Sand Hill Road

“Yeah, and we, you know, at Pond you know, we do four or five companies per partner, so we're not in that more traditional Sand Hill Road mode of 10 to 15 companies per partner, where you're not really dug in very deeply on any of those companies.”

“I think, to be honest, I think being in Silicon Valley on Sand Hill Road exposes you to just every company out there, and you get to see what everybody's talking about, and you just invest in what everybody's talking about.”

“I don't think the VC of today can hang behind a Sand Hill Road address anymore, and pretend like that brand will become, or maintain its supremacy In this ecosystem.”

“Most of the funds were trying to do investments that were three to four million dollars. They were not taking technology risk. A lot of the new people on Sand Hill at that time were not coming from a startup or an operating background.”

“When we were first raising, our office was in Edmarieville, so East Bay, a little out of the way, especially for anyone on Sand Hill Road, and I would not go anywhere for a meeting. There was a bar around the corner called Prizefighter, and every VC that reach…”

“In terms of culture, that's why we never, ever would have an office on Sand Hill Road. We want to be anti-Sand Hill Road. We want to be anti-culture, venture capital culture. We want our own culture, independent thought processes.”

“We're typically not bringing in people that we start businesses with that are otherwise trying to be entrepreneurs. The scientists, the academics, the engineers, the researchers that we primarily start businesses with are not out there going up and down Sand H…”

“We tried for like the first Five years to raise money. We tried many times. We tried angels. We tried, I met Peter Thiel. I went, I met a bunch of different angels. I went up and down. I used all my connections up and down Silicon, you know, Sand Hill road to …”

“And this, for example, is why Founders Fund was why Peter put us in San Francisco when everyone else was on Sand Hill, because he wanted us to avoid getting caught up in this, like, are they going and meeting all the way down the street with all the other peop…”

“I think there is no systematic sourcing strategy. It's the partners and the brands are so strong and they're so networked in the, you know, S tier founder community that they're just in, they're just gonna be a first call for a lot of these firms.”

“It was in the throes of the recession back in and we went up and down Sand Hill road, like Darmesh and I get off the plane from Boston, landed in Sand Hill road. We're like, we got this. We're going to go up and down. It's like 20 meetings. And we go all 20 me…”