The Ledger, every show

“I think pipeline is a lazy crutch. I think the reality is it's only a pipeline problem if you believe the best VCs have to be technical, which if you look at the Midas list is not the case at all.”

“Women still get promoted for results while men get promoted for potential, and that's what we need to change.”

“That operators don't make good VCs. That's what I believe. I think it's really tough to have two CEOs in the boardroom. I think CEOs, when things work well for them, they're so used to repeating that, and sometimes it can work for another founder, but it's oft…”

“When you hire a female GP, you're telling the rest of the world, I believe in this woman's work so much that I am willing to give more share of my dollars in my pocket to her, and more than that, I believe she is going to bring so much more to this GP pie that…”

“And in my kind of seven to eight years in venture, some of our best deals would have never gotten done had an analyst not pounded the table and made the argument on behalf of the entrepreneur.”

“If I look back at all the outbound emails that I sent when I started, and the founders that responded to me, and the way in which they responded to me, the ones that ended up being very successful, they responded honestly, they were transparent with their numb…”

“Hanging out with other VCs as fun as it is, is It's antithetical to good sourcing. If we're very honest, the only deals you pass on to other VCs are deals that you don't want to do, especially if you're collaborating with firms that invest at the same stage.”

“I think the last thing that has really worked for me is just always showing up with more information and saying, I may have only eight years of venture experience, but I know your space so well. I have deep sector experience. And in a lot of ways, I think that…”

“Especially now after COVID, the supply of good companies has decreased, and the best companies frankly aren't going through a formal fundraising process”

“I think multi-stage funds kind of slap on playbooks. They're not very customized, and it's hard to launch with those kind of plain vanilla playbooks.”

“Unfortunately, I see that less and less in venture, because I think it's become So commoditized, where within five minutes, we're asking about the ARR, and the net dollar retention, and the growth rate, and few people really take time to ask the questions like…”

“What I always tell my founders is, you should reply, and then you should get them to do work for you. It's very easy to send an email to an entrepreneur, but when they reply, you And they ask you to do something. I think that's when you can really shine both a…”

“The first is never forget that sourcing is still the heart of venture investing. Getting to a founder and Earlier than anyone else is how you succeed, and a lot of partners forget that because once you reach that level, you sort of think sourcing is below you,…”

“Hanging out with product or engineering leaders is time much better spent because they're actually using the products that you want to invest in.”

“Earlier in my career, I was much more data-driven, but I think what's really evolved over this time is my ability to take a leap of faith based on early signs, whether that's chatter about a product, whether it's a founder that spent time in the industry that …”

“Spending more time with the entrepreneur is one of the main ways, because as I mentioned in sort of our analyst conversation, partners are really busy and they have made a commitment to 10, 12, sometimes 15 other entrepreneurs that they have long-term relation…”

“If you spend time on a market and see strong precedent there for meaningful exits, I wouldn't wait. I would stretch on valuation, make it a deal that is hard for the entrepreneur to say no to, especially at the early stage, because the more late stage you go, …”

“It's really hard to forget the person that bet on you when no one knew your name or used your product, and I think that is sort of that secret weapon that early stage funds can use because they come out of it with a much deeper and much more emotional connecti…”

“Hire great female analysts and associates. You, after hiring them, will realize that you will see more female CEOs pitch you, because through hiring these analysts, you are getting access to networks that you just have no access to.”

“At Bessemer, we were the ones that came up with metrics on how to measure great cloud companies when no one knew how to measure cloud growth, and so as a result, we gravitated a lot more to that than really focusing on kind of team or the early signs in the ma…”

“Today, every senior at Stanford knows what a VC is, but back then it wasn't really an industry that was accessible to young people.”

“Blogging has been really helpful for me. It really helped me get my voice out there. I wrote about The things I wanted to invest in, whether it was open source or finance as a service. And I have founders email me a tremendous amount saying things like, I'm ac…”