Velvet Sea Ventures

“And so being a great investor is part therapy. It's part advisor. I find that many of the entrepreneurs know the right answer. They just need someone to talk to.”

“Can we get fifty million? Which is, you know, the largest deal that we've done.”

“We are a firm that is unanimous. They're four partners, and so it's a family firm, Cass and me, John, Jim Petroni, and Matthew, Jim Petroni. We're all in with deals that we like. I have to first convince myself that I like the deal. Cass has to convince hersel…”

“Your gut reaction is usually right about people. And so that's The first gut reaction that you have is so critical. The problem is the next two weeks, you try to talk yourself out of that gut reaction.”

“Well, I think what I meant is that money in today's market is fungible. You can get it anywhere. Experience and reputation are not. So in venture, if you look at the great returns, Experience and reputation drive results for the funds”

“We're not interested in putting together massive funds that would be hard for us to deploy right now.”

“The only way a company goes out of business is they raise money. Show me a failed product and twenty million in the bank. They still have a shot. Show me a successful product that can't raise money and you know, it'll go out of business.”

“We cut back our allocation significantly in order to make room for Mark Benioff and a bunch of our friends who wanted to be investors, right?”

“We don't say we need a board seat. We don't say that we don't need it. And so if an entrepreneur invites us on the board and we think we can contribute, we'll be on the board.”