Manu Kumar

“For a lot of these multi-stage firms, the capital that they put into a company in the early stages is just an option value. And if it's just an option value, then if things don't go well, that company is going to have an incredibly difficult time at raising ca…”

“In a lot of cases, I feel that some of the multi-stage firms coming in and investing at the seed stage is not a function of a calculated strategy, but more of essentially providing a safe playground and training wheels for some of the new folks who are there.”

“First my investment period is five years. So I only go out to market with a new fund every five years and not every two to three years.”

“My initial range used to be between 400 to 600 K as an initial investment. I would say I'm probably closer to the higher end of that range today than I was earlier, but I've still tried to keep it very stable and disciplined.”

“I have absolutely zero fear of missing out, and so if there's a company that is got multiple term sheets or offers even at the pre-seed stage and stuff like, I'm not going to be Chasing that deal and trying to move up in valuation in order to win that deal.”

“So if I'm only making three or four new investments in a year, it's an incredibly tight filter to begin with.”

“And I think that experience of having been a solo founder is critical for me today being a solo GP, because I have to be comfortable in making a judgment call, effectively trusting my gut in a lot of cases.”

“And so now I, when I'm talking to companies that I would invest in, I'm totally comfortable with them having remote teams. And in fact, I advocate that they should have remote teams.”

“Being naive when you're starting something is often a good thing. Because otherwise you wouldn't take the same steps that you did.”

“The mega funding rounds, the hundreds of millions of dollars coming into companies in the late stage. I think in a lot of cases, those lead to unhealthy companies”

“Manu and I were having lunch one day and he said, you know, I have this problem, this stock certificate problem. I would love for a company to exist to solve it. If you'll start the company, I'll invest in it.”

“Most of the funds were trying to do investments that were three to four million dollars. They were not taking technology risk. A lot of the new people on Sand Hill at that time were not coming from a startup or an operating background.”

“So the first fund was about six and six and a quarter million which is super tiny as venture funds go.”

“And that's probably what I spend most of my time on with my existing portfolio companies.”

“I actually kind of coined the pre-seed term at one point in, I think in 2013, 2014 because I saw the seed market kind of evolving where it was becoming a two million to three million dollar round, and I was like, wait, these things are changing, and so there h…”

“So my sweet spot is usually around 400 to 500,000 as an initial investment. But then I will go as high as about four million dollars into each company. So I do, I'll do 400 to 500,000 into the pre-seed. I might do 750 or a million into the seed, and then anoth…”

“And I walk away from deals all day long based on price and structure, so I also don't do convertible notes.”

“My advice to them is to actually go for a slightly lower valuation, because whatever valuation they take is setting the bar for their next round of financing, and it's also setting the bar for what kind of exit they can have. And so trying to optimize that, I …”

“EShares is one of my portfolio companies. And in fact, it's a company that I co-founded. And in the case of that company I was talking with Henry Ward, who's, who's my co-founder in that company about his previous company that he was working on. And I just rea…”

“I think when I got into it with a thirty-year timeline.”

“I actually don't use a sector strategy. For me, it's really about, like, give me radically new technology and radically new market, and then let's talk about it.”