The Ledger
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Anna Khan: Sharing Carry Is the Most Meaningful Validation for Women
“When you hire a female GP, you're telling the rest of the world, I believe in this woman's work so much that I am willing to give more share of my dollars in my pocket to her, and more than that, I believe she is going to bring so much more to this GP pie that…”
Kadavy: Facebook and Google hold a massive data advantage in AI bots
“I absolutely believe that. I think that you look, you just look at this sheer scale of Facebook Messenger and Google specifically. And while I think that others may be able to compete, the scale is, is just so vast.”
Zachary: Wealthy people cluster socially to avoid friends with financial motives
“I just started hanging out with people in approximately the same economic zone because I knew they had no interest in wanting to get any money. I think that's why a lot of times people in the same Socioeconomic zone end up hanging out with one another.”
Zachary wrote a $5 million check to Udacity without a business plan
“And after that, I basically gave him a check for five million dollars within an hour of him presenting at our firm with basically no business plan.”
Anna Khan: Deep Sector Domain Experience Trumps Generalist VC Longevity
“I think the last thing that has really worked for me is just always showing up with more information and saying, I may have only eight years of venture experience, but I know your space so well. I have deep sector experience. And in a lot of ways, I think that…”
Max Gazor advises seed-stage startups to avoid formal boards and decks
“In the very, very early days, we advise against it, especially at the seed stage, because it just doesn't feel like a useful way to spend time for a CEO.”
Max Gazor notes corporate acquirers heavily prioritize co-located startup teams
“Geography is important, making sure that folks are kind of in the same room to the extent possible and, you know, working well and collaboratively. Those are the types of important things that buyers look for, and it's really not emphasized enough, I would say…”
Max Gazor prefers frugal founders over those raising lavish seed rounds
“So I prefer companies and founders that manage to keep burn low, to be resourceful, to kind of live a frugal and efficient lifestyle versus those that raise lots and lots of money in the seed round and kind of Live a little bit richer.”
Gur: Capital is the single biggest value VCs provide to founders
“Again, having, having worked in companies, I realized that, you know, some, we, I think we add value, but you know, 99% of the work is on the founders, but there's true, the biggest value that we add is the money.”
Gur: Many early-stage VCs panic when portfolio companies face turbulence
“I find many investors, especially at the early stage, when things are not going well, it's like turbulence in a plane. They're like the, you know, the person freaking out and yelling, like, we're gonna die.”
CRV frequently funds portfolio startups rejected by outside investors
“At CRV, we tend to come from believing in the founder's First at the time we invest, then that, you know, that investment is mostly a statement of belief in the team, and so if the team is making progress, I find time and time again, honestly, we throw good mo…”
Kadavy: Great consumer tech either mirrors offline behavior or gives superpowers
“Many of the greatest companies we know could fall into one or perhaps two buckets of In what they've enabled for consumers. One is that they have enabled them to behave more as we behave as humans offline... The second is piece of technology that Give someone …”
Investors should avoid capital-intensive startups late in market cycles
“It's made me think about being careful about getting involved in capitally intense projects, that the further on you are in the cycle, the more careful you should be about financing companies that will take lots of rounds of capital.”
Anna Khan: Early-Stage VC Requires Leaps of Faith Over Financial Metrics
“Earlier in my career, I was much more data-driven, but I think what's really evolved over this time is my ability to take a leap of faith based on early signs, whether that's chatter about a product, whether it's a founder that spent time in the industry that …”
Anna Khan: Hiring Female Junior Investors Expands Deal Flow to Women
“Hire great female analysts and associates. You, after hiring them, will realize that you will see more female CEOs pitch you, because through hiring these analysts, you are getting access to networks that you just have no access to.”
Anna Khan: Younger VCs Win Competitive Rounds by Out-Investing Time
“Spending more time with the entrepreneur is one of the main ways, because as I mentioned in sort of our analyst conversation, partners are really busy and they have made a commitment to 10, 12, sometimes 15 other entrepreneurs that they have long-term relation…”
CRV sets follow-on reserves at initial check stage to support founders
“Generally speaking, we allocate reserves at a very early stage for companies and having been in the business for a long time, CRV kind of looks at this as a long-term game. So we try not to play around too much with reserves and we try to give founders a shot …”
CRV heavily fines partners who use phones during founder pitch meetings
“We have a no phone policy where we find ourselves internally and thankfully we've never had to use it. But if you find a CRV partner breaking out his phone during the meeting, there's a very, very hefty fine for that.”
Max Gazor considers recruiting capability the most important founder trait
“And it kind of leads to the number one most important thing that I look for is an ability to recruit.”
Gur: Exceptional CEOs actively treat executive leadership as a learned skill
“It turns out, you know, no one is born a CEO and many young founders. I don't see them applying a growth mindset to sort of understanding what being a CEO means and how that role changes over time. And some of my best CEOs are just maniacal in, in their though…”
Gur: 30% to 50% of startup executive hires fail
“30 to 50%, depending on the company of the executives we hire, are not going to work out, or they're going to work for some period of time, and then, you know, we need to find someone else”
Gur: VCs should support struggling founders because downside is capped at 1x
“When you truly just come at this from like, okay, we can only lose one times our money. Let's focus on just, you know, believing in this team to figure it out. I think magic can happen.”
Gur: Founders must treat company building itself as their core product
“So one of the things I love in being a venture capitalist is once a The company actually becomes the product, in my mind, meaning a lot of the work that we do as VCs, and many VCs will tell their CEOs, you should be spending, you know, 90% of your time on hiri…”
Kadavy: Conversational interfaces are the next wave of consumer technology
“The idea of a non-interface interface or a conversational interface being the next wave in the consumerization of technology is, is quite interesting.”
Kadavy: Bot startups should target high-value vertical niches to compete
“To start with a vertical, ideally a vertical that is you know, very high value to a consumer and build a depth of knowledge or experience there because people will flock to the things that, that work best in those bots.”
Kadavy: Top Midas List Investors Don't Fit Traditional Operator Mold
“And after I went and looked around, I found that many of the best investors out there, you know, if you look at the Midas list, which is one list that's put together that has a lot of extremely talented and successful investors on it, they by no means fit that…”
Zachary: I only have one friend in Silicon Valley venture capital
“I don't have many friends that I hang out with in the venture business here in Silicon Valley. I would say maybe one.”
Zachary deployed only $240 million across his first 23 years in VC
“Up until that point in my career in roughly 23, 22 years, I had invested about two hundred forty million dollars, so I've never been a person just to write a ton of checks and throw darts at a wall and see what happens.”
Zachary initially rejected VC offer thinking it was about country clubs
“Sooner or later, that led up to the year 1995 when someone asked me if I wanted to be in the venture business and I had no idea what that meant. And I kind of thought it was about country clubs and playing tennis. And I initially turned down what the job was b…”