Upfront Ventures

“Fast forward to today, I think that's a non-issue with people like, you know, Mark Suster and Upfront Ventures and Snapchat in LA.”

“Our average check size is between three to three and a half million dollars. So what you're really talking about is, in terms of new investments, each partner doing between two to three deals per year maximum.”

“Like, you've got one company, and there's no divorce clause from investors, so I really think entrepreneurs need to take the time to get to know their investors, which is why I'm not a big proponent of demo days, or overhyping your company, or Waiting to meet …”

“There's all these intangibles that I'm trying to judge because I'm a seed or a round investor. So I'm usually not betting specifically on traction, which tends to be more of a B round activity.”

“But probably the best known post I've ever done was a post I wrote saying I invest in lines, not dots. And the metaphor is an x-axis is time, and a y-axis is your performance. And on any given day, I'm judging your performance on that day. How well did you pre…”

“But in general, I think the reality is I would take a great team in a very good market over a decent team in a great market. Cause I think at the end of the day, the great end of the day, the great team has a flexibility insight to really move into great marke…”

“What I quickly learned is I'm much better off reacting to strong entrepreneurs who think they can do something with a market versus my own point of view about a certain market.”

“My formula is a very large market opportunity that doesn't have multiple brand participants that can play in, let's say high margin categories that have reoccurring purchasing characteristics. Meaning this idea of I can build a direct to consumer brand in cate…”

“I think people who've kind of worked through and gotten themselves in a position to succeed in Probably have a greater likelihood of having a very successful outcome, and so those are some characteristics I look for.”

“We only invest in about two companies a year.”

“I definitely think the picking is 50% or more, but I very much believe in the doing”

“And we've been religiously on three years since 2009. So our funds have been oh nine, 12, 15 and 2018.”

“We funded a company today. We submitted the term sheet two weeks ago, and I've never met the founder in person. We greenlit another term sheet last Monday. It'll fund early to middle of next week. I've never met the founder in person. We are going to our partn…”

“Yes. In fact, I think it'll go up from 20%, not down.”

“So when we're looking at companies, we're looking at bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, we're going to build this for the next 10 years, we're in the first six to 18 months of our journey, as opposed to a company been around for six years and suddenly finds itself in …”

“So we're investing somewhere between 39 to say 42% Of our fund in first jacks, and we reserve the balance and then we pace ourselves.”

“And we have two companies closing north of fifty million dollar rounds this month.”

“We're tending to fund a lot more, call it, three million dollar checks than ten million dollar checks in terms of new money right now.”

“One of the things I was involved in helping guide one of the portfolio companies of which I'm involved through their single largest customer renegotiating their entire contract. And what we were able to do, sadly, you know, we cut, I don't know, 40% off the an…”

“I suspect it's going to be harder to raise funds for the next five years than it was for the last five.”

“So we do 89% over the last several funds has been about 89% in seed and A. And of that 89%, two-thirds of it is A, one-third of it is seed. So we're actually pretty sizable seed investors, but we are, as you said earlier in the show, A investors. We do 11% of …”

“Usually, in a run-up, I'll usually sell 33 to 40% maximum.”

“We're putting way more dollars into space right now.”

“Since 2009, if you take every one of our funds, they've been median between 3.2 to 3.5 million dollar first check in. And they've been median between 18 to 21% ownership.”

“So we had zero SoftBank deals, we had zero Tiger deals, we had one Coatoo deal, one Insight deal.”

“That 2012 fund for us, I think is going to be a phenomenal success. By any measure, it'll, it should return north of five X capital cash on cash.”

“So our median valuation on entries between 11 to 12 pre”

“On average of our companies that take longer and that we had reserves for. On average, it took six years to raise a growth round. Okay. But those companies by definition are more capital efficient because they didn't have access to it. I have six deals that fi…”

“So in 23, I started buying secondaries at discounts. We deployed almost fifty million dollars into secondaries in 23 at deep discounts at a time where other people were, like, scared about the market”

“So, we invest 40% of our fund, usually 42% of our fund, and we reserve 58%.”

“We were the seed investor in Ring. Everybody on Shark Tank passed on it. We wrote a check.”

“We don't write right now upfront is not doing a lot of generative AI.”

“We sold 1.2 billion dollars worth of positions in 2021. When everyone was writing crazy checks, I sold six hundred million dollars that year.”