Mark Suster

“I think they'll want to invest less because I think they're going to be trying to like deal with domestic issues. So I think that there's a possibility that we see a downturn coming out of this that, that could shock venture industry.”

“Mark Suster, I give him all the credit in the world. He's been in the game for a long time and upfront. He saw 20, 21 as an insane period. And he strip sailed like majority of his portfolios and his funds. For a very good price. DPI in the pocket. Like I, all …”

“Most markets are winner take most. Number one takes the majority. Number two takes the rest. And number three is a set of steak knives. And If you back three, four or five, you're just not going to make a lot of money. You need extreme success in the category.”

“You often get input from investors who have never done what you've done before. And so it's like, well, meaning smart people saying smart things, but it's not actionable.”

“So you look recently at Anduril, probably the most important company In the private markets behind SpaceX.”

“If I tried to sell you a product on your iPhone, download it and pay 20 dollars a month, It's so hard to get someone to pay 20 dollars a month for anything on their iPhone. If I sell you a 200 dollar piece of hardware, but then you need a 20 dollar a month sub…”

“So, I think VCs just got a little too comfortable that every investment they were gonna do was software only, and I just don't think that's realistic for the future.”

“So, people were paying in twenty-twenty-one 25 times next 12 month revenue, ok? Over the last 10 years, they were paying just under 10 times.”

“But the twenty-year average is six X. And right now, if you're growing at 20%, you're probably trading at Forex.”

“You're already seeing it, you know, we're reading about it, like, almost monthly in the press. Yes, you're gonna see a lot more of it.”

“It's one step worse than that, which is, I know of a company in which the founder embezzled money. Ok, literally stole millions of dollars. In order to not end up in a big legal battle, their VCs ended up settling, and they got all the stock back, but none of …”

“I used to tell people about fundraising, which is lemons ripen early. And what do I mean by that? So if you go ask 30 people for money, five or 10 of them are going to tell you no quickly because no's come quickly and the yes's take months.”

“Put the smallest number on the front of your pitch deck that you're possibly raising.”

“50 to 500 fundamentally changes your strategy. 50 to a hundred, you're still playing in the same ballpark.”

“Institutional money is way more likely to be in fund two and fund three and fund four. Whereas friends and family money's not as likely to repeat.”

“All investors are sheep. End of story. Like, I don't want to pick on LPs, like LPs are no different than VCs. They're no different than retail investors.”

“We sold 1.2 billion dollars worth of positions in 2021. When everyone was writing crazy checks, I sold six hundred million dollars that year.”

“Usually, in a run-up, I'll usually sell 33 to 40% maximum.”

“On average of our companies that take longer and that we had reserves for. On average, it took six years to raise a growth round. Okay. But those companies by definition are more capital efficient because they didn't have access to it. I have six deals that fi…”

“And then I had one big company that was incredibly fast growing is the fastest growing company I had ever seen. And so I piled money into it and it ended up being a zero. We had an offer to sell the company for three hundred and fifty million dollars. Founder …”

“Hardware plus software is incredibly valuable. So the hardware actually provides you with a differentiated return if you also have a services business.”

“And so guys like Mike Jones, who runs science, Mark Suster, who had just gotten there that is, you know, running upfront, upfront. Yep. had, had all put money into my company. And it was the first time I'd ever taken on outside capital.”

“Too many investors that I had come across didn't have real startup operating experience. And I didn't feel like I always got the advice that I could have used at the time I could have used it.”

“We funded a company today. We submitted the term sheet two weeks ago, and I've never met the founder in person. We greenlit another term sheet last Monday. It'll fund early to middle of next week. I've never met the founder in person. We are going to our partn…”

“So when we're looking at companies, we're looking at bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, we're going to build this for the next 10 years, we're in the first six to 18 months of our journey, as opposed to a company been around for six years and suddenly finds itself in …”

“So I don't think that's going to be a major problem. What'll be a major problem is people coming into your next fund, because if they find themselves in a bad economic situation, what they end up doing is cutting commitments to managers that they've had for a …”

“The obvious example, Harry, is Uber, where having lived in London and seen the taxi lobby and how strong the taxi lobby was in London, that clouded my vision for what was possible. Having lived in Los Angeles and seeing how few people ever use taxis, that clou…”

“Yes. In fact, I think it'll go up from 20%, not down.”

“And party rounds did incredibly well. For the last five years, but I suspect party rounds are going to do the worst for the next three years, because getting conviction across three or four small investors that each own seven, eight, nine, 10% of your company …”

“If you want to understand the world and what's happening around you, read The Accidental Superpower, The Absent Superpower, and Disunited Nations. And Disunited Nations is the most recent. Each one of those books Has predicted what was going to happen in the w…”

“The things that really matter are people who turn up, roll up their sleeves, have a point of view, will do the detail work, actually read spreadsheets. And be thoughtful and be one step ahead of the game on things that are harder that people don't like to do, …”

“There is a headset that has become the norm, which is always be raising. I don't know if that's always right. I think it's where we are, but I don't think that's necessarily the right thing for all founders. I think it's often very distracting and very, and ma…”

“You know who I always love is Mark Schuster. He's like, so when we first, first started getting going in, in Twitter, 2008, nine, he was crushing it then. He's now crushing it on Snapchat and doing really interesting stuff.”

“Now, the absolute worst scenario, and Mark Suster actually talks about it in his recent post on both sides of the table, are these party rounds. I don't think these party rounds are happening as often, but these party rounds are where 20 plus individuals, you …”

“Entrepreneurship's not cut out for everybody, but if you want to give it a try, it's infinitely better to start earlier.”

“You need to take some programming course, even if you want to be the CEO or the head of sales or the head of marketing or the head of biz dev, Understanding, having a fundamental understanding of how systems work is critical to being in the business.”

“Is to get some sales experience, and usually the best way to do that is telesales, and even if you want to be in marketing, even if you are in customer support, even if you want to do biz dev, ask the CEO if you can, you know, just do an hour a week of sales c…”

“A certain amount of constraint actually forces creativity, and when you have a little too much capital, you can take shortcuts, or you can throw money at problems, and it masks certain problems as well. So I'll just give you an example for anyone who's ever wo…”

“I mean, the ideal amount of capital, if you can raise it as 18 months.”

“There's no great presentation, there's no amount of data that can get someone to want to take that bet on you other than Trust, and trust is established through rapport, which is built in meetings.”

“There's all these intangibles that I'm trying to judge because I'm a seed or a round investor. So I'm usually not betting specifically on traction, which tends to be more of a B round activity.”

“But probably the best known post I've ever done was a post I wrote saying I invest in lines, not dots. And the metaphor is an x-axis is time, and a y-axis is your performance. And on any given day, I'm judging your performance on that day. How well did you pre…”

“Like, you've got one company, and there's no divorce clause from investors, so I really think entrepreneurs need to take the time to get to know their investors, which is why I'm not a big proponent of demo days, or overhyping your company, or Waiting to meet …”

“Investors are like lemmings, and when an idea works, everyone chases the same idea. By definition, if you're chasing a hot idea, and you weren't early in that market, you're gonna lose.”

“I think we've returned to a moment where startups and Silicon Valley and tech have become fashionable, and everyone wants to do it, which means you're gonna have too many companies, too much money, and too many people who aren't truly entrepreneurs, kind of cl…”

“I think it's stressful, it's hard, it leads a lot of people to depression, and conflict, and stress, and for most people it doesn't even pay off economically. And so if you're going to dedicate yourself to it, you sure as hell better love the product concept o…”

“Fast forward to today, I think that's a non-issue with people like, you know, Mark Suster and Upfront Ventures and Snapchat in LA.”

“So my very clear goal is I want to have the largest IPO in Los Angeles. I want to back a company in LA that IPOs and has the biggest IPO in LA. My goal with that is not purely financial. My goal is to see an ecosystem form around that company that will cement …”