Vasavada: Top VC Backing Can Attract Employees Seeking Quick Exits
Samir Vasavada · Samir Vasavada: The Real Story of Vise: The Regrets, Mistakes and Mis-Hires | E1171 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Jun 28, 2024 · at 39:23
Samir Vasavada is the co-founder and CEO of asset management platform Vise. He discusses the hidden drawbacks of raising capital from top venture firms like Sequoia Capital and Founders Fund.
0:00 / 1:07exact quote · 67.2s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“So it's a double-edged sword. And the reason why it's a double-edged sword is because on one hand, you've got all this great credibility by association. You have all of this social capital and that social capital allows you to hire people. It allows you to get great customers. It allows you to get in the press. It allows you to raise money from other investors. Everyone pattern matches to What is Sequoia? What is Founders Fund? What are these prominent investors doing? The reason why it's a double-edged sword is a lot of people see it as their, you know, especially prospective employees, see it as their get-rich-quick. You know, like, this company's a racket ship. They raised all this money from Sequoia. I'm gonna go join, and it's gonna work, and I'm gonna be, it's gonna be awesome, right? And it's an attractor for talent. And oftentimes, this is the wrong talent for your business and you need to be Extra mindful of, is this person joining my company because of my company and the mission and, you know, the, you know, some irrational motivator as to why they're going to be really successful here, or are they joining my company because they see it as a quick path to an exit because Sequoia backed it.”
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 Samir Vasavada
Vasavada: Vise Leadership Meetings Were Consumed by DEI and Infrastructure
“When we went into our leadership meetings, we weren't talking about we weren't talking about that. We were talking about making infrastructure decisions that will matter in 2026 and rewriting our code to better position ourselves four or five years down the li…”
Vasavada: Big Tech Executives Lack Product-Market Fit Experience
“None of these people had to go out and find product market fit. They came into companies where there was already product market fit, and they just had to operate their little part of that company, or big part of that company, where they were kind of keeping it…”
Vasavada: 99% of Startup Advice Given to Founders Is Bad
“You don't get enough advice, and then you start getting capital, and you have stakeholders, and you get too much advice, and the problem is a lot of this advice is either bad advice, 99% of the advice is bad advice, and then the rest of the advice is contradic…”
Vasavada: Raising $130M in 18 Months Was Bad for Vise
“So we raised something like a 120, hundred and thirty million dollars in an 18 month period. And that was a bad thing.”
Vasavada: Concentrating Board Ownership in One VC Suppresses Healthy Debate
“You want multiple voices in the boardroom, and I think the challenge is when you have One investor that owns 30% of the company and, you know, has piled in, you know, close to fifty million bucks, then you're going to have that investor's perspective as, you k…”