Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 3/5

Giant VC Funds Cannot Be Deeply Invested in Seed Startups

Mo Koyfman · Mo Koyfman: The Secret to Winning in Venture; Why Small Funds Outperform Large Funds | 20VC #915 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Aug 8, 2022 · at 53:09

Mo Koyfman, founder of Shine Capital, explains why mega-funds offering seed and pre-seed checks are structurally incapable of devoting serious attention to early-stage founders.

0:00 / 0:13exact quote · 13.3s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“When you take money from a very big firm, definitionally at the early stage, definitionally, they can only be so invested in your success because it is a tiny amount of overall capital for the firm.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Mo Koyfman

Opinion
VCs Who Claim to Always Exercise Pro-Rata Rights Are Lying
“Anybody that says they do pro rata always, I think, is lying. I just, I don't believe that to be the case, and I've seen enough, I've been in venture long enough to know that that's total bullshit.”
Mo Koyfman Aug 8, 2022 ▶ 28:08 Mo Koyfman: The Secret to Winning in Venture; Why Small Funds Outperform Large Funds | 20VC #915 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Larger Early-Stage Venture Funds Consistently Yield Lower Returns Over Time
“Larger early stage funds always lead to lesser returns over time.”
Mo Koyfman Aug 8, 2022 ▶ 18:11 Mo Koyfman: The Secret to Winning in Venture; Why Small Funds Outperform Large Funds | 20VC #915 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Investors Prefer Re-Backing Founders Who Shut Down Failing Startups Gracefully
“The investors are That are in your cap table today are infinitely more likely to back you again, watching you make that kind of mature decision as an entrepreneur, rather than watching you piss that money down the drain over the next two years, and actually, i…”
Mo Koyfman Aug 8, 2022 ▶ 32:17 Mo Koyfman: The Secret to Winning in Venture; Why Small Funds Outperform Large Funds | 20VC #915 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Not checkable as stated
The VC Industry Faces a Reckoning With Many Firms Shutting Down
“I think there will be a lot of folks that go away in this cycle. I watched it in the last go round. You know, Spark and USV and all these firms didn't exist before the last cycle. And they really made their names coming out of the O eight crisis. And on the ot…”
Mo Koyfman Aug 8, 2022 ▶ 58:52 Mo Koyfman: The Secret to Winning in Venture; Why Small Funds Outperform Large Funds | 20VC #915 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Supported
Bijan Sabet's Twitter Series B Catapulted Spark Capital Into Top Tier
“As I was joining Spark, Bijan Sabat at Spark led Twitter series B and that investment catapulted us into the upper echelon of VC firms.”
Mo Koyfman Aug 8, 2022 ▶ 6:25 Mo Koyfman: The Secret to Winning in Venture; Why Small Funds Outperform Large Funds | 20VC #915 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Durable VC Firms Require Clear Leadership Rather Than Equal Partnerships
“And while both can certainly work and there are certain, and there are notable exceptions here, like union square ventures, for instance, which works very well as a partnership structure, the more durable firms in my experience often have very clear leadership…”
Mo Koyfman Aug 8, 2022 ▶ 9:51 Mo Koyfman: The Secret to Winning in Venture; Why Small Funds Outperform Large Funds | 20VC #915 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 1,200 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.