Hoover: Behind the confident mask, almost every company is internally chaotic
“Everyone has to wear this unfortunate mask is kind of the way I, what I used to describe it, this mask in Life and business where everything is going great and, you know, you're super confident. There are no problems. You got it all under control. And so the r…”
Hoover: Started Weekend Fund while building Product Hunt via weekend pitches
“I started weekend fun when I was building product hunt. So took a lot of pitch pitches and calls with founders on the weekends.”
Hoover: Targeting a narrow audience makes building and messaging easier for startups
“It's effectively the more narrow your idea generally, and this is where I throw in the big asterisks, like not for everything, there's always contextual differences, but generally the easier it is to build a great solution for those people, because now you can…”
Hoover: Weekend Fund has invested in over 110 companies
“We've invested in over a 110 companies now.”
Hoover: Raised a fund because he lacked personal angel capital
“So that that's the decision that I decided back in 2017 is I wanted to raise a fund. It's a lot more work to raise the capital and there's a lot more responsibility and managing funds and so on and so forth. But it provided me with the most flexibility and in …”
Hoover: $21M might be the largest fund Weekend Fund ever raises
“Our latest fund is twenty one million. And that might, I might change my mind on this, but that might be the biggest fund we ever raise. I might keep it around that same size for the next one, because it really allows us to be like really collaborative.”
Hoover: Weekend Fund Raised From 370 Operator LPs in Latest Fund
“We raised from 370 LPs in our latest fund. So we raised from tons of operators, like some top designers, data scientists, engineers, salespeople. We have hundreds and hundreds of LPs who are financially invested in our success and therefore the portfolio succe…”
Ryan Hoover Jun 10, 2022 ▶ 29:12 Building From Scratch with Ryan Hoover
Hoover: Weekend Fund GP Demo Days Drove $1.1M and $1.5M in Interest
“And so far we've run two GP demo days with three people in each demo day. First one, we had about a 1.1 million dollars in interest. Second one is 1.5 million dollars in interest.”
Ryan Hoover Jun 10, 2022 ▶ 30:02 Building From Scratch with Ryan Hoover
Observing a startup ship rapidly for two weeks drives Hoover's investment decisions
“Progress is like everything, and just, even if it's, it doesn't have to be, you know, 50% month over month growth, but I've invested in companies after following them for even just two or three weeks have given me more confidence based on what they're shipping…”
Hoover: Raised $3M Weekend Fund writing $50k to $200k checks
“So I raised a fund after talking to Naval and a bunch of other people three million dollar fund and just investing in, of course, early stage companies. Everything from 50,000 to 200,000.”