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Aydin Senkut

Founder & Managing Partner, Felicis · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

investorfounderexecutiveoperator@asenkut ↗LinkedIn ↗felicis.com ↗Wikipedia ↗

Before transitioning to investing, Senkut was an early Google executive serving as the company's first product manager and first international sales manager. In 2006, he founded Felicis, scaling it into a venture firm known for early investments in companies like Shopify, Adyen, Canva, and Notion.

13statements → 5claims → 2claims resolved → 3.85/5average certainty → 1.54/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 1said about them ↓

1 supported 0 partly supported 1 contradicted 1 not yet assessed 2 not checkable as stated how the 5 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

5 assertions · 2 insights · 6 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 5 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 2 are resolved, 1 is not yet assessed, and 2 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Aydin argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Netscape, TiVo, and Nvidia share Silicon Graphics technology heritage
“A lot of companies like Netscape, TiVo, like all this, like digital recording, all these are SGI technologies. And it's so funny that then permeated to other companies like Nvidia. So many of these companies have Silicon graphics heritage.”
Aydin Senkut Feb 7, 2022 ▶ 14:00 Aydin Senkut – Tenacious Sourcing and Founder Support at Felicis, Venture is Eating the Investment World 6 (Capital Allocators, EP.234)

Their most notable contradicted claim

Assertion Contradicted
Aydin Senkut made 100 angel investments in his first 4.5 years
“By doing my own firm and making a hundred investments in four years, four and a half years, if I was at another firm, God knows if I would have even been able to make five or six investments in that time, if at all.”
Aydin Senkut Feb 7, 2022 ▶ 25:46 Aydin Senkut – Tenacious Sourcing and Founder Support at Felicis, Venture is Eating the Investment World 6 (Capital Allocators, EP.234)

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Aydin Senkut on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

Everything Aydin Senkut said on Capital Allocators that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight
Aydin Senkut: Outlier returns in venture capital require outlier thinking
“This is a business of outliers. Nothing that is an outlier is normal. So if you try to bring normalcy or strings attached or boxes into venture, you're not going to succeed, or at best, you're going to be mediocre. So if you want outliers, you need to have an …”
Aydin Senkut Feb 7, 2022 ▶ 26:34 Aydin Senkut – Tenacious Sourcing and Founder Support at Felicis, Venture is Eating the Investment World 6 (Capital Allocators, EP.234)
Insight
Larry Page mandated insane goals at Google to prevent incremental thinking
“He had a very simple philosophy, which was, I'm going to ask you to do insane things. And they are insane by default because If they're not insane, you're going to basically revert to status quo and you're going to come up with incremental ideas. And the only …”
Aydin Senkut Feb 7, 2022 ▶ 16:54 Aydin Senkut – Tenacious Sourcing and Founder Support at Felicis, Venture is Eating the Investment World 6 (Capital Allocators, EP.234)
Disclosure
Felicis took mid-single-digit Series A ownership in Canva despite VC norms
“Canva is a good example. It's one of our most valuable companies. Our initial series A ownership was probably around single digit percentage, mid single digits. In other world, ABC is like, oh, we can't even get 10, 20%. We're not going to do it. Look at where…”
Aydin Senkut Feb 7, 2022 ▶ 46:01 Aydin Senkut – Tenacious Sourcing and Founder Support at Felicis, Venture is Eating the Investment World 6 (Capital Allocators, EP.234)
Disclosure
Felicis caps internal headcount by guaranteeing revenue for external solo agencies
“Even if we have aspirations and we want to grow, we don't want 200 people in our team. So we started doing some really creative things. We start engaging people. There are some great people out there. They just want to run their own firm, whether it's recruiti…”
Aydin Senkut Feb 7, 2022 ▶ 56:28 Aydin Senkut – Tenacious Sourcing and Founder Support at Felicis, Venture is Eating the Investment World 6 (Capital Allocators, EP.234)
Assertion Supported
Netscape, TiVo, and Nvidia share Silicon Graphics technology heritage
“A lot of companies like Netscape, TiVo, like all this, like digital recording, all these are SGI technologies. And it's so funny that then permeated to other companies like Nvidia. So many of these companies have Silicon graphics heritage.”
Aydin Senkut Feb 7, 2022 ▶ 14:00 Aydin Senkut – Tenacious Sourcing and Founder Support at Felicis, Venture is Eating the Investment World 6 (Capital Allocators, EP.234)
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Larry Page launched Google Research when the company had just 50 employees
“Exactly at 50 people at Google, Larry said, you know what, we need to move even faster, and if we only put engineers on projects as they become relevant, It's not fast enough and we're going to fall behind. So for the first time in the history of Google, he to…”
Aydin Senkut Feb 7, 2022 ▶ 49:39 Aydin Senkut – Tenacious Sourcing and Founder Support at Felicis, Venture is Eating the Investment World 6 (Capital Allocators, EP.234)
Disclosure
Senkut only takes founder meetings with a >50% chance of investing
“In fact, one of the things that I'm trying to do is to only have conversation where I think there is a better than fifty-fifty chance of saying yes, so that we don't waste somebody's time, and we're not spending all that time in a meeting and saying no.”
Aydin Senkut Feb 7, 2022 ▶ 53:47 Aydin Senkut – Tenacious Sourcing and Founder Support at Felicis, Venture is Eating the Investment World 6 (Capital Allocators, EP.234)
Assertion Contradicted
Aydin Senkut made 100 angel investments in his first 4.5 years
“By doing my own firm and making a hundred investments in four years, four and a half years, if I was at another firm, God knows if I would have even been able to make five or six investments in that time, if at all.”
Aydin Senkut Feb 7, 2022 ▶ 25:46 Aydin Senkut – Tenacious Sourcing and Founder Support at Felicis, Venture is Eating the Investment World 6 (Capital Allocators, EP.234)
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sourcing Shopify took Aydin Senkut eight emails; Adyen took two years
“I think Shopify took me eight emails until Toby said yes. And he asked me to fly to Ottawa. Addion took me two years to break through. Rovio took me a year and a half and I had to meet them in the U S and London in Helsinki.”
Aydin Senkut Feb 7, 2022 ▶ 36:06 Aydin Senkut – Tenacious Sourcing and Founder Support at Felicis, Venture is Eating the Investment World 6 (Capital Allocators, EP.234)
Disclosure
Felicis Ventures manages 200 active portfolio companies with 26 team members
“Today we have about 26 people in our team. Roughly 10 of them are in the investment team. I do have to give a lot of credit to our founder success team. It's a very important aspect of our operation. So that's growing really fast to say like anywhere between 1…”
Aydin Senkut Feb 7, 2022 ▶ 42:14 Aydin Senkut – Tenacious Sourcing and Founder Support at Felicis, Venture is Eating the Investment World 6 (Capital Allocators, EP.234)
Disclosure
Felicis Ventures grew from a $41M fund to a $900M fund family
“And our first fund was forty one million. Now for the first time we're investing out of a fund family and together we have, I think, nine hundred million committed in this latest fund.”
Aydin Senkut Feb 7, 2022 ▶ 43:07 Aydin Senkut – Tenacious Sourcing and Founder Support at Felicis, Venture is Eating the Investment World 6 (Capital Allocators, EP.234)
Disclosure
Felicis Ventures leads or co-leads approximately 70% of its investments
“We went from by default and by capital scarcity to be only participating investors to now, I think we lead or co-lead about 70% of the investments we make. And there is still 30% where we make strategic investments”
Aydin Senkut Feb 7, 2022 ▶ 45:04 Aydin Senkut – Tenacious Sourcing and Founder Support at Felicis, Venture is Eating the Investment World 6 (Capital Allocators, EP.234)
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Fifty LPs rejected Aydin Senkut on his first Felicis fundraise
“The first time I was fundraising, there are 50 LPs that said no to me.”
Aydin Senkut Feb 7, 2022 ▶ 54:17 Aydin Senkut – Tenacious Sourcing and Founder Support at Felicis, Venture is Eating the Investment World 6 (Capital Allocators, EP.234)

The other half of the tape: Aydin Senkut's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 1 time in 1 episode on Capital Allocators. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Renata Quintini 1

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
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2022 1 mention in 1 episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Aydin Senkut – Tenacious Sourcing and Founder Support at Felicis, Venture is Eating the In Feb 7, 2022 47m
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