The Ledger
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Tisch: VCs who overpaid deserve no sympathy; valuation is their problem
“The valuation to me is the investor's problem. And I just don't like, I don't believe that my sympathy sits for all the VCs that overpaid on things that they did. Like, everybody could, again, back to this, like, you could have said no. If you thought somethin…”
Tisch: The market has too many companies, diluting top startup talent
“I think there are too many companies. So I think the idea that every company is going to succeed and every company deserves to be funded through a series C, that's a risk to me. So there's a massive dilution of talent in our industry in that when everybody sta…”
Venture capital investors do not add value to startups
“When entrepreneurs in a meeting ask us, you know, what value do we add? My initial response is always, investors don't add value, and that's what we'll promise you.”
Tisch: BoxGroup forbids team members from 'throwing grenades' on deals
“We structurally push our group to not allow that. We have vocabulary internally. We say, like, throwing a grenade. You're not allowed to throw a grenade on some deal. It doesn't help.”
Tisch: Any BoxGroup team member can individually approve an investment
“So we're a team of nine. Everyone on our team can say yes in an individual meeting. We don't need, we don't vote. We don't try to find groupthink.”
Tisch: VCs should judge price at the portfolio level, not per deal
“I think it is important to be price aware on a portfolio basis, and I don't think on a deal-by-deal basis, price is a determinant of making a decision. Pretty simple. If you love a company and you want to invest, and the deal is what the deal is, you make a de…”
Tisch: Never pass on a great seed deal due to high valuation
“Don't pass on a deal because it's overpriced. If it's going to be a great company, that's the cheapest it will ever be. So you should probably invest.”
Tisch: Outlier returns solve VC fund economics regardless of entry valuation
“The best companies will make all the math work, no matter what your check size, no matter what your entry point. And obviously that sort of stops at some scale, but if you are an early investor in one of the sort of unique once in a decade, once every five yea…”
Tisch: Founders prefer 'favorite' VCs over transactional 'best' VCs
“I think best is this, what did they do? What, like, name the things that they did for you. Favorite is, I would work with them in a heartbeat because I like them, and they are a friend. They are somebody that we go to when we want to talk to an investor withou…”
Tisch: BoxGroup will invest in and catalyze uncapped SAFEs
“We will do an uncap safe. We will catalyze an uncap safe.”
BoxGroup will make check-size exceptions to fund math for promising startups
“We truly hold to the idea that we want to invest in companies we're excited about, and if what we're able to invest is not in perfect alignment with the math, we're willing and able to make exceptions.”
Tisch: VCs need price discipline on a portfolio level, not per deal
“It is important to be price aware on a portfolio basis, and I don't think on a deal-by-deal basis, price is a determinant of making a decision. Pretty simple. If you love a company, and you want to invest, and the deal is what the deal is, you make a decision …”
Tisch: BoxGroup will not lead seed or Series A rounds
“We don't want to lead seed rounds. We don't want to lead series A rounds. We want to be sort of second or third biggest check on a cap table.”
Tisch: Seed VCs can only build ownership if founders prioritize them
“Do I think the only way to buy up in a company is to start by investing in the company? Yes. And the only way to buy up in a company is if you are worthwhile of the founder prioritizing you going forward.”
Tisch: Seed rounds should prioritize collaboration over ownership targets and board seats
“Our view is that seed should be a collaborative experience for both The founders and the investors in the sense of a founder wants to surround themselves with a group of people that can ideally create the right infrastructure for them to lean on as they go abo…”
BoxGroup recently closed a $212 million early-stage venture capital fund
“We are a, as of recently we just closed our sixth fund, so it's a two hundred and twelve million dollar early stage fund.”
Tisch: BoxGroup refuses to compete directly with multi-stage VC firms
“No, I, we don't try to compete. I think if we tried to compete, we would lose our ability to work well with others. And I don't think our value proposition is to say, pick us instead of somebody.”
Tisch: BoxGroup has repeatedly missed great deals in their cold inbox
“If I looked back at the quality deals that showed up in our inbox that we missed in that, like, and sometimes we see it a year later and it comes through a warm source and we're like, oh my God, it was sitting there. Like, this is an interesting deal. Or like,…”
Tisch: BoxGroup will not expand into leading Series A rounds
“We are we are going to run whether you like it or not, the same model for a long time. And I think what that does is it aligns us with founders who are also going to build their business for a long time. We are consistent. We're not going to suddenly be a Seri…”
Tisch: BoxGroup wrote Ro's entire pre-seed round and followed through growth
“And so if we look at Rowe, the men's health company that just raised a big growth round, we backed Zach Z in the pre-seed. We did that alone. We wrote a check in a round by ourselves. We've been backing that company from the pre-seed all the way up through thi…”
Tisch: BoxGroup invested in unannounced payments startup Catch
“And then there's another company that we invested in that hasn't announced yet, but it's called Catch. It's a sort of payment product.”
Tisch: BoxGroup aims for 80 to 100 companies per fund
“Yeah, there'll be 80 to a hundred companies in a fund.”
Tisch: BoxGroup requires only one partner advocate to make an investment
“What it means is in a given deal, somebody has to want to do the deal, and our job is to help that person get to their conviction as best as we can, and so what is it that we can do to help them Do better with how they're thinking about it. You know, sometimes…”
Tisch: BoxGroup passed on investing in Stitch and Check
“There's a company that we looked at called Stitch, which just raised a nice round. There's a company we looked at called Check, which just raised a nice round.”
BoxGroup leads pre-seed rounds and co-invests in seed rounds
“In a traditional seed round, we're happy to be the second, third biggest check on a cap table. You know, pre-seed round, we're happy to lead it.”
Tisch: VC market pricing is simply whatever an investor says yes to
“Everybody can ask for whatever they want, and everybody can say yes or no. That's the way this business works. If somebody says yes, that's the price.”
Tisch: BoxGroup targets seed checks between $500,000 and $1 million
“So we write a 500 K, 750 K million dollar check. We do that as the core of our business. It is a target in the majority of companies that we're able to work with.”
Tisch: BoxGroup has invested in Ramp since its seed round
“Ramp is a company that we've been fortunate enough to invest in since the seed round.”
Tisch: BoxGroup currently manages over $100 million in capital
“I have a hundred plus million dollars that I manage.”
Tisch: BoxGroup holds over 300 active portfolio companies
“We've been doing this a long time, and so I think today we have probably over 300 active companies in the portfolio.”
Tisch: BoxGroup invests $200K-$500K per startup and rarely leads seed rounds
“And so our check size typically ranges from basically 200,000 to 500,000. We're typically not the lead of a traditional seed round. We will lead a pre-seed round.”
Tisch: BoxGroup missed follow-on opportunities due to limited capital
“I think at the same time, when we look back at the past 10 years, I think we've just left a lot of opportunities on the table. So as we found great companies, the ability to continue to follow on and increase our check size and be a bigger partner to those fou…”
BoxGroup tracks all missed seed deals funded by respected firms
“We keep a list of everything that we've either looked at or didn't have an opportunity to see that gets funded by a firm that we have respect for because we assume that somebody sees something in it.”
BoxGroup raised over $160 million across two first external vehicles
“Recently, they raised their first external capital with two separate vehicles totaling over a hundred and sixty million dollars.”
Box Group invests in approximately 40 companies per year
“And the way that we invest, we, you know, invest in about 40 companies a year.”