Nikhil Basu Trivedi
Co-Founder & General Partner, Footwork. On 2 shows, 3 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorfounderoperatorauthor@nbt ↗LinkedIn ↗footwork.vc ↗
Nikhil Basu Trivedi is an early-stage venture capitalist who co-founded Footwork alongside Mike Smith, having previously served as Managing Director at Shasta Ventures. He is known for early-stage investments in companies such as Canva, Frame.io, Lattice, ClassDojo, and The Farmer's Dog.
2shows
3appearances
62statements
10resolved
8supported
1contradicted
80%fully supported
21said about them ↓ Everything Nikhil Basu Trivedi said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Basu Trivedi: Massive AI foundation model seed rounds make no sense
“We don't think that the foundational model investments that, for example, they're raising hundreds of millions of dollars in a seed make any sense. They don't make sense for sure for our firm, but we don't think they actually make much sense for the big funds …”
Basu Trivedi: Small VC funds outperform larger funds
“And my firm belief in my bones is that small funds outperform bigger funds.”
Basu Trivedi: 5x net returns on $1B+ funds are historically rare
“It is incredibly difficult to have a five X net return on A billion dollar plus fund. I think there's incredibly few of those funds in history, in the history of venture.”
Basu Trivedi: LLMs will directly serve use cases, bypassing application layers
“In the large language model world, that the LLMs themselves will serve as a use case versus an application layer on top of those LLMs.”
Basu Trivedi: Several AI startups are seeing ARR declines due to churn
“I've heard there are several companies now that have grown rapidly in ARR and have now started declining in ARR as retention actually starts to affect these businesses because there's churn from folks who just try out products built on top of these LLMs becaus…”
Basu Trivedi: Elon Musk predicted fully self-driving Teslas by late 2017
“Elon Musk said in In December, 2015 that Tesla is two years away from a self-driving car. So, you know, now we're in 2016 and he said that the Tesla will get there in late 2017.”
Basu Trivedi: Exceptional startups deserve exceptions to standard VC portfolio rules
“Exceptional companies deserve exceptions. And it's a mantra that I've tried to always have in my venture career, which is yes, you have this model of how you want to invest this dream idea of portfolio construction and the profile of company that you're lookin…”
Basu Trivedi: Founders Should Judge VC Associates by Quality, Not Title
“I think that you're better off as a founder judging based on the actual conversation you have, which sometimes may be a lot better with the youngest person on the team versus the managing partner of the firm, and sometimes it won't be.”
Basu Trivedi: Most large VC firms generate excess management fee revenue
“Most venture firms have plenty of fees to cover the team and more, especially at that fund size scale.”
Basu Trivedi: Larger VC fund sizes cause laziness in investment decisions
“You know, in a strange way, I really like the constraint of our fund size. I actually think it forces us to make better decisions. And I think there's a laziness and a lack of great decision making that can come from having a bigger fund in the same way that i…”
Basu Trivedi: Early traction matters more than team and market size
“I've always been a sort of traction, early signs of product market fit first investor. Then people, and then market.”
Basu Trivedi: Market size is the hardest startup variable to predict
“I weight market third on the three that you asked me about because I just think it's the hardest one to assess and predict for myself, and I think when you look at the investments you just described and some of the very great ones, that was true for those inve…”
Basu Trivedi: Making VC decisions via internal politics is a terrible practice
“Look, I think there are partnerships where decisions are made based on the ability of individuals to sell internally, and so there's some folks that are just naturally more gifted to sell the deal to their partners, and there's political points back and forth …”
Basu Trivedi: Only 10 to 15 LPs globally anchor first-time venture funds
“Yeah, look, I think that there's, especially in a first fund, there's a handful of LPs around the world, at least that I know of and have met, who are truly independent thinking, who will truly raise their hand and say, we're willing to do a first time fund, a…”
Basu Trivedi: Most LPs fail to rigorously assess GP drive and commitment
“I don't think that they spend enough cycles on it. But I actually think some of the great ones do.”
Basu Trivedi: VC platform teams scale the firm, not the portfolio companies
“Most of those platform offerings are about scaling the firm themselves versus about Actually scaling companies and really helping companies get to the next level.”
Basu Trivedi: The Farmer's Dog is my biggest investment hit, not Canva
“I actually think my biggest hit right now at least as I can best predict it is not Canva. Dollar gains, Perspective, and on an IRR basis as well, it's a company called The Farmer's Dog, which is in the pet food space, and it's a subscription service for fresh …”
Basu Trivedi passed on early Figma rounds for lacking product-market fit
“This comes back to my bias around wanting to see some early signs of product market fit before investing, and Figma did not have a launched product. Before its first couple of venture rounds.”
Basu Trivedi: Venture capitalists cannot work as hard after becoming parents
“No, and I believe the answer is no. I mean, it has not been the case for me.”
Basu Trivedi: AUM is the stupidest metric for venture firms
“I think AUM is the stupidest thing to talk about as a venture firm, because back to what we were talking about earlier, small funds outperform larger funds, and so you really shouldn't be talking about how much capital you've raised. I'm okay with people talki…”
Basu Trivedi: Exercising pro-rata in rapid markup rounds was my biggest mistake
“I think it was doing our pro-rata In companies that quickly raised another round at a huge step up from where we first invested. Fundamentally, there was very little de-risked, and we saw this happen where a company had raised a series A from us, and two month…”
Basu Trivedi: USV belongs in the VC pantheon alongside Sequoia and Benchmark
“I think USV doesn't get the credit that it deserves. I think it should be in that pantheon of greatness that sort of Sequoia and Benchmark are typically put in.”
Basu Trivedi: Venture experience eventually trumps operating background for investors
“But now that I've been in venture capital for five to six years, the venture experience trumps the operating experience at some point. It absolutely does now for me. And so I think the venture experience now informs much more what I do every day with finding n…”
Basu Trivedi: Autonomous transportation will drive trillions in consumer spend shifts
“I focus more on the consumer side at Shasta, and we do a mixture of consumer enterprise and connected hardware investing, and I think across, across those areas, there's a few categories that will lead to trillions of dollars of shift in spend for consumers ov…”
The other half of the tape: Nikhil Basu Trivedi's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 20 times in 9 episodes across the shows. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 19Beezer Clarkson 1
Statements about Nikhil Basu Trivedi, by other people (1)
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 20
2023 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
2020 4 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: a16z's Angela Strange on Why Every Company Will Be A Fintech Company, How Founders Should Think About Niches and Optimal Insertion Points, How To Transition To Become The System of Record & Are We Entering A Period of Bundling Or Unbundling for Fint
- 20VC: Why Entrepreneurs Care Less About Firm Brand at Seed, How LPs Should Think About GP Commit & How The World of LPs and Fundraising Will Change Post COVID with Apurva Mehta, Managing Partner @ Summit Peak Investments
- every mention in 2020, scene by scene →
2019 8 mentions in 2 episodes 4 per episode
- 20VC: Kapwing Founder Julia Enthoven on Why Marketing Innovation Is As Important As Product Innovation, Why Every Company Is Becoming A Media Company & The Benefits Of Not Raising Money Too Early
- 20VC: Why Startup Valuations Are Not As Overpriced As You Think, How To Determine Whether An Investor Is Truly Aligned To Your Mission and What 2 Traits Make The Truly Special Board Members with Jason Brown, Founder & CEO @ Tally
- every mention in 2019, scene by scene →
2017 2 mentions in 1 episode
2016 4 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Nikhil'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 & General Partner, Footwork | 2 | 55 | 78% 7/9 | full record on 20VC → |
 CAPITAL ALLOCATORSLEDGER | Co-Founder & General Partner, Footwork | 1 | 7 | 100% 1/1 | full record on Capital Allocators → |