BoxGroup

“I think two years ago we were saying like, 30 to 40% of the companies we see talk about AI or are oriented around AI. Last year was like 90, and this year it's a 170%. You don't meet non AI companies right now.”

“We've invested in quite a few direct-to-consumer brands, like Warby and Harry's, and I think our expertise in Sweet Spot is really where companies do go heavy on DTC in the beginning and so I'm passing for now”

“Box Group here in New York GELT VC with Jake. The Full Tilt Capital, the managing partner there is Anthony Pompliano, he's an army veteran. Tim Ferriss, Howard Lindzen, and a few other angels as well.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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…”

“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.”

“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.”

“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,…”

“We will do an uncap safe. We will catalyze an uncap safe.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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…”

“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…”

“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 …”

“To date, Eric has raised over three hundred and ninety million dollars for the company from some of the best, including Thrive, Stripe, Founders Fund, Code Two, and Box Group, to name a few.”

“One of the leading seed-focused firms of the last decade, with a portfolio including the likes of Airtable, Glossier, Pillpack, Plaid, and many more incredible companies.”

“I have a hundred plus million dollars that I manage.”

“We've been doing this a long time, and so I think today we have probably over 300 active companies in the portfolio.”

“Yeah, there'll be 80 to a hundred companies in a fund.”

“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.”

“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…”

“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…”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“We don't sell.”

“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…”

“We don't sit on boards.”

“Ramp is a company that we've been fortunate enough to invest in since the seed round.”

“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.”

“Recently, they raised their first external capital with two separate vehicles totaling over a hundred and sixty million dollars.”

“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…”

“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.”

“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…”

“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…”

“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…”

“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.”

“And the way that we invest, we, you know, invest in about 40 companies a year.”

“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.”