Nicole Quinn
Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Connect Ventures. On 1 show, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorfounderanalystathlete@nik_quinn ↗connectventures.com ↗
Nicole Quinn is an early-stage venture investor who spent nearly a decade leading consumer technology and fintech investments at Lightspeed Venture Partners before co-founding Connect Ventures with CAA. She has led investments and served on boards for companies including Calm, Cameo, Lunchclub, and Haus Labs.
1shows
2appearances
26statements
7resolved
3supported
2contradicted
43%fully supported
31said about them ↓ Everything Nicole Quinn said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Nicole Quinn: TAM is unimportant because great consumer companies create markets
“So this is contrarian, but I actually don't think that TAM is very important. The greatest consumer companies of our time have been created in very small markets.”
Quinn: OpenAI's app store will become a major new search channel
“If OpenAI really do the, like, app store of AI, then that's gonna be, like, a new search.”
Quinn: Startups should accept significant down rounds over structured deal terms
“I would much rather take a significant down round than having structure on that. And so that's what I'm really encouraging our portfolio companies to do.”
Quinn: Startups die more often from indigestion than starvation
“Companies die from indigestion rather than starvation.”
Quinn: Venture investors will return to syndicate co-investing across rounds
“I think we spent far too many years with the multi-stage funds and then suddenly realizing, wow, now I'm the only one on the cap table. There's no one else to turn to. There's no one else around to like help support this company with me. And so I think we're g…”
Nicole Quinn: Brand is a key network effect that outweighs TAM
“I certainly believe that brand is a key network effect. And yes, user economics, TAM are important, but at the end of the day, your margins and the size of the market, not quite as important if no one's buying your product.”
Nicole Quinn: DTC cosmetics brands achieve 95% gross margins rivaling SaaS
“And I am regularly meeting these digitally native vertical brands which have SaaS type margins. You look at cosmetics, for example, and a lot of these cosmetics brands have 95% margins, and so they are just as attractive, if not more attractive, than the margi…”
Nicole Quinn: Amazon is not your friend and clones successful products
“My view is always that Amazon is not your friend. They are maybe increasing the size of the overall pie. They are making companies' lives very, very difficult, and anything that's working, they see, and they decide to go after.”
Quinn: Higher valuations for AI startups are worth paying
“The valuations are gonna be slightly higher, but honestly, that's worth paying for.”
Quinn: Seed stage startup valuations have not dropped in over ten years
“Like the valuations in Seed have not dropped. And we've looked at this data really over like 10 plus years.”
Quinn: Klarna chose a 90% down round over heavy deal structure
“I think Klan is a good example in Europe, right? And they do a 90% down round rather than taking like a lot of structure because that structure then sticks with you for multiple rounds.”
Nicole Quinn: Allbirds physical retail stores reach profitability in months
“Clearly all birds have just raised around to focus on retail expansion, and you can see that these retail stores are profitable in a matter of months. Often they're cost-neutral marketing channels.”
Nicole Quinn: The next major computing platform will be voice-first
“My belief is actually that the next platform will be voice first,”
Nicole Quinn: Estee Lauder and L'Oreal acquire startups at 7x forward revenue
“If you look at the beauty brands, Estee Lauder and L'Oreal are acquiring these companies on seven times forward year revenue multiples.”
Nicole Quinn: Estee Lauder projects 95% of future growth from acquisitions
“Estee Lauder will publicly say, we think that 95% of our growth for the next 10 years is going to come through acquisitions.”
Nicole Quinn: Lightspeed requires a 33% DAU/MAU ratio for social apps
“So we like to think about DAU divided by MAU. If you're A social media app , then we want it to be over a third. If it can be over 50%, then it really is a daily use case, and that's exactly what we saw from Snapchat back in the day, but we definitely need for…”
Quinn: Lightspeed's fund sizes grew from $700M to $7B in ten years
“When I started a decade ago, we were raising seven hundred million dollar funds. They're now seven billion dollar funds.”
Quinn: Facebook paying 10% of its market cap for WhatsApp was justified
“Was it worth 10% of Facebook's market cap to buy WhatsApp? Absolutely.”
Quinn: Lightspeed has deployed over $1B across 54 AI startups
“We've invested at lightspeed in 54 companies in AI. We've spent, we've invested over a billion dollars in AI, but big, but that was not all this year. That is not all generative AI, right? That's been over the few years, over the last few years”
Quinn: AI tools will save users two to three hours per day
“I would say AI is akin to winning the lottery. And what I mean by that is it is the lottery of time. So in your, like, say, 10 hour working day, you spend maybe an hour writing a newsletter. Well, that could get compressed down to 10 minutes, right? You have B…”
Quinn: Startups growing 2x to 5x year-over-year will continue getting funded
“There is a crunch in terms of valuation. Definitely that is coming down, but I do still believe the best teams and the ones that are growing, you know, two, three, four, five X year on year, they will continue to get funded.”
Quinn: The IPO market is looking miserable
“The IPO market is looking miserable. That window is not exactly wide open to say the least.”
Nicole Quinn: Lightspeed avoids e-commerce startups with 30% gross margins
“So if we're bringing a 30% gross margin e-commerce company to the table, then that to us is not going to quite hit the bill or cut the mustard.”
The other half of the tape: Nicole Quinn's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 30 times in 10 episodes across the shows. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 22Jeremy Liew 3Steven Galanis 1Semil Shah 1Mike Mignano 1Jana Messerschmidt 1Barry Eggers 1
Statements about Nicole Quinn, by other people (1)
Jeremy Liew averages two board meetings and seven portfolio calls weekly
“And so on average, I have two board meetings per week. And then seven, I just did a analysis of my calendar for a couple of months as did Alex Taussig and Nicole Quinn. And so, so this, these numbers are sort of top of mind, but two, two board meetings per wee…”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 30
2022 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
2020 5 mentions in 2 episodes 3 per episode
- 20VC: Lightspeed Partner, Merci Victoria Grace on The Future of Collaboration Tools, Bundling vs Unbundling, Synchronous vs Asynchronous & What It Means To Productise The S*** Out of Venture
- 20VC: The Implications of a Biden vs a Trump Administration on Venture and Startups, How The Rise of Rolling Funds, SPACs and Solo Capitalists Will Impact Venture & What We Can Do To Swing the Race Pendulum in VC with Barry Eggers, Founding Partner @ Ligh
- every mention in 2020, scene by scene →
2019 15 mentions in 4 episodes 4 per episode
- 20VC: Cameo's Steven Galanis on Why You Must Fall In Love With Your Mission Not Your Product, How To Extract As Much Value From Your Investor Base As Possible & Should You Really Hire For 6 Months Ahead of What You Need?
- 20VC: How Founders Can Gain Leverage in Fundraising Negotiations, The Metrics You Need To Raise Your Series A in Consumer & What We Have To Change About Cap Table Construction with Jana Messerschmidt, Partner @ Lightspeed Venture Partners
- 20VC: Lightspeed's Jeremy Liew on Why It Is More Important To Be Right Than Contrarian, The Most Common Mistakes Made By Hyper-Growth Companies & 3 Characteristics That Make An Individual Incredible At Sourcing
- 20VC: Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed on Why Market Risk Is The Most Dangerous Risk To Underwrite As A VC, How To Determine When to Stretch vs Not on Price Today & The $TRN of Market Cap Up For Grabs Today In Enterprise
- every mention in 2019, scene by scene →
2018 8 mentions in 2 episodes 4 per episode
- 20VC: What It Takes To Found and Scale A Global Venture Firm Like Lightspeed, 3 Ways Firms Do Not Succeed in Generational Transition & What Makes The Truly Special Board Members Like Jim Goetz with Barry Eggers, Founding Partner @ Lightspeed Venture Partn
- 20VC: Lightspeed's Alex Taussig on VC Risk Mentality, The Current State of Retail & The Mechanics of Cash Flow
- every mention in 2018, scene by scene →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Nicole's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Connect Ventures | 2 | 26 | 43% 3/7 | full record on 20VC → |