valuation
Sep 10, 2026 neutral
Assertion Supported
Stebbings: Index dropped Town deal after portfolio company Instinct objected
“There was a conflict in venture that has now prevented a deal. We've spoken about instinct being the AI assistant that's raised from index and benchmark. Well, there's another AI assistant called town, which we just had on the show and index. Were going to …”
Harry Stebbings Sep 10, 2026 ▶ 47:45 Jensen Huang Declares AGI Has Arrived | Tesla Launches Cybercabs | Index Pulls Out of Town
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