The Exchanges

Q I do want to finish those days, Jeff, on the final one being your most recent publicly announced investment. And tell me, why did you get so excited?

A Well, I'll give you two that we just announced in the last 30 days. One is called Electric.ai. It's based in New York. Repeat founder named Ryan Dennehy. We actually met Ryan in the Series A. We offered lead the Series A, and he Politely chose Bessemer Venture Partners. It's just a firm we have a great deal of respect for, but we very eagerly pursued him for the Series B, and I'm glad that he chose us. An amazing company that is using AI and modern tools like chat and bots to provide IT support for small businesses, and small business technology is a category that we've been very focused on as a firm, going all the way back to Zendesk and Square and House, and a market category that we just think is enormous. Small businesses in the US alone spend a hundred and eighty billion dollars a year on IT, Ryan and his team are setting out to change the way those businesses manage their IT infrastructure. The other one I just have to mention is an amazing company with an absolutely steadfast founder named Austin Allred, and it's a company called Lambda School. I mean, he's really, this is a passionate area for me, trying to change the way people are prepared to go into the workforce, and for hundreds of years, we've had this traditional model of going to college for four years, graduating, and then trying to find a job, and Austin has really Flipping that on its ear and saying, hey, if …

AI assessment note: “Small businesses in the US alone spend a hundred and eighty billion dollars”

Q Wayne Chang at Crashlytics on the show previously, and he actually said, That a VP of talent or a head of people, head of hiring, whatever we want to call that, should be your first hire because of the infrastructure benefits it provides over time. Would you agree with that? And how do you think about that VP of people, talent position, and the right time to really implement it?

A Well, this is something I'm, I'm pretty passionate about having been a founder and an operator. I agree. I wrote a blog post a couple of years ago called The People Conundrum, and I made the point that founders send so much I'm recruiting VPs of engineering, VPs of product, VPs of sales, VPs of marketing, because they view those functions as mission critical. And yet the people and talent function is what is going to build the culture and the organization within your company. And very often founders will wait until they have a hundred or 200 employees to go hire for that role. And I agree. I would, you know, if I were starting a company tomorrow, a VP of people would be one of my first five or 10 hires because I could delegate so much of, or not delegate, but I could rely on somebody who is senior in that role and To help me put the right infrastructure in place, the right culture in place, the right hiring processes, help me hire better people and make them happier in the roles that they're in. I just think it's such a mission critical hiring. It's a missed opportunity for a lot of companies. Having said that, it's a really hard hire to make. You know, there isn't as much of a career path in Silicon Valley for super successful VPs of people or VPs of talent. If you look at well-known folks in those roles like Lazlo Bach, who ran people and talented Google and now has a startup…

AI assessment note: “a VP of people would be one of my first five or 10 hires”

Q me, essentially, when you're a startup, Harry, you can either hire the burnt-out exec, or you can hire the stretch VP who's not really quite ready for that role. In terms of finding that perfect C-suite exec and building out that leadership team at the beginning, would you agree with Jason's assessment there, and the challenges of really getting those A-star people when you are a three, five, ten-man startup?

A I think Jason's point is valid, and I would say, on average, that is the trade-off. You either hire an up-and-comer who hasn't proven it yet, but is hungry and has the smarts to really be successful, or you hire somebody who's further along in their career and may not be, you know, may not have been super successful in their most recent role. Having said that, what I've seen happen in the last five years is companies that have exceptional founders that are mission-driven are able to attract super talented executives who are willing to give up compensation, they're willing to give up security, they're willing to take on more risk. Because they believe in the mission of the company. You mentioned Bright Wheel earlier as an example of that. I think that's a great example. As you know, we're an investor in a company called Open Door that I think people have really grabbed onto the mission and the idea that they're trying to change the real estate industry. So these companies that look transformative, that have powerful leaders, that can inspire people, I think those kinds of companies can break the mold and recruit super talented executives who will take the risk to come in earlier. I'll give you an example. I was on the board of a company called Buddy Media and Which Salesforce acquired several years ago for eight hundred million dollars, and when we were scaling the company, we g…

AI assessment note: “I think Jason's point is valid, and I would say, on average, that is the trade-off.”

Q you for sharing this. I do want to start there today. You mentioned, obviously, your founding there and your entrepreneurial experience. Now with GGV, I know that one element that you experience a lot is maybe the transition from founder to CEO, so I'd love to start on this. Tell me, how do you see this in reality with your companies today, and when does this fundamentally need to occur?

A Well, it's such a hard thing when you're, you know, about 80, probably 80% of the folks that we back are first-time founders. It may even be 90%. But it's a very high percentage. And so almost every company we work with is being run by somebody who's doing it for the first time. And, you know, in the early days of getting a business off the ground, your first five hires, 10 hires, 15 hires, you're doing so much of the work yourself, right? In some cases, you're building the product, you're raising the money, you're hiring all the team members, you're doing so much of the work yourself. And that's really the mode of being a founder. And it's what makes founders exceptional is that ability to sort of one day come up with an idea and build something out of nothing. But there's a moment in time, and I don't really have a perfect data point, but I would say, you know, what I've seen is it usually happens around 50 employees. When a company gets to about 50 employees, maybe 60 or 70, where the founder has to start transitioning into more of a professional manager type role. They need to delegate. They need to hire fantastic people in some cases or in many cases who are better than they are, and they need to start spending their time in a different way. They need to spend more time recruiting. They need to spend more time leading. They need to be spending more time communicating. And …

AI assessment note: “it usually happens around 50 employees. When a company gets to about 50 employees”

Q No, absolutely. And I do love that kind of, if all the stars align, what does it look like? Can I ask, have there been Specific moments for you that's maybe changed the way you think on price and your relationship to price sensitivity.

A We are all a collection of our hits and our misses in venture capital. One of the hardest things for me to get my head around when I went from being an operator to an investor was the idea of this very hits-driven business, this idea of batting, you know, for slugging average, not batting average. I'll give you an example. We invested in Didi in China at a relatively Low valuation, but at the time, it looked like an exceedingly high valuation for where the company was, certainly from a revenue standpoint, but my partner, Jishun, did an amazing job of talking to the partnership and saying, guys, if we get this right, and DB changes the way people use transportation in China, I think this can be a hundred billion dollar company, which at the time, I think it was valued at two billion. And that's just an exceptional train of thought to have for a company that's literally generating maybe a hundred million dollars in revenue. Well, fast forward today, it's probably been four or five years. Didi has five hundred and fifty million users, over thirty million drivers, and has just fundamentally changed the transportation landscape in China and is now doing so outside of China. So there are these anecdotal moments and these companies that we've been able to back. Didi's one. Xiaomi is one. Airbnb is one. I think, you know, Opendoor has the chance to be one. Square was one. Where you sor…

AI assessment note: “all of those are examples of companies that we think of when we're asking ourselves those questions”

Q Can I jump in there and ask, I totally agree with you on the difficulty and the importance of it. Do you think that we have the structures in place really to guide founders through that very difficult process when they are first time founders often?

A Well, we don't. You asked earlier about my experience in founding my first company in 1987 when I was 25 years old. And I like to joke that, you know, I raised twenty million dollars in 1999 and the investor said, good luck. And I sort of realized, like, I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know how to run a company. We were sort of figuring it out for the first time, and I think that's been one of the challenges in Silicon Valley for several decades is we hand founders these incredible sums of money and ask them to, to survive, and I think, you know, we launched two years ago with, with Jen Holmstrom, our head of talent, who we recruited from Facebook. We launched a program called Founders and Leaders, and the idea was to provide that kind of support mechanism, that, that training mechanism, and the mentorship to help founders say, hey, it's okay, To raise your hand and say, hey, I don't necessarily know what I'm doing, and I'd love some help, and so we provide training. We provide mentorship. We give them tools and techniques to become better leaders, and the whole idea was to cater towards founders trying to transition becoming leaders, but also for their management teams to helping their management team become better leaders, because if you work at Facebook or LinkedIn or Microsoft or, you know, a large tech company, very often you're getting training throughout the yea…

AI assessment note: “Well, we don't.”

Q What's the favorite book for you, and why? What must I read on my next trip out to the West Coast?

A Well, I've listened to a lot of your episodes, and so I know folks have recommended a lot of books that I love, like Shoe Dog, and Elon Musk, and many of those books. I'll give you one that might be a little unconventional, which is a book by Robert Rubin, who was the Treasury Secretary under Clinton. It's called In an Uncertain World, and it was written in 2004, and it's, and it's about his experience in the, you know, monetary crisis of the mid-nineties, and to me, it was It's just an amazing book because it really helps you understand the way all of these economies around the world are interconnected, and I think it really plays into what we're doing as a firm. We're, you know, we're looking at all of these different markets around the world and the technology trends in those markets and how they're interrelated, and then making bets that we hope will change the outcomes in those geographies. I would just offer that one because I think it just offers a little bit different point of view. Oftentimes in America, we get fairly focused on what we're doing in the U.S., but in an uncertain world, My Robert Rubin just tells some great anecdotes about how all these economies around the world are interconnected.

AI assessment note: “a book by Robert Rubin, who was the Treasury Secretary under Clinton. It's called In an Uncertain World”

Q as an investor over the last 10 years, having seen the boom, I'm super interested. We chatted about Josh Koppelman's episode, Before the show. And we asked Josh, which was, how did the boom and bust kind of firsthand experience affect your mindset today as an investor? I'd love to hear how it affected your mindset, having seen that firsthand, and maybe how it's changed how you think today investing.

A Yeah, I think anyone who has gone through, you know, went through the dot-com bubble in 2002 1001, or who went through the crash in 2008 or 2009, you know, has a very distinct view of what that's like. And I'd say there are a couple of things that I walked away with. One, it's totally out of your control, so there's this dynamic in the market that you think is sort of slowly happening, and then it really builds into a crescendo, and it happens, and it just wipes out entire sectors, and industries, and companies, and that's the one thing I remember from 2002 1001, all these amazing companies that we thought were doing well, and well-capitalized, and really well-run, were just decimated, and I look at my own company, you know, we had grown to about a thirty million dollar revenue business, it was a recurring revenue business, In 2000, we lost about half of that revenue when the market cratered because 85% of our customers were tech companies and nobody along the way, nobody on our board, none of our investors, nobody on the management team said, oh gosh, what if there's a massive crash and it wipes out the tech economy and we lose half our revenue? That just never came up. And yet that's exactly what happened. And so it's really hard to prepare for that kind of a shift in the market. And I think anybody who's been through that kind of cycle in the back of their mind has some idea…

AI assessment note: “I'd say there are a couple of things that I walked away with.”

Q Can I jump in there and ask, I totally agree with you on the difficulty and the importance of it. Do you think that we have the structures in place really to guide founders through that very difficult process when they are first time founders often?

A Well, we don't. You asked earlier about my experience in founding my first company in 1987 when I was 25 years old. And I like to joke that, you know, I raised twenty million dollars in 1999 and the investor said, good luck. And I sort of realized, like, I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know how to run a company. We were sort of figuring it out for the first time, and I think that's been one of the challenges in Silicon Valley for several decades is we hand founders these incredible sums of money and ask them to, to survive, and I think, you know, we launched two years ago with, with Jen Holmstrom, our head of talent, who we recruited from Facebook. We launched a program called Founders and Leaders, and the idea was to provide that kind of support mechanism, that, that training mechanism, and the mentorship to help founders say, hey, it's okay, To raise your hand and say, hey, I don't necessarily know what I'm doing, and I'd love some help, and so we provide training. We provide mentorship. We give them tools and techniques to become better leaders, and the whole idea was to cater towards founders trying to transition becoming leaders, but also for their management teams to helping their management team become better leaders, because if you work at Facebook or LinkedIn or Microsoft or, you know, a large tech company, very often you're getting training throughout the yea…

AI assessment note: “Well, we don't.”

Q me, essentially, when you're a startup, Harry, you can either hire the burnt-out exec, or you can hire the stretch VP who's not really quite ready for that role. In terms of finding that perfect C-suite exec and building out that leadership team at the beginning, would you agree with Jason's assessment there, and the challenges of really getting those A-star people when you are a three, five, ten-man startup?

A I think Jason's point is valid, and I would say, on average, that is the trade-off. You either hire an up-and-comer who hasn't proven it yet, but is hungry and has the smarts to really be successful, or you hire somebody who's further along in their career and may not be, you know, may not have been super successful in their most recent role. Having said that, what I've seen happen in the last five years is companies that have exceptional founders that are mission-driven are able to attract super talented executives who are willing to give up compensation, they're willing to give up security, they're willing to take on more risk. Because they believe in the mission of the company. You mentioned Bright Wheel earlier as an example of that. I think that's a great example. As you know, we're an investor in a company called Open Door that I think people have really grabbed onto the mission and the idea that they're trying to change the real estate industry. So these companies that look transformative, that have powerful leaders, that can inspire people, I think those kinds of companies can break the mold and recruit super talented executives who will take the risk to come in earlier. I'll give you an example. I was on the board of a company called Buddy Media and Which Salesforce acquired several years ago for eight hundred million dollars, and when we were scaling the company, we g…

AI assessment note: “I think Jason's point is valid, and I would say, on average, that is the trade-off.”

Q I do have to ask, we mentioned reasonable prices. In terms of pricing, Josh said that pricing is both an art and a science, and the science is picking the price, and the art is knowing the five percent to stretch on. How do you assess your own price sensitivity today, Jeff? I love this question.

A It's a really hard topic. You know, we like to say we don't mind paying high prices for great companies. And I think that has been the mantra in Silicon Valley. And when you get it right, I know Glenn made this point when you chatted with him. When you get it right, the great companies wildly exceed your expectations. I remember, you know, GGB was an early investor in Alibaba Group, and back in 2003, the two hundred million dollar valuation. And I remember when I joined GGB in 2008, I was chatting with an investor here in the U.S. who was just mystified that Alibaba was now worth several billion dollars. I think privately at the time, it was worth 10 or twelve billion. You know, and he just kind of said, well, how much room does it have to run from there? Well, of course, today, Alibaba is a five hundred billion dollar company. And so when you get it right, whether it's an Uber or a Facebook or an Alibaba or a Tencent or a JD, when you get it right, they run and they wildly exceed your expectations. And I think everyone in the venture community has learned that if you pay up for great companies and great founders, when you get it right, it can produce exceptional returns. So it creates this really difficult dynamic where it's really hard to pencil out the valuation using any conventional math For many of these rounds, particularly in kind of the C and D rounds, when companies a…

AI assessment note: “we like to say we don't mind paying high prices for great companies.”

Q Wayne Chang at Crashlytics on the show previously, and he actually said, That a VP of talent or a head of people, head of hiring, whatever we want to call that, should be your first hire because of the infrastructure benefits it provides over time. Would you agree with that? And how do you think about that VP of people, talent position, and the right time to really implement it?

A Well, this is something I'm, I'm pretty passionate about having been a founder and an operator. I agree. I wrote a blog post a couple of years ago called The People Conundrum, and I made the point that founders send so much I'm recruiting VPs of engineering, VPs of product, VPs of sales, VPs of marketing, because they view those functions as mission critical. And yet the people and talent function is what is going to build the culture and the organization within your company. And very often founders will wait until they have a hundred or 200 employees to go hire for that role. And I agree. I would, you know, if I were starting a company tomorrow, a VP of people would be one of my first five or 10 hires because I could delegate so much of, or not delegate, but I could rely on somebody who is senior in that role and To help me put the right infrastructure in place, the right culture in place, the right hiring processes, help me hire better people and make them happier in the roles that they're in. I just think it's such a mission critical hiring. It's a missed opportunity for a lot of companies. Having said that, it's a really hard hire to make. You know, there isn't as much of a career path in Silicon Valley for super successful VPs of people or VPs of talent. If you look at well-known folks in those roles like Lazlo Bach, who ran people and talented Google and now has a startup…

AI assessment note: “a VP of people would be one of my first five or 10 hires”

Q No, absolutely. And I do love that kind of, if all the stars align, what does it look like? Can I ask, have there been Specific moments for you that's maybe changed the way you think on price and your relationship to price sensitivity.

A We are all a collection of our hits and our misses in venture capital. One of the hardest things for me to get my head around when I went from being an operator to an investor was the idea of this very hits-driven business, this idea of batting, you know, for slugging average, not batting average. I'll give you an example. We invested in Didi in China at a relatively Low valuation, but at the time, it looked like an exceedingly high valuation for where the company was, certainly from a revenue standpoint, but my partner, Jishun, did an amazing job of talking to the partnership and saying, guys, if we get this right, and DB changes the way people use transportation in China, I think this can be a hundred billion dollar company, which at the time, I think it was valued at two billion. And that's just an exceptional train of thought to have for a company that's literally generating maybe a hundred million dollars in revenue. Well, fast forward today, it's probably been four or five years. Didi has five hundred and fifty million users, over thirty million drivers, and has just fundamentally changed the transportation landscape in China and is now doing so outside of China. So there are these anecdotal moments and these companies that we've been able to back. Didi's one. Xiaomi is one. Airbnb is one. I think, you know, Opendoor has the chance to be one. Square was one. Where you sor…

AI assessment note: “I'll give you an example. We invested in Didi in China”

Q Absolutely, and I totally agree with you in terms of those hard conversations. Remaining on the reserve allocation question, obviously we've got four different GGV offices and multiple different partners. In terms of kind of competing for those reserve dollars, so to speak, in the pool, what does that reinvestment decision-making process look like for you internally, and how does that Process play out?

A It's a great question. I think every firm, you know, has their own model. So for us, when we make an initial investment in the company, we put a reserve behind that. And every partner, you know, there's usually one or two partners that are working on a deal together. They'll make a decision and say, if we're going to invest a million in front, we'll put a reserve behind that. And then over time, we make a judgment call as to how to allocate that reserve pool of capital based on the performance of the company. So I think one of the things that's really, really hard to do is to have a high level of trust among the partners within a firm. We have six Six GPs in our firm, three in the US and three in China, but to have a high level of trust that you will make the right decisions about which companies to put the reserve capital behind, because you're going to have some companies that take longer to hit their stride and really hit their inflection curve, and they need capital and support along the way to get there, and you'll have others that just sprint right out of the gate and are rocket ships, and your tendency is to put all of your reserve capital behind those rocket ships, but you've got some other companies that might just take longer, but can be really, really successful outcomes and drive huge returns, and you want to make sure there's Reserve capital for those companies as …

AI assessment note: “when we make an initial investment in the company, we put a reserve behind that.”

Q Listen, I always welcome a non-common one, so that's fantastic. This is very unfair of me to ask, but I have to while I have the chance. I've just joined my first board. What advice would you have for me, having both been an operator, an investor, and having sat on boards for the last 11 years?

A It's a great question. I guess I'd give a couple thoughts. One, I would talk to the CEO who has brought you onto the board. And ask what his or her expectations are of you. What role would he or she like you to play? Where are specific areas that you can add value? What roles do the other board members play? And how can you be complimentary to them? So one is, you know, we sort of assume that quote unquote board member is the same in every company. And the reality is different board members can play different roles as part of the board. So that'd be one. The second would be to spend time outside of the board meeting. I think board meetings are fantastic. They're a terrific chance for CEOs to organize their thoughts and give their teams a chance to, to present and engage with their investors and their board members. But so much of the dialogue that really is beneficial to you as a board member to the CEO happens outside of the board meetings. And so I spend a lot of time outside of board meetings, chatting with founders and CEOs to make sure I'm aligned with what they're trying to do and figure out how we can be most supportive to them.

AI assessment note: “One, I would talk to the CEO who has brought you onto the board.”

Q So what do you know now that you wish you'd known at the beginning of your career in venture back when Glenn gave you that call?

A I think when you first get into venture capital, your tendency is to be looking for relatively safe choices, and every VC I know, particularly those who have switched from the operating world into the venture world, has said, you know, I wish I would have taken more risk, and I think You know, I would say the same thing. There were some things that I looked at early on that went on to be huge outcomes that we passed on because they look too risky. And part of it is you're new in your career. You don't have a lot of credibility or data points to rely on to say, yeah, absolutely. I should take that risk. But I think what you see is experienced venture capitalists and some of the most well-known venture capitalists, Bill Gurley, Doug Leone, Jim Getz, the further along they've got in their career, the more risk they take. And so that would be my mind would be, you know, I would have loved to have taken more risk early.

AI assessment note: “I wish I would have taken more risk”

Q as an investor over the last 10 years, having seen the boom, I'm super interested. We chatted about Josh Koppelman's episode, Before the show. And we asked Josh, which was, how did the boom and bust kind of firsthand experience affect your mindset today as an investor? I'd love to hear how it affected your mindset, having seen that firsthand, and maybe how it's changed how you think today investing.

A Yeah, I think anyone who has gone through, you know, went through the dot-com bubble in 2002 1001, or who went through the crash in 2008 or 2009, you know, has a very distinct view of what that's like. And I'd say there are a couple of things that I walked away with. One, it's totally out of your control, so there's this dynamic in the market that you think is sort of slowly happening, and then it really builds into a crescendo, and it happens, and it just wipes out entire sectors, and industries, and companies, and that's the one thing I remember from 2002 1001, all these amazing companies that we thought were doing well, and well-capitalized, and really well-run, were just decimated, and I look at my own company, you know, we had grown to about a thirty million dollar revenue business, it was a recurring revenue business, In 2000, we lost about half of that revenue when the market cratered because 85% of our customers were tech companies and nobody along the way, nobody on our board, none of our investors, nobody on the management team said, oh gosh, what if there's a massive crash and it wipes out the tech economy and we lose half our revenue? That just never came up. And yet that's exactly what happened. And so it's really hard to prepare for that kind of a shift in the market. And I think anybody who's been through that kind of cycle in the back of their mind has some idea…

AI assessment note: “a couple of things that I walked away with. One, it's totally out of your control”

Q Absolutely, and I totally agree with you in terms of those hard conversations. Remaining on the reserve allocation question, obviously we've got four different GGV offices and multiple different partners. In terms of kind of competing for those reserve dollars, so to speak, in the pool, what does that reinvestment decision-making process look like for you internally, and how does that Process play out?

A It's a great question. I think every firm, you know, has their own model. So for us, when we make an initial investment in the company, we put a reserve behind that. And every partner, you know, there's usually one or two partners that are working on a deal together. They'll make a decision and say, if we're going to invest a million in front, we'll put a reserve behind that. And then over time, we make a judgment call as to how to allocate that reserve pool of capital based on the performance of the company. So I think one of the things that's really, really hard to do is to have a high level of trust among the partners within a firm. We have six Six GPs in our firm, three in the US and three in China, but to have a high level of trust that you will make the right decisions about which companies to put the reserve capital behind, because you're going to have some companies that take longer to hit their stride and really hit their inflection curve, and they need capital and support along the way to get there, and you'll have others that just sprint right out of the gate and are rocket ships, and your tendency is to put all of your reserve capital behind those rocket ships, but you've got some other companies that might just take longer, but can be really, really successful outcomes and drive huge returns, and you want to make sure there's Reserve capital for those companies as …

AI assessment note: “when we make an initial investment in the company, we put a reserve behind that.”

Q So what do you know now that you wish you'd known at the beginning of your career in venture back when Glenn gave you that call?

A I think when you first get into venture capital, your tendency is to be looking for relatively safe choices, and every VC I know, particularly those who have switched from the operating world into the venture world, has said, you know, I wish I would have taken more risk, and I think You know, I would say the same thing. There were some things that I looked at early on that went on to be huge outcomes that we passed on because they look too risky. And part of it is you're new in your career. You don't have a lot of credibility or data points to rely on to say, yeah, absolutely. I should take that risk. But I think what you see is experienced venture capitalists and some of the most well-known venture capitalists, Bill Gurley, Doug Leone, Jim Getz, the further along they've got in their career, the more risk they take. And so that would be my mind would be, you know, I would have loved to have taken more risk early.

AI assessment note: “I would have loved to have taken more risk early.”

Q you for sharing this. I do want to start there today. You mentioned, obviously, your founding there and your entrepreneurial experience. Now with GGV, I know that one element that you experience a lot is maybe the transition from founder to CEO, so I'd love to start on this. Tell me, how do you see this in reality with your companies today, and when does this fundamentally need to occur?

A Well, it's such a hard thing when you're, you know, about 80, probably 80% of the folks that we back are first-time founders. It may even be 90%. But it's a very high percentage. And so almost every company we work with is being run by somebody who's doing it for the first time. And, you know, in the early days of getting a business off the ground, your first five hires, 10 hires, 15 hires, you're doing so much of the work yourself, right? In some cases, you're building the product, you're raising the money, you're hiring all the team members, you're doing so much of the work yourself. And that's really the mode of being a founder. And it's what makes founders exceptional is that ability to sort of one day come up with an idea and build something out of nothing. But there's a moment in time, and I don't really have a perfect data point, but I would say, you know, what I've seen is it usually happens around 50 employees. When a company gets to about 50 employees, maybe 60 or 70, where the founder has to start transitioning into more of a professional manager type role. They need to delegate. They need to hire fantastic people in some cases or in many cases who are better than they are, and they need to start spending their time in a different way. They need to spend more time recruiting. They need to spend more time leading. They need to be spending more time communicating. And …

AI assessment note: “what I've seen is it usually happens around 50 employees”

Q it's always the thesis that you want to concentrate as much capital as possible in those winners. How do you think about reserve allocation with that in mind? I'm wondering if it's different to maybe a Josh who says, hey, every company will always get a second check from us as long as there's next External leads. So how do you think about it? Maybe at the slightly later stage?

A Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, obviously our fund size today, our fund that we're currently managing is 1.9 billion and we're managing 6.2 billion overall. And so at some level we're trying to produce outsized returns, those 10, 20, 30 X type returns, but we're also trying to put money to work on behalf of our LPs. So we, we're kind of balancing both when we think about both our initial check, but we're trying to, you know, get obviously a good ownership stake in a company. But then also the follow-on, and one of the benefits that we pitched to entrepreneurs is we can follow on and finance your company throughout the life cycle of the company, and I'll give you a great example. One of our largest investments today is a seventy-five million dollar investment. We started out with an eight million dollar investment of a hundred free in the series B. Today, that company is worth over eight and a half billion dollars, and so we've continued to support the company, we've continued to invest in the company, and it's going to produce a fantastic return for our LPs, But, you know, part of our pitch to entrepreneurs is we not only can follow on the initial check, but we have the ability to support you down the road with additional capital. We can lead rounds. We can participate pro rata because our LPs would like to see us put the most amount of money that we possibly can behind our…

AI assessment note: “our LPs would like to see us put the most amount of money that we possibly can behind our winners”

Q Not at all. Listen, I would love, though, to start with a little bit about you. So tell me, Jeff, it's a very, very strange and wonderful world in many ways, but how did you make your way into the world of venture and come to be a GP at GGV today?

A Well, I didn't follow a sort of traditional career path. I grew up in Seattle. My dad was an entrepreneur, and I grew up in an era in Seattle where a lot of folks were entrepreneurs. It was, you know, back in the day before we had Microsoft, before we had Amazon, very grassroots companies that really were part of the scene in Washington State, and I then went to college, Dartmouth College on the East Coast, and then moved back to the West Coast in 1995, which turned out to be amazing timing. I mean, I landed in Silicon Valley, you know, right as the Internet was starting to take off, and I worked at PWC, I was just a consulting firm for three years. I spent half my time in Hong Kong and half my time in the U S, which was just an amazing experience. My first time in Asia in 1995 and 1996. And then, you know, as the internet was starting to take off, Amazon had gone public, Netscape had gone public. And I just had this burning urge to get out of the sort of corporate world and join the startup world. And so I, in 1997, when I was 25 years old, I started my first company and that was a company called Quantum Shift. And, uh, really started it with the kind of the marriage of the internet and the telecom spaces, which had also deregulated at the time and ended up in this amazing five-year journey that was interrupted by the dot-com bubble in 1992 and 2000, where we raised, you know,…

AI assessment note: “Well, I didn't follow a sort of traditional career path. I grew up in Seattle.”

Q Not at all. Listen, I would love, though, to start with a little bit about you. So tell me, Jeff, it's a very, very strange and wonderful world in many ways, but how did you make your way into the world of venture and come to be a GP at GGV today?

A Well, I didn't follow a sort of traditional career path. I grew up in Seattle. My dad was an entrepreneur, and I grew up in an era in Seattle where a lot of folks were entrepreneurs. It was, you know, back in the day before we had Microsoft, before we had Amazon, very grassroots companies that really were part of the scene in Washington State, and I then went to college, Dartmouth College on the East Coast, and then moved back to the West Coast in 1995, which turned out to be amazing timing. I mean, I landed in Silicon Valley, you know, right as the Internet was starting to take off, and I worked at PWC, I was just a consulting firm for three years. I spent half my time in Hong Kong and half my time in the U S, which was just an amazing experience. My first time in Asia in 1995 and 1996. And then, you know, as the internet was starting to take off, Amazon had gone public, Netscape had gone public. And I just had this burning urge to get out of the sort of corporate world and join the startup world. And so I, in 1997, when I was 25 years old, I started my first company and that was a company called Quantum Shift. And, uh, really started it with the kind of the marriage of the internet and the telecom spaces, which had also deregulated at the time and ended up in this amazing five-year journey that was interrupted by the dot-com bubble in 1992 and 2000, where we raised, you know,…

AI assessment note: “Well, I didn't follow a sort of traditional career path. I grew up in Seattle.”

Q it's always the thesis that you want to concentrate as much capital as possible in those winners. How do you think about reserve allocation with that in mind? I'm wondering if it's different to maybe a Josh who says, hey, every company will always get a second check from us as long as there's next External leads. So how do you think about it? Maybe at the slightly later stage?

A Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, obviously our fund size today, our fund that we're currently managing is 1.9 billion and we're managing 6.2 billion overall. And so at some level we're trying to produce outsized returns, those 10, 20, 30 X type returns, but we're also trying to put money to work on behalf of our LPs. So we, we're kind of balancing both when we think about both our initial check, but we're trying to, you know, get obviously a good ownership stake in a company. But then also the follow-on, and one of the benefits that we pitched to entrepreneurs is we can follow on and finance your company throughout the life cycle of the company, and I'll give you a great example. One of our largest investments today is a seventy-five million dollar investment. We started out with an eight million dollar investment of a hundred free in the series B. Today, that company is worth over eight and a half billion dollars, and so we've continued to support the company, we've continued to invest in the company, and it's going to produce a fantastic return for our LPs, But, you know, part of our pitch to entrepreneurs is we not only can follow on the initial check, but we have the ability to support you down the road with additional capital. We can lead rounds. We can participate pro rata because our LPs would like to see us put the most amount of money that we possibly can behind our…

AI assessment note: “our LPs would like to see us put the most amount of money that we possibly can behind our winners”