The Ledger
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Fralic: Increasing Early-Stage VC Ownership Post-Initial Round Is Way Harder
“I think it's way harder for everything you mentioned, and there's so much more capital that's around so many more firms. Again, like, I think Roblox was unique in being under the radar company for so long, whereas anything that's got traction and visibility wi…”
Fralic in 2021: The SPAC boom will end badly
“I think it'll go too far. You know, the SPAC Invasion of the SPACs. I think some of that will end badly. It's too much too quick, I believe, but in general, more public companies, more capital, more funds is good for us, and more importantly, for our companies…”
First Round passed on Roblox in 2008 at a $10M valuation
“We decided not to invest in January of 2008. A lot of it was based on the price. Your listeners might laugh, but a ten million dollar valuation seemed outrageous, was way out of our normal range back then, and the game really looked raw.”
First Round passed on Twitter over a $20M valuation limit
“Yeah, I think we might have been fortunate back in those days to have made a really poor investment decision, missed one of our biggest of all time, with Twitter. When we were all early users, we had an opportunity to invest at first round, and didn't, primari…”
First Round retained over 5% ownership in Roblox at direct listing
“Our initial investment was 500 K Roblox or so, and that was probably on the high end of an average investment. And we were starting to think about our best companies and opportunities. Where could we put more capital to work? How could we deploy more into the …”
Fralic: I did not share Baszucki's conviction on Roblox's eventual scale
“And to be honest, I didn't share that conviction all the time. I didn't think it could be as big as it is now, but I think he always did.”
First Round passed on Etsy due to Fralic's misplaced eBay confidence
“We had the opportunity to look at Etsy, and I was almost dismissive, or I just thought of it as this little niche of handmade goods or something, and I think I was jaded. I mean, I thought I knew so much from eBay that it kind of turned me off to the whole cat…”
Chris Fralic: First Round took secondary liquidity in Uber and Roblox early
“If you look at our investments in our two most notable returns with Uber and with Roblox, we had taken some capital off the table along the way at various points, Which made sense and drove great returns relative to that investment, and yet what was left was s…”
Fralic: Only a small percentage of startup board members truly add value
“If I look at all the board members I've seen in action, the number that are really adding value, really trusted partners of the CEO are in a small percentage. I think probably the, maybe the bulk are mostly harmless, or sometimes helpful, and they write checks…”
Xbox forced Roblox to prioritize game quality over quantity at launch
“In order to do that, they couldn't just open up all the millions of games that they have on Roblox that can look like YouTube in terms of almost too much choice, and Microsoft and Xbox forced them to have a very limited small number of games that were on that …”
Fralic: First Round invested $3M in Roblox at a $40M valuation
“We invested at about an eleven million dollar valuation when we first came in, and then we led around And put in about three million dollars at what was around a forty million dollar valuation, which was very high, but we could see the traction in the revenue,…”
First Round Capital's Second Fund Included Uber, Square, and Roblox
“It turns out that fund had Uber and Square and Roblox in it.”
Fralic: Altos Ventures owned ~24% of Roblox at its public debut
“When Roblox went public, Altos owned about 24% of the company”