Apr 22, 2019 · 35m · 20vc
20VC: Lightspeed's Jeremy Liew on Why It Is More Important To Be Right Than Contrarian, The Most Common Mistakes Made By Hyper-Growth Companies & 3 Characteristics That Make An Individual Incredible At Sourcing
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In this episode of The 20 Minute VC, Harry Stebbings interviews Lightspeed Venture Partners Partner Jeremy Liew to discuss deal sourcing evolution, founder-board dynamics, scaling pitfalls, and strategies for winning competitive venture investments.
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 37.3% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Harry as informed peer 2.8 Guest teaching 4.5 Guest disagreement 1.5 Harry pushing back 1.1
speaking balance: gold is Harry, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 12:32 Jeremy rejects premise of VCs molding companies
Jeremy directly disagrees with Harry's suggestion that smart VCs can mold decent projects into great ones, calling that line of thinking a mistake and pushing back against host premises.
Hardest push from Harry ▶ 14:19 Harry presses on timing of board interventionHarry refuses to drop the topic after Jeremy warns against board over-steering, pushing Jeremy to specify exactly when and where an investor should step in if a company is heading towards a cliff.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 13:05 Driving instructor analogy for board governanceJeremy uses a vivid metaphor comparing over-involved board members to backseat driving instructors to illustrate how Micromanaging founders ruins investor relationships.
Harry holds his own ▶ 24:15 Harry frames round compression mechanicsHarry demonstrates strong industry understanding by framing how modern round compression forces VCs to make fast decisions without traditional due diligence cycles.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Harry as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Harry pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jeremy Liew's Background and Entry into Venture Capital | 2 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Harry asks for explicit career advice and benchmarks on whether to meet every company or remain selective. Jeremy educates him on the '1 in 1,000' rule in venture capital, explaining that volume is mandatory early in a career before intuition develops. | |
| Spotlight on Sourcing Excellence: Nicole Quinn | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Harry introduces concepts like acceptable versus unacceptable risk from discussions with his partners. Jeremy reframes how VCs distinguish good from great companies, explaining that intuition comes from reps rather than a set formula. | |
| The Board-Founder Dynamic: Giving Advice Without Over-Steering | 3 | 7 | 4 | 2 | Jeremy strongly rejects Harry's premise that high-profile VCs can mold okay projects into great companies by imposing their own ideas, calling it a real mistake. He uses a detailed driving instructor metaphor to explain why over-steering founders leads to broken board relationships. | |
| Scaling Mistakes and Managing Customer Acquisition Saturation | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Harry probes how VCs handle customer acquisition channels reaching saturation. Jeremy breaks down S-curve dynamics in consumer growth and explains how broad-based media can complement digital acquisition once Facebook and Instagram top out. | |
| Winning Competitive Deals and Playing to Personal Strengths | 2 | 5 | 2 | 1 | Harry asks for personal mentorship on whether he should fix backend flaws like cap table math or double down on brand building. Jeremy directly instructs him to focus entirely on personal strengths, noting founders pick investors based on outstanding spikes rather than lack of weakness. | |
| Navigating Compressed Round Timelines and Founder Relationships | 4 | 4 | 2 | 2 | Harry questions how investors evaluate deals under compressed timelines and whether founders should constantly raise. Jeremy clarifies that while constant fundraising is exhausting, ongoing relationship-building outside of active rounds is critical for long-term board fit. | |
| Quick-Fire Segment: How VCs Allocate Time Across Their Day | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Harry conducts a quick-fire breakdown of calendar allocation. Jeremy shares specific data on board loads, pitch volume, and his personal philosophy on maintaining email responsiveness to all founders. | |
| Investment Breakdown: Imran and Kate Khan's E-Commerce Retailer | 2 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Jeremy breaks down his investment thesis in Imran and Kate Khan's new venture. He explains the counterintuitive thesis that multi-brand e-commerce retailers often yield larger outcomes than digitally native vertical brands. |
Statements from this episode (17)
Liew: VCs must see 1,000 companies to spot a 1-in-1,000 outlier
“The job of venture is to spot that one in a thousand company. Not one in a hundred, not one in 10, but one in a thousand. And the challenge is you don't know what a one in a thousand company looks like until you've seen at least a thousand companies.”
Liew: Requires email traction metrics before taking Series A/B meetings
“At the series A and series B, yeah, I will definitely be asking a lot more questions via email and oftentimes looking for some, threshold level of engagement or retention or growth or usage before I'll take a meeting.”
Liew: VC sourcing depends on work ethic, likability, and network density
“At the end of the day, this comes down to work ethic. It comes down to likability, and it comes down to being part of connected networks that are likely to have a higher propensity to have entrepreneurs coming out of them.”
Liew: Distinguishing bad startups from good ones is easy for investors
“If you're a reasonably intelligent, reasonably quantitative person who has some domain expertise, and I would probably put, like, most aspiring venture capitalists into this category, it's not hard to tell bad from good. That's actually a pretty easy filter.”
Liew: Investors cannot make a good company great through investor value alone
“Folks who believe that they can take a good company and make it great by sheer value being an investor, I think in general, maybe being a little bit too optimistic.”
Liew: Former operators turned VCs are most prone to over-steering founders
“People who used to be operators are most prone to, because they're actually used to making the key decisions, and if they had senior roles in their operating companies in the past, they might actually be used to, quote unquote, overruling the team when their j…”
Liew: Failing to Spot Channel Saturation Is Startups' Top Scaling Mistake
“Specifically around starting to scale, I think perhaps the most common mistake that people can make is not recognizing when the channel on which they're scaling is going to start to reach saturation.”
Liew: Organic Virality Avoids Saturation Until the Entire Market Is Reached
“I think that one of the joys of word of mouth and genuine virality is that that continues to grow as your core user base grows. It doesn't necessarily find saturation until you actually saturate the available market.”
Liew: In venture capital, there is no prize for second place
“There's no prize for second place. If you almost got the entrepreneur to choose you, but they ended up taking a temperature from someone else, it doesn't matter. Like, it didn't matter that you identified this was a great opportunity if you didn't get to inves…”
Liew: Founders pick VCs for standout strengths, not absence of weaknesses
“Entrepreneurs who choose to work with you will choose to work with you because you're the best at something, not because you're not terrible at something else.”
Liew: Cap table math is irrelevant to founders selecting a VC
“No one cares about cap table mathematics. Like that's not a dimension on which people choose their venture capitalists.”
Liew: VCs should limit diligence to 3-5 thesis points over checklists
“If you have a very clear investment thesis, and, like, there's two or three things that you would need to believe to believe that this company can be extraordinary, and one or two things that you would need to verify to make sure that it's not going to be a di…”
Liew: Founders should build VC relationships early rather than always raising
“You shouldn't always be raising. It's exhausting, but if you're going to consider adding someone to your board, that person is going to be on your board for years, and if you're going to make that decision on the basis of having met somebody two or three times…”
Jeremy Liew averages two board meetings and seven portfolio calls weekly
“And so on average, I have two board meetings per week. And then seven, I just did a analysis of my calendar for a couple of months as did Alex Taussig and Nicole Quinn. And so, so this, these numbers are sort of top of mind, but two, two board meetings per wee…”
Liew: VCs must prioritize existing portfolio companies over new pitches
“Like if you're not available to the people you've already committed to work with, you know, you're not doing your job properly. You have to prioritize that over taking a company meeting for a new pitch.”
Liew: VCs have an obligation to respond to every entrepreneur
“I know that that's not a perspective that's shared for by everybody, but I think that we have an obligation to respond to every aspiring entrepreneur, even if, you know, their ideas are not well thought through or their ask is unreasonable. We have an obligati…”