Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 3/5

Fear of missing outliers traps LP capital in underperforming legacy funds

Paul Martino · 20VC: Investing In Sectors That Were Cool 2 Years Ago, What Accel's Facebook Fund Taught a Generation of LPs & Why LPs Need A New Discovery Process with Paul Martino, Founding Partner @ Bullpen Capital · Nov 16, 2016 · at 27:07

Paul Martino, General Partner at Bullpen Capital, critiques institutional LP capital allocation decisions and legacy venture brand advantages.

0:00 / 0:19exact quote · 19.2s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“This has now trained a generation of LPs to be scared to death to cut off funds that aren't performing well, because they could be just around the corner from Facebook. And as a result, a lot of that money that should be going to new and innovative funds gets captured by big funds whose brands continue to get money in spite of performance that's not great.”

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 Paul Martino

Assertion Partly supported
Accel's returns were not top-tier prior to its Facebook investment
“Excel's returns prior to the Facebook fund weren't the best in the industry, and so some analyst types in the LP community were like, well, you know, should I stay in Excel or not?”
Paul Martino Nov 16, 2016 ▶ 26:49 20VC: Investing In Sectors That Were Cool 2 Years Ago, What Accel's Facebook Fund Taught a Generation of LPs & Why LPs Need A New Discovery Process with Paul Martino, Founding Partner @ Bullpen Capital
Insight
VCs relying on gut instinct miss breakout companies like FanDuel
“If you're not looking at the spreadsheet and only looking at kind of these softer, subjective, gut-oriented factors, you're going to miss FanDuel. You're going to miss Namely. You're going to miss Ipsy. You're going to miss some of the absolute best performing…”
Paul Martino Nov 16, 2016 ▶ 14:50 20VC: Investing In Sectors That Were Cool 2 Years Ago, What Accel's Facebook Fund Taught a Generation of LPs & Why LPs Need A New Discovery Process with Paul Martino, Founding Partner @ Bullpen Capital
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Seed investors categorically refuse internal bridge funding for portfolio companies
“And it turns out many seed investors, if you ask them, if they come on your show and say, hey, seed investor, do you inside bridge your companies? Almost every one of them is going to tell you categorically, no, that's something we don't do.”
Paul Martino Nov 16, 2016 ▶ 19:01 20VC: Investing In Sectors That Were Cool 2 Years Ago, What Accel's Facebook Fund Taught a Generation of LPs & Why LPs Need A New Discovery Process with Paul Martino, Founding Partner @ Bullpen Capital
Opinion
Venture capitalists fail to recognize disruption within their own industry
“It is amazing that for a group of people that fund disruption to be so oblivious to disruption happening to their own business, it is It has been fascinating to me to see people who fund disruption, not understand that an iceberg hit this business over the las…”
Paul Martino Nov 16, 2016 ▶ 19:43 20VC: Investing In Sectors That Were Cool 2 Years Ago, What Accel's Facebook Fund Taught a Generation of LPs & Why LPs Need A New Discovery Process with Paul Martino, Founding Partner @ Bullpen Capital
Insight
Targeting older incubator cohorts yields superior venture deal flow
“What if we said, let's go look at not what the cool kids are in YC's graduating class, but let's go look at those companies that have great metrics from three classes ago that nobody's paying attention to. You know, we sat down with some of the incubators, for…”
Paul Martino Nov 16, 2016 ▶ 20:23 20VC: Investing In Sectors That Were Cool 2 Years Ago, What Accel's Facebook Fund Taught a Generation of LPs & Why LPs Need A New Discovery Process with Paul Martino, Founding Partner @ Bullpen Capital
Opinion
Josh Koppelman's seed model was venture's most innovative move in 60 years
“Josh truly innovated, and his For lack of a better word, early stage option buying model. I don't know exactly the right phrase to use it, but to basically say, I'm going to let these companies fail fast and write small checks to them. It was perhaps the singl…”
Paul Martino Nov 16, 2016 ▶ 29:01 20VC: Investing In Sectors That Were Cool 2 Years Ago, What Accel's Facebook Fund Taught a Generation of LPs & Why LPs Need A New Discovery Process with Paul Martino, Founding Partner @ Bullpen Capital
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.