Aydin Senkut, founder of Felicis Ventures, discusses his anti-portfolio misses during a quick-fire segment on 20VC with Harry Stebbings.
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“Passed on Uber, passed on Airbnb, passed on Pinterest.”
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More from Aydin Senkut
Insight
Senkut: Optimizing for unlimited upside outweighs initial valuation and ownership constraints
“I think what we decided as a firm is the only thing that matters for us is to be in the world's best companies, because out of all the things that you can optimize for unlimited upside is the single most important one, right?”
Aydin SenkutMay 27, 2022▶ 9:25Aydin Senkut: How I Scaled from a $4M Angel Fund to $900M AUM | 20VC #890 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Small seed funds face major headwinds as small M&A dries up
“More and more we're seeing the bigger companies, you know, focusing on only on large M&A and companies' success driven more like either they get to a scale where they can go public but there is not as much glory in kind of smaller successes. So I think there's…”
Aydin SenkutApr 11, 2016▶ 12:1620VC: Felicis' Aydin Senkut on Scaling Felicis From $4m to $120m, Doing Venture Differently and Why Being A VC Is Like A Jamaican Bobsled Team!
AssertionNot checkable as stated
High entry valuations did not correlate with Felicis' exit outcomes
“So we have a very, very good data set, and what we found is that at least half of these companies, we were borderline, ah, about coming in because they were very expensive deals. But that had nothing to do with the eventual outcome.”
Aydin SenkutApr 11, 2016▶ 15:5020VC: Felicis' Aydin Senkut on Scaling Felicis From $4m to $120m, Doing Venture Differently and Why Being A VC Is Like A Jamaican Bobsled Team!
AssertionContradicted
Only Google has an AI dataset comparable to Diffbot
“I think the only other company in the world that has that kind of data set is Google.”
Aydin SenkutApr 11, 2016▶ 28:2220VC: Felicis' Aydin Senkut on Scaling Felicis From $4m to $120m, Doing Venture Differently and Why Being A VC Is Like A Jamaican Bobsled Team!
Insight
Senkut: The ideal VC fund portfolio size is 40 to 50 companies
“I really do think that in venture, the ideal size is around 40, 50 companies and not 20.”
Aydin SenkutMay 27, 2022▶ 14:41Aydin Senkut: How I Scaled from a $4M Angel Fund to $900M AUM | 20VC #890 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
AssertionPartly supported
Senkut: Crossover funds focus 99% of their investments on enterprise software
“All these people have been 99% focused on enterprise software. So any other vertical, you don't have as much impact because they're not investing in everything. They're primarily investing in enterprise software, and it might grow from there.”
Aydin SenkutMay 27, 2022▶ 22:00Aydin Senkut: How I Scaled from a $4M Angel Fund to $900M AUM | 20VC #890 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
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