The Exchanges

Q what great looks like in terms of founders and opportunities. Should I meet as many companies as possible and kind of just smash the data through the kind of algorithm, so to speak, of what great looks like? Or should I take a much more filtered approach and really spend time researching the space before and have much higher quality, but fewer meetings? What would your advice be there, Dana?

A I would say if you're just starting out in venture, and even if you're not Definitely take as many meetings as you can to really understand what great looks like, not in terms of the idea and the business necessarily, but in terms of the people. If you take these meetings early on, frankly, you may not end up investing in those entrepreneurs. You'll have a year or two after that to see how the business has played out, and you'll see, was my hunch initially correct about whether this was a great entrepreneur or not? Even if the business didn't turn out well, you can still assess whether that entrepreneur was onto the right threads and onto the right ideas, and that type of Personal data refinement on your judgment is very helpful early in your career.

AI assessment note: “Definitely take as many meetings as you can to really understand what great looks like”

Q Can I ask, often something that comes up in terms of complexities within deals is the element of price, especially today in this kind of excess capital environment we have. How do you assess your own price sensitivity today, Dana?

A You know, many people have said this on your show that price doesn't matter. That is right and wrong, depending on the stage, in my opinion, of the investment. I subscribe completely to the mentality that price does not matter at the Series A. At the Series A level, we as venture investors, anyone with more than a 25 or fifty million dollar fund should be looking for these outsized exits. They should be looking for category leaders one day, category creators, market Creators. Things that can be 10, a hundred times multiples on their initial investment. So it really doesn't matter if you pay 20 or 30 or 40 or more, you know, sub, let's say, a hundred million or so. I don't think it matters. But with that, entrepreneurs also have to keep their expectations in check depending on what they have, depending on how quickly they're growing. This should all lead to their thinking about not this round, but what is the price of the next round? Because the next round, the price is going to matter more, and again, we'll be on the same side of the table with the entrepreneur, so we just don't want you to get too far out ahead of yourself and ahead of the pricing of the next round, and that's something we can all make together, but if it's a competitive process, an entrepreneur really wants a certain valuation, and it's, the market usually clears at a certain price, and we kind of wait to see…

AI assessment note: “price doesn't matter. That is right and wrong, depending on the stage”

Q The final one here, Dana, what's the most recent investment and why did you say yes?

A Okay, my, uh, most recent investment is in a company called Wirewheel that is in the data privacy and production protection space. I said yes because I actually think privacy is Is an epidemic in this country as well, perhaps as big as the opioid crisis, that in plain sight over the past 10 or 20 years we let this problem occur, and we didn't know exactly what it meant until it was already out of the bag. Luckily, I do think, being that this is a tech problem, that we have a myriad of tech entrepreneurs who can go solve this problem. I recently invested in Justin Antonopilai, who was the undersecretary of the Department of Commerce with Penny Pritzker, and he has set out, after kind of witnessing the GDPR regulations and helping influence them, frankly, as, as they came about in Europe, he set about on the tech side to solve the problem and protect privacy, protect data at the data layer and understanding where it goes and, and who has access to it. He's also pointed out that GDPR is, in fact, a, uh, European Union, EU regulation and, And the United States and the EU have had different approaches to regulation and policies over time, and good or bad, we should all, you know, the US should have their own approach to that, and so that's something I'm really excited to see if it happens over the next few years.

AI assessment note: “my, uh, most recent investment is in a company called Wirewheel”

Q 20 years of industry in there, and you're kind of questioning or doubting elements of their thesis around it. I do have to ask, because it's interesting with different firms, when they do and don't bring in additional members from the team into that When do you at NEA and you personally think about bringing additional members from the team into that conviction building process with you? What's your preference?

A So we have a lot of associates and principals at our firm that are very smart on their individual spaces as they cover. They're also very scrappy. So I love the word scrappy. I love the word resourcefulness. It's the two things that I really try to embody in my own work. So I will often bring someone along for Fairly quickly to start employing some of the scrappy resourceful tactics, whether it's to go research a certain space really quickly or, frankly, to find ways to further endear ourselves to the entrepreneur if it's a very competitive situation or, frankly, just something we really want to do. In terms of the team as a whole, you know, it's probably the most common question I get from entrepreneurs being that NEA is such a big firm. We're three billion dollars in size, 50 investing professionals across healthcare and tech. And so when you're just going to make a tech investment, do all 20 or so have to be aligned? The answer is no, but we don't also try to get those full 20 people to be aligned. We break up into smaller teams based on the experts around the table, the investors inside NEA who are prone to know something about that space. So if it's a robotics company, we'll grab five or six partners and general partners who could really help us make the best decision about that investment. And that's for the final, you know, sort of partner presentation.

AI assessment note: “I will often bring someone along for Fairly quickly to start employing”

Q on the very beginning, before even the sourcing work starts, really, we need some form of strategy or thesis, and yours is very much centered around the world of manufacturing tech, and we're seeing ever-increasing specialization among VCs. I have to ask, as a generalist VC, are we seeing the end of the generalist investment? And how do you think about kind of the ability to recognize themes across sectors?

A Yes. Short answer is no. I do not think we're seeing the end of the generalist investor. I do have quite a portfolio in the industrial manufacturing space today, but I also have a number of consumer investments as well as software investments. And I think for anyone who plans to be in venture or has been in venture for many years, spaces do evolve, specialties to evolve. And first and foremost, we're investing, I'm investing in people, in the actual entrepreneur. And that's, that's frankly what then has led me in to the industrial space, pulling a thread of a different entrepreneurial trend, and people connected to each other, and I discover one entrepreneur through the other, and then I see the space evolve, and that's given me the exposure to industrial that I have today. But I don't think, I don't think generalist is dying at all, so no worries for you there. I think what's interesting about the industrial space, however, a couple of trends that I've recognized are happening in the manufacturing world that also happened in In, frankly, the SaaS software world. First of all, it's the miniaturization of robotics and how these products are actually delivered to a shop floor. With miniaturization comes commoditization. You can buy a three D printer in the case of Formlabs for 3000 dollars that otherwise would have cost you almost a 100,000 dollars. In the case of desktop metal, …

AI assessment note: “Short answer is no. I do not think we're seeing the end of the generalist investor.”

Q on the very beginning, before even the sourcing work starts, really, we need some form of strategy or thesis, and yours is very much centered around the world of manufacturing tech, and we're seeing ever-increasing specialization among VCs. I have to ask, as a generalist VC, are we seeing the end of the generalist investment? And how do you think about kind of the ability to recognize themes across sectors?

A Yes. Short answer is no. I do not think we're seeing the end of the generalist investor. I do have quite a portfolio in the industrial manufacturing space today, but I also have a number of consumer investments as well as software investments. And I think for anyone who plans to be in venture or has been in venture for many years, spaces do evolve, specialties to evolve. And first and foremost, we're investing, I'm investing in people, in the actual entrepreneur. And that's, that's frankly what then has led me in to the industrial space, pulling a thread of a different entrepreneurial trend, and people connected to each other, and I discover one entrepreneur through the other, and then I see the space evolve, and that's given me the exposure to industrial that I have today. But I don't think, I don't think generalist is dying at all, so no worries for you there. I think what's interesting about the industrial space, however, a couple of trends that I've recognized are happening in the manufacturing world that also happened in In, frankly, the SaaS software world. First of all, it's the miniaturization of robotics and how these products are actually delivered to a shop floor. With miniaturization comes commoditization. You can buy a three D printer in the case of Formlabs for 3000 dollars that otherwise would have cost you almost a 100,000 dollars. In the case of desktop metal, …

AI assessment note: “Short answer is no. I do not think we're seeing the end of the generalist”

Q 20 years of industry in there, and you're kind of questioning or doubting elements of their thesis around it. I do have to ask, because it's interesting with different firms, when they do and don't bring in additional members from the team into that When do you at NEA and you personally think about bringing additional members from the team into that conviction building process with you? What's your preference?

A So we have a lot of associates and principals at our firm that are very smart on their individual spaces as they cover. They're also very scrappy. So I love the word scrappy. I love the word resourcefulness. It's the two things that I really try to embody in my own work. So I will often bring someone along for Fairly quickly to start employing some of the scrappy resourceful tactics, whether it's to go research a certain space really quickly or, frankly, to find ways to further endear ourselves to the entrepreneur if it's a very competitive situation or, frankly, just something we really want to do. In terms of the team as a whole, you know, it's probably the most common question I get from entrepreneurs being that NEA is such a big firm. We're three billion dollars in size, 50 investing professionals across healthcare and tech. And so when you're just going to make a tech investment, do all 20 or so have to be aligned? The answer is no, but we don't also try to get those full 20 people to be aligned. We break up into smaller teams based on the experts around the table, the investors inside NEA who are prone to know something about that space. So if it's a robotics company, we'll grab five or six partners and general partners who could really help us make the best decision about that investment. And that's for the final, you know, sort of partner presentation.

AI assessment note: “I will often bring someone along for Fairly quickly to start employing”

Q No, I, I do agree with you there. But on the flip side, we have a more happier story. We have when we're kind of looking to delve deeper. In terms of that investment decision-making process, How do you think about optimizing it within, within a structure like NEA and for you personally?

A There's two streams, right? There's one in working with the entrepreneur to make sure he or she understands that you're moving this forward quickly and you're very serious about investing in their company. In that regard, I try to be upfront and open about the things that I still need to do, whether it's, you know, merely scheduling them for a partner meeting, which sometimes at NEA could take a couple of weeks and slotting them into the Or whether it's doing additional research and uncovering, we'll use your example again, more about the ACV that they're modeling or planning to have in their business. I'll be very open with them, but very encouraging along the way that I'm very interested in this business and we're just trying to shore these things up. Then internally I will do just that. I will grab, you know, the four or five or six people here at NEA who have an opinion or have expertise in that space. Sit down with them and talk to them about the investment. I'll also run the diligence work with an associate, especially if it's more of a series A plus series B stage company. There's more diligence to do, but not a lot. And then it's just about, you know, building rapport with the entrepreneur and making sure he or she wants to work with us and we have a deal that could work.

AI assessment note: “There's two streams, right? There's one in working with the entrepreneur”

Q what great looks like in terms of founders and opportunities. Should I meet as many companies as possible and kind of just smash the data through the kind of algorithm, so to speak, of what great looks like? Or should I take a much more filtered approach and really spend time researching the space before and have much higher quality, but fewer meetings? What would your advice be there, Dana?

A I would say if you're just starting out in venture, and even if you're not Definitely take as many meetings as you can to really understand what great looks like, not in terms of the idea and the business necessarily, but in terms of the people. If you take these meetings early on, frankly, you may not end up investing in those entrepreneurs. You'll have a year or two after that to see how the business has played out, and you'll see, was my hunch initially correct about whether this was a great entrepreneur or not? Even if the business didn't turn out well, you can still assess whether that entrepreneur was onto the right threads and onto the right ideas, and that type of Personal data refinement on your judgment is very helpful early in your career.

AI assessment note: “Definitely take as many meetings as you can to really understand what great looks like”

Q I totally get it, and I love that on the ultimate decision. Final question before we dive into the quick fire round. I'd love your thoughts and advice here. Again, I mercilessly use the show for my own intellectual advantage, but I've just joined my first institutional board. Knowing all you do now from your many boards, what advice would you give me upon my joining my first?

A You know, I would say many people have also said this, to listen, to show up, to give advice, but not make decisions. I would say some of the other nuanced things that you should do would be to really strive to be in sync with your other board members. And if you see conflicts, you Even very, very subtle at the board level, meaning one person using your example from before doesn't think ACV is as important as TCV. Who knows what the other metric is? Or doesn't think development at this pace is as useful as marketing, getting a help ahead there. That can be very hard for a CEO to put those opinions together if you just lay them out on the table. I think it's incumbent on board members to really recognize when there are just little bits of conflict on the board or little bits of Differences in opinion. I won't even say conflict, and we should be proactively trying to help the CEO resolve those and, and get alignment, because again, you want to empower that person to really make the best decision possible, but if you lay a bunch of conflicting opinions on the table, it can be very, very difficult for them.

AI assessment note: “listen, to show up, to give advice, but not make decisions”

Q that it may be a VC-centric point of view, but I just think that investors don't have the time to Fully do their work on a space, and founders don't have the time to fully bond with their investors to make sure it's a relationship they want for the next 10 years. Am I being fair? Do you see the same realm compression, and how do you think about this?

A I think that's absolutely true. There's always a healthy debate about whether there's too much money in the industry or too many companies looking for funding. I don't know which it is, but I do know that the best companies often can control the market And the pace for getting their company funded. They will have their pick of many investors who definitely want to work with them. So if I were an entrepreneur, knowing that it's on them, it's, it's their market. They can set the pace. They can pick their investors. I would absolutely encourage them not to rush that process. And I don't know anyone who would disagree with me on the entrepreneur side. That said, they definitely want to spend as little time fundraising and as much time as they can in building their business. And that's also the right approach. You know, my advice to entrepreneurs, and again, we are on the same side of the table as them. Once we've invested in the company, we go out to market with them. They're out front, but we're investors in the company, and we see that process, too. I encourage them to get to know the right investors for their business over time when they don't need the money. That's different than, you know, the advice of always be fundraising. It's more about relationship building and taking the time to run into the right people at the right time, taking the time to talk to their entrepreneur. …

AI assessment note: “I think that's absolutely true.”

Q No, I, I do agree with you there. But on the flip side, we have a more happier story. We have when we're kind of looking to delve deeper. In terms of that investment decision-making process, How do you think about optimizing it within, within a structure like NEA and for you personally?

A There's two streams, right? There's one in working with the entrepreneur to make sure he or she understands that you're moving this forward quickly and you're very serious about investing in their company. In that regard, I try to be upfront and open about the things that I still need to do, whether it's, you know, merely scheduling them for a partner meeting, which sometimes at NEA could take a couple of weeks and slotting them into the Or whether it's doing additional research and uncovering, we'll use your example again, more about the ACV that they're modeling or planning to have in their business. I'll be very open with them, but very encouraging along the way that I'm very interested in this business and we're just trying to shore these things up. Then internally I will do just that. I will grab, you know, the four or five or six people here at NEA who have an opinion or have expertise in that space. Sit down with them and talk to them about the investment. I'll also run the diligence work with an associate, especially if it's more of a series A plus series B stage company. There's more diligence to do, but not a lot. And then it's just about, you know, building rapport with the entrepreneur and making sure he or she wants to work with us and we have a deal that could work.

AI assessment note: “There's two streams, right? There's one in working with the entrepreneur”

Q maybe to the board level approach. When we chatted before, you said ultimately the board is there to serve that CEO. I wanted to pick up on that as prior guests on the show have pushed back on this. And stated that they're not there to serve the CEO, but the company itself. Where do you stand on this debate? And kind of, how do you think about that dichotomy?

A I would say to me, when I said we're there as a board to serve the CEO, I call that sort of one in the same as serving the company because the CEO is the ultimate leader of the company. Yes, you could say hierarchically, I guess the CEO works for the board, but the CEO is guiding the board and their management team on the critical decisions They have to take so much advice, both from their management team and the board, and really steer us back to what is the most important decision to make. Now, we all have informed decisions, and we all can advise the CEO, and we should be advising the CEO, but as long as that person is in place, we're there to kind of help them hone their decisions, but empower them to make the ultimate decision.

AI assessment note: “I call that sort of one in the same as serving the company”

Q No, absolutely. But now we have that kind of slightly more focused aperture, as you said there, kind of having kind of pulled on that Mastering and being naturally pulled into the space. We do need to source. How do you approach the sourcing component of Venture State? Let's kick off with that.

A Sure. You know, I think there's this idea in venture, at least from the outside, and oftentimes with new entrepreneurs, that somehow we're sitting back and waiting for ideas to come to us. Actually, I spend the majority of my time proactively researching spaces, researching sectors, and getting to know networks of people. So early in my venture career, someone gave me the advice that I should get to know all the director levels and the VP level people inside companies that I know and respect well, because one day they will be the company creators of the future, and that served me really well. Even if you don't end up investing, or even if those people don't end up starting a company, you get to know them, and those networks are really what you need to be doing early in your, building early in your career. Secondly, the way I do evaluate deals is often through warm introductions. Warm introductions from people That I really work with and that I know well. So entrepreneurs of my companies. So I'd say probably half the meetings I take are kind of opportunistic intros that they're sending to me. And the other half are really formed by the proactive outreach that I'm doing on my own.

AI assessment note: “I spend the majority of my time proactively researching spaces, researching sectors”

Q like TJ, the founder of PillPack, incredible founder products and market fit and Incredibly aligned. And that story just works. But then there's also incredibly successful founders like Marco Thumbtack who say that maybe isn't so prominent and you don't need to have like an idea to get started, so to speak. How do you think about founder product days and its importance given both have been proven to work?

A I think there's merit to both approaches. I think really the best entrepreneurs are out to solve a huge problem, let's say in the market. And they might be starting with a core small technology, and there might be a lot of distance between those two things, how they're going to solve the problem and where the technology is today. But if that founder is really focused on, I'm going to change the world in this way, I'm going to solve this massive problem, and here are the one or two or three other founders who are going to join me in this journey, that's kind of the most inspiring thing I look for. It's not about, I've got this little thing, and I've got huge product market fit today. Yes, you need to accomplish that. Over, you know, the early days of the company's life, but you don't have to have it on day one. I'm much more interested to hear what have you been doing in terms of testing and learning? How quickly are you tacking and changing? Who are you inspiring to follow you? Who has joined you? Those are the most important things. Vision, inspiring other people to join you, and then changing quickly along the way.

AI assessment note: “I think there's merit to both approaches.”

Q Can I ask, do you think that's the role of the investor to really kind of assemble that hit list, so to speak, of five or so investors that would be perfectly aligned and they should build a relationship with? Or I've heard some investors say, no, that needs to be kind of sought out on their own from the founders and just relationship driven alignment.

A You know, I think that is an investor's role on the board. If you're an investor and you've taken a board seat and the next stage of the company is to go raise capital and You absolutely want to have an open discussion with your founder and your CEO about who the best people would be to raise capital from, but as a board member, you're giving advice. You're not making the decision. You're not setting the course, and you're listening to your CEO based on what he or she also wants to do. If they've said, you know, I think what you're really saying is you want to find this type of fund and this type of space who could help me in this area. Hey, I've met this guy over here, and he or she seems great. Why don't we also talk to them? Then your board member and your Slash your investor should be very open to that too. So it should be a collaborative process, but I do find that CEOs often want my advice on that, or my help on intros, because we see a lot of investors across all the boards that we work on, and all the companies we're invested in, we're probably co-invested with the majority of other firms, um, out there.

AI assessment note: “I think that is an investor's role on the board.”

Q Can I ask, often something that comes up in terms of complexities within deals is the element of price, especially today in this kind of excess capital environment we have. How do you assess your own price sensitivity today, Dana?

A You know, many people have said this on your show that price doesn't matter. That is right and wrong, depending on the stage, in my opinion, of the investment. I subscribe completely to the mentality that price does not matter at the Series A. At the Series A level, we as venture investors, anyone with more than a 25 or fifty million dollar fund should be looking for these outsized exits. They should be looking for category leaders one day, category creators, market Creators. Things that can be 10, a hundred times multiples on their initial investment. So it really doesn't matter if you pay 20 or 30 or 40 or more, you know, sub, let's say, a hundred million or so. I don't think it matters. But with that, entrepreneurs also have to keep their expectations in check depending on what they have, depending on how quickly they're growing. This should all lead to their thinking about not this round, but what is the price of the next round? Because the next round, the price is going to matter more, and again, we'll be on the same side of the table with the entrepreneur, so we just don't want you to get too far out ahead of yourself and ahead of the pricing of the next round, and that's something we can all make together, but if it's a competitive process, an entrepreneur really wants a certain valuation, and it's, the market usually clears at a certain price, and we kind of wait to see…

AI assessment note: “price doesn't matter. That is right and wrong, depending on the stage”

Q I totally get it, and I love that on the ultimate decision. Final question before we dive into the quick fire round. I'd love your thoughts and advice here. Again, I mercilessly use the show for my own intellectual advantage, but I've just joined my first institutional board. Knowing all you do now from your many boards, what advice would you give me upon my joining my first?

A You know, I would say many people have also said this, to listen, to show up, to give advice, but not make decisions. I would say some of the other nuanced things that you should do would be to really strive to be in sync with your other board members. And if you see conflicts, you Even very, very subtle at the board level, meaning one person using your example from before doesn't think ACV is as important as TCV. Who knows what the other metric is? Or doesn't think development at this pace is as useful as marketing, getting a help ahead there. That can be very hard for a CEO to put those opinions together if you just lay them out on the table. I think it's incumbent on board members to really recognize when there are just little bits of conflict on the board or little bits of Differences in opinion. I won't even say conflict, and we should be proactively trying to help the CEO resolve those and, and get alignment, because again, you want to empower that person to really make the best decision possible, but if you lay a bunch of conflicting opinions on the table, it can be very, very difficult for them.

AI assessment note: “to listen, to show up, to give advice, but not make decisions.”

Q maybe to the board level approach. When we chatted before, you said ultimately the board is there to serve that CEO. I wanted to pick up on that as prior guests on the show have pushed back on this. And stated that they're not there to serve the CEO, but the company itself. Where do you stand on this debate? And kind of, how do you think about that dichotomy?

A I would say to me, when I said we're there as a board to serve the CEO, I call that sort of one in the same as serving the company because the CEO is the ultimate leader of the company. Yes, you could say hierarchically, I guess the CEO works for the board, but the CEO is guiding the board and their management team on the critical decisions They have to take so much advice, both from their management team and the board, and really steer us back to what is the most important decision to make. Now, we all have informed decisions, and we all can advise the CEO, and we should be advising the CEO, but as long as that person is in place, we're there to kind of help them hone their decisions, but empower them to make the ultimate decision.

AI assessment note: “I call that sort of one in the same as serving the company”

Q It's so good to have you on the show, but I'd love to start today with a little on you, so let's kick off, Dana, with this. It's a very weird and wonderful world that we exist in the world of VC, but how did you come to be a partner at NEA today?

A Sure. Well, I might start all the way back to my product development days prior to when I got into VC to begin with. I started my career after college in product development and design. In college, I had majored in engineering, and so went right into new product development inside a consulting firm. I was there for just a little while before the dot-com crash of the early 2000. Then picked my head up and said, what am I doing with my life? I somehow found my way to a company called Blackbaud that was a software company somehow growing quite well despite the market downturn. And I was there for just a few years Doing design, and all the while the company was growing, and lo and behold, they filed for an IPO just in the 2003, 2004 time frame. And I remember sitting at my desk and reading the S-one that they filed to go public, and understanding the company for the first time on a whole new level. You know, in product development, in product design, when you're sitting there day to day reprioritizing product priorities, trying to ship product, trying to get things out the door, sometimes you lose the overall context of where the company is going. Because you're making very micro, minute, literal decisions about how the product needs to work over what time frame. But when I poured through that, it just was hugely eye-opening, and it connected me to, again, why this all mattered, wh…

AI assessment note: “Well, I might start all the way back to my product development days”

Q It's so good to have you on the show, but I'd love to start today with a little on you, so let's kick off, Dana, with this. It's a very weird and wonderful world that we exist in the world of VC, but how did you come to be a partner at NEA today?

A Sure. Well, I might start all the way back to my product development days prior to when I got into VC to begin with. I started my career after college in product development and design. In college, I had majored in engineering, and so went right into new product development inside a consulting firm. I was there for just a little while before the dot-com crash of the early 2000. Then picked my head up and said, what am I doing with my life? I somehow found my way to a company called Blackbaud that was a software company somehow growing quite well despite the market downturn. And I was there for just a few years Doing design, and all the while the company was growing, and lo and behold, they filed for an IPO just in the 2003, 2004 time frame. And I remember sitting at my desk and reading the S-one that they filed to go public, and understanding the company for the first time on a whole new level. You know, in product development, in product design, when you're sitting there day to day reprioritizing product priorities, trying to ship product, trying to get things out the door, sometimes you lose the overall context of where the company is going. Because you're making very micro, minute, literal decisions about how the product needs to work over what time frame. But when I poured through that, it just was hugely eye-opening, and it connected me to, again, why this all mattered, wh…

AI assessment note: “Well, I might start all the way back to my product development days”

Q you take multi-stage money at my stage and then they don't follow on, it will be trickier. And I would advocate actively against them taking multi-stage money at seed for that and other reasons, like it's not worth GP's time for it to do a one million check and then spend active time working on a rebranding or messaging of the company or hiring a sales rep. Am I right?

A Yes, that's a great example of signaling, but I think you have to be upfront if one of your CEOs really wants to take money from a multi-stage venture fund in the very, very early seed stages, you have to ask why, you know, what is it That they want to accomplish. Is it that they just are wanting to make a ton of, you know, seed bets, and they don't really follow on with those? In which case, that's, again, the truth, and not a, not a signal, and so you should get that out of them. But the other case might be, who knows, it could be something that they're really actively trying to build a company with, and they, or that they really have a strong relationship with that founder, and that they want to make an exception. My point is that there are varying cases, and if it's Legitimate reason, and they're a really value-added investor, that should, you know, you should absolutely want to take money from them at any stage, but that's just one example of signaling. There's tons of other examples of pacing, and the market does read signals. Certainly, you know, we talk about it at the seed level that you were just saying, but as companies mature more and more, and eventually have a huge investor base, the market overall is a signal, so you have to be very cognizant of it, but I think we put too much stock in that word, and not trying to get to the ultimate truth of Of what's going on i…

AI assessment note: “Yes, that's a great example of signaling, but I think you have to be upfront”

Q you take multi-stage money at my stage and then they don't follow on, it will be trickier. And I would advocate actively against them taking multi-stage money at seed for that and other reasons, like it's not worth GP's time for it to do a one million check and then spend active time working on a rebranding or messaging of the company or hiring a sales rep. Am I right?

A Yes, that's a great example of signaling, but I think you have to be upfront if one of your CEOs really wants to take money from a multi-stage venture fund in the very, very early seed stages, you have to ask why, you know, what is it That they want to accomplish. Is it that they just are wanting to make a ton of, you know, seed bets, and they don't really follow on with those? In which case, that's, again, the truth, and not a, not a signal, and so you should get that out of them. But the other case might be, who knows, it could be something that they're really actively trying to build a company with, and they, or that they really have a strong relationship with that founder, and that they want to make an exception. My point is that there are varying cases, and if it's Legitimate reason, and they're a really value-added investor, that should, you know, you should absolutely want to take money from them at any stage, but that's just one example of signaling. There's tons of other examples of pacing, and the market does read signals. Certainly, you know, we talk about it at the seed level that you were just saying, but as companies mature more and more, and eventually have a huge investor base, the market overall is a signal, so you have to be very cognizant of it, but I think we put too much stock in that word, and not trying to get to the ultimate truth of Of what's going on i…

AI assessment note: “Yes, that's a great example of signaling, but I think you have to be upfront”

Q Speaking of those meetings with the entrepreneurs themselves there, what have you found really works best in building that rapport and engagement with the entrepreneur in the very first meetings?

A You know, I like to understand the history. I don't know if it builds rapport, first of all. You'd have to ask the entrepreneur on the other side, but for me personally, I love to hear from the entrepreneur of how they've Started the idea. How they came up with the idea. What led them to become an expert in this field? And an expert in your, in the field does not mean that you came right out of industry and that you were doing this type of development in robotics, let's say. It could be as simple as you experience the problem or you witness the problem in your last job or in your personal life, and that's what's created the idea of starting the company today. Often people are calling this It's storytelling. Frankly, I also just like to tell the entrepreneur why I'm interested in, in their space. One saying that I really do not like in venture and in entrepreneurship is the idea that raising capital is like dating or investing in entrepreneurs is like dating. That's quite silly if you think about it. A VC and an entrepreneur should be quite up front, and often that time that would go something like, hey, I've been doing a lot of research, and I've dated these three people in the past, and I've been looking for something in this area because it's how I think the future will Play out. That's not really an approach to dating that I would employ. I have been out of the dating world …

AI assessment note: “I love to hear from the entrepreneur of how they've Started the idea.”

Q Speaking of those meetings with the entrepreneurs themselves there, what have you found really works best in building that rapport and engagement with the entrepreneur in the very first meetings?

A You know, I like to understand the history. I don't know if it builds rapport, first of all. You'd have to ask the entrepreneur on the other side, but for me personally, I love to hear from the entrepreneur of how they've Started the idea. How they came up with the idea. What led them to become an expert in this field? And an expert in your, in the field does not mean that you came right out of industry and that you were doing this type of development in robotics, let's say. It could be as simple as you experience the problem or you witness the problem in your last job or in your personal life, and that's what's created the idea of starting the company today. Often people are calling this It's storytelling. Frankly, I also just like to tell the entrepreneur why I'm interested in, in their space. One saying that I really do not like in venture and in entrepreneurship is the idea that raising capital is like dating or investing in entrepreneurs is like dating. That's quite silly if you think about it. A VC and an entrepreneur should be quite up front, and often that time that would go something like, hey, I've been doing a lot of research, and I've dated these three people in the past, and I've been looking for something in this area because it's how I think the future will Play out. That's not really an approach to dating that I would employ. I have been out of the dating world …

AI assessment note: “I don't know if it builds rapport, first of all.”