Apr 11, 2016 · 30m · 20vc

20VC: Felicis' Aydin Senkut on Scaling Felicis From $4m to $120m, Doing Venture Differently and Why Being A VC Is Like A Jamaican Bobsled Team!

Aydin Senkut · 21m spoken Harry Stebbings · 6m spoken

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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions

In this episode of The 20 Minute VC, host Harry Stebbings interviews Aydin Senkut, Founder and Managing Director of Felicis Ventures, about scaling his firm from $4 million to $120 million, adopting a founder-centric investment strategy, and navigating the evolving venture capital ecosystem.

Chapters · click to jump

3 statements ▾

Venture capital is a derivative business like an art gallery open →

Y Combinator classes were only 10 to 15 companies in 2006 open →

Small seed funds face major headwinds as small M&A dries up open →

1 statement ▾

High entry valuations did not correlate with Felicis' exit outcomes open →

2 statements ▾

Rovio's $42M Series A was larger than Felicis Ventures' entire fund open →

Rovio became Shopify's top store out of 10,000 within a week open →

1 statement ▾

Felicis was the first VC firm to pledge voting with founders open →

3 statements ▾

Felicis passed on investing in Uber, Airbnb, and Pinterest open →

Felicis' anti-portfolio valuation is a multiple of its actual portfolio open →

Only Google has an AI dataset comparable to Diffbot open →

How this conversation actually went

Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Harry holds 24.2% of the talking time here. How this is scored →

Harry as informed peer 1.5 Guest teaching 2.5 Guest disagreement 0.0 Harry pushing back 0.0

speaking balance: gold is Harry, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)

Sharpest disagreement ▶ 4:15 Critique of traditional VCs

In a universally collaborative interview, Aydin offers his mildest contrarian stance by calling out traditional VCs for lacking original thinking and refusing to spend time with him.

Hardest push from Harry ▶ 15:23 Querying valuation impact

Harry gently challenges Aydin's multi-stage strategy by asking how much valuation actually dictates whether Felicis makes an investment.

Biggest teaching moment ▶ 15:33 Valuation and outcome probability breakdown

Aydin educates Harry using data from 60 M&A exits to demonstrate that entry deal valuation has zero correlation with eventual venture outcome.

Harry holds his own ▶ 12:56 Probing stage-agnostic mechanics

Harry demonstrates knowledge of fund strategy by directly probing how stage-agnostic investing works in practical execution.

the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each

Topic	Harry as informed peer	Guest teaching	Why
Aydin Senkut's Unconventional Path to Venture Capital	1	3	Aydin recounts his non-traditional path into venture capital and offers career advice when Harry asks about his own background. Harry acts purely as a receptive listener seeking mentorship.
Evolving from Angel Investor to Seed VC and Market Differentiation	2	3	Harry asks standard market expansion questions regarding the seed landscape. Aydin reframes the ecosystem by highlighting market headwinds for small seed funds and explaining Felicis's bespoke VC model.
Stage-Agnostic Strategy, Valuation Realities, and Managing Risk	2	3	Harry prompts Aydin on how stage-agnostic investing works in practice and how valuation impacts decisions. Aydin breaks down how probability of compounding growth matters far more than entry valuation.
Case Study: Winning the Rovio Investment	2	2	Harry brings a crowdsourced question regarding the Rovio deal. Aydin tells the story of hustling and adding value through a Shopify integration to win allocation.
Felicis's Strategic Evolution and Founder-Centric Innovations	1	2	Harry asks about firm evolution as Felicis scaled. Aydin highlights founder-centric policies such as voting with founders and recruiting Wesley Chan.
Quick Fire Round: Books, Anti-Portfolio, Highlights, and AI	1	2	Harry runs a friendly quick fire round covering books, anti-portfolio misses, and recent deals. Aydin answers openly without any friction.

Statements from this episode (10)

Insight

Venture capital is a derivative business like an art gallery

“I basically immediately realized that venture capital is a derivative business. It's like an art gallery. We are not building these companies, but we're creating these companies and we're supporting them.”

Aydin Senkut Apr 11, 2016 ▶ 8:12

Assertion Supported

Y Combinator classes were only 10 to 15 companies in 2006

“When I started 10 years ago, Google and Facebook were still buying a lot of small companies. YC classes were only 10, 15 companies.”

Aydin Senkut Apr 11, 2016 ▶ 11:56

Opinion

Small seed funds face major headwinds as small M&A dries up

“More and more we're seeing the bigger companies, you know, focusing on only on large M&A and companies' success driven more like either they get to a scale where they can go public but there is not as much glory in kind of smaller successes. So I think there's…”

Aydin Senkut Apr 11, 2016 ▶ 12:16

Assertion Not checkable as stated

High entry valuations did not correlate with Felicis' exit outcomes

“So we have a very, very good data set, and what we found is that at least half of these companies, we were borderline, ah, about coming in because they were very expensive deals. But that had nothing to do with the eventual outcome.”

Aydin Senkut Apr 11, 2016 ▶ 15:50

Assertion Supported

Rovio's $42M Series A was larger than Felicis Ventures' entire fund

“When Rovio closed their first Series A round, it was forty-two million dollars, and that was larger than our whole fund.”

Aydin Senkut Apr 11, 2016 ▶ 18:14

Assertion Supported

Rovio became Shopify's top store out of 10,000 within a week

“In seven days, the Rovio store was up and running on Shopify. Instantly, it became the top store in Shopify among 10,000 stores. They sold out their whole inventory in a week”

Aydin Senkut Apr 11, 2016 ▶ 20:04

Assertion Supported

Felicis was the first VC firm to pledge voting with founders

“For instance, you know, ah, two years back, we were the first venture firm to officially, you know, vote, always with their founders,”

Aydin Senkut Apr 11, 2016 ▶ 22:13

Disclosure

Felicis passed on investing in Uber, Airbnb, and Pinterest

“Passed on Uber, passed on Airbnb, passed on Pinterest.”

Aydin Senkut Apr 11, 2016 ▶ 24:31

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Felicis' anti-portfolio valuation is a multiple of its actual portfolio

“If you take our anti-portfolio and add up their current pending valuation, it's probably a multiple of that.”

Aydin Senkut Apr 11, 2016 ▶ 24:35

Assertion Contradicted

Only Google has an AI dataset comparable to Diffbot

“I think the only other company in the world that has that kind of data set is Google.”

Aydin Senkut Apr 11, 2016 ▶ 28:22

20VC: Felicis' Aydin Senkut on Scaling Felicis From $4m to $120m, Doing Venture Differently and Why Being A VC Is Like A Jamaican Bobsled Team!

How this conversation actually went

Statements from this episode (10)

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