Mike Hirshland, co-founder of Resolute Ventures, discusses seed investing risks on 20VC, explaining why Resolute is comfortable taking product-market fit risk over metrics.
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“But our view is that, that those early signs of traction really are not very telling about whether they're ultimately going to have meaningful traction and product market fit.”
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More from Mike Hirschland
Insight
Seed-stage investor boards are an unnecessary drag on founder time
“And I think too often having a formalized board, an investor led board during the seed stage brings a lot of the trappings of From the post-series A board dynamic into the seed stage, where there's some degree of formality, there's a fair amount of preparation…”
Mike HirschlandMar 18, 2019▶ 16:5420VC: The Acceptable vs Unacceptable Risks To Take When Seed Investing, Why Loss Ratio Is Not A Consideration & Why Series A Is The Right Time To Establish A Board with Mike Hirshland, Co-Founder @ Resolute Ventures
Opinion
Early seed investing is challenging out of a billion-dollar fund
“The challenge of doing really early stage seed investing out of a billion dollar fund. And a very large platform.”
Mike HirschlandMar 18, 2019▶ 5:4320VC: The Acceptable vs Unacceptable Risks To Take When Seed Investing, Why Loss Ratio Is Not A Consideration & Why Series A Is The Right Time To Establish A Board with Mike Hirshland, Co-Founder @ Resolute Ventures
Disclosure
Resolute Ventures does not consider loss ratio in seed investing
“Quite honestly, we don't think about loss ratio, which I suppose is in some that might be the answer that it's less important to us and is likely going to be higher. Honestly, when those conversations come up with LPs, I tend to be very direct in that we reall…”
Mike HirschlandMar 18, 2019▶ 9:1420VC: The Acceptable vs Unacceptable Risks To Take When Seed Investing, Why Loss Ratio Is Not A Consideration & Why Series A Is The Right Time To Establish A Board with Mike Hirshland, Co-Founder @ Resolute Ventures
Insight
Sub-$100M seed funds need 4-7 big wins with 10% ownership
“You can only lose one times your money, so, you know, losses are limited, and really, for a seed fund, for a sub-hundred-million-dollar seed fund, if you end up having a handful of companies, four, five, six, seven, that truly are venture-scale returns in the …”
Mike HirschlandMar 18, 2019▶ 9:4320VC: The Acceptable vs Unacceptable Risks To Take When Seed Investing, Why Loss Ratio Is Not A Consideration & Why Series A Is The Right Time To Establish A Board with Mike Hirshland, Co-Founder @ Resolute Ventures
Insight
True VC support requires direct feedback, not superficial founder-friendliness
“There's a difference between, you know, the phrase that's become tossed about a lot being quote founder friendly on the one hand, which means that you're always going to be yielding to the founder and supporting what they want and want to do versus having, you…”
Mike HirschlandMar 18, 2019▶ 14:4820VC: The Acceptable vs Unacceptable Risks To Take When Seed Investing, Why Loss Ratio Is Not A Consideration & Why Series A Is The Right Time To Establish A Board with Mike Hirshland, Co-Founder @ Resolute Ventures
Opinion
Very few VCs are actually interested in pre-traction startups
“And too often, everybody says they do all of it, when in fact, they're very Few investors, VCs, who really are interested in pretraction, So I think there's just a lot of confusion in the marketplace in terms of who really wants to invest when and clarity arou…”
Mike HirschlandMar 18, 2019▶ 20:3920VC: The Acceptable vs Unacceptable Risks To Take When Seed Investing, Why Loss Ratio Is Not A Consideration & Why Series A Is The Right Time To Establish A Board with Mike Hirshland, Co-Founder @ Resolute Ventures
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