Assertion certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Venture capitalists share an unspoken rule against scooping reference-call deals

Bill Trenchard · Bill Trenchard - First Round Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.23) · Dec 9, 2021 · at 47:26

Bill Trenchard, partner at First Round Capital, discusses the ethics and dynamics of checking references with other investors and scouts.

0:00 / 0:06exact quote · 6.8s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“Typically in the industry, there's an unspoken rule that you don't scoop other people's deals if you learn about it from them.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Bill Trenchard

Opinion
Most Silicon Valley VCs default to cheerleading to protect founder-friendly reputations
“I'd say in the Valley today, there's really two types of investors and most fall in the first bucket. There's the cheerleaders and the people that'll give you the tough love. And I fall in the second bucket for sure. And I think the reason why a lot of people …”
Bill Trenchard Dec 9, 2021 ▶ 24:11 Bill Trenchard - First Round Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.23)
Opinion
Founders would likely fire half the operating staff at most VC firms
“If a founder walked into most venture firms, I think they would probably fire half the team from an operating standpoint, because it is not the thing that is traditionally driven returns is building great services and delivering great quality of service to fou…”
Bill Trenchard Dec 9, 2021 ▶ 34:20 Bill Trenchard - First Round Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.23)
Disclosure
First Round partners silently score pitches in Airtable before debating disagreements
“When a founder leaves the room, we don't talk. So they come and pitch typically for an hour. We ask questions. It's relatively conversational type of approach when we, when they're pitching the partnership. And then we literally just write for about 15 minutes…”
Bill Trenchard Dec 9, 2021 ▶ 39:09 Bill Trenchard - First Round Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.23)
Insight
Hybrid work models are often harder for individual employees than fully remote
“The partially distributed model is actually harder than the fully distributed model for a lot of the individuals, because being the one that's on the TV, on the screen, and having everyone else in a conference room feels very disconnected versus if everyone's …”
Bill Trenchard Dec 9, 2021 ▶ 53:18 Bill Trenchard - First Round Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.23)
Insight
Venture capital is commoditized; strong founders choose investors based on value-add
“Capital is a commodity now. Good founders with good ideas are making a decision about who should have their equity based on what value they bring. If they're good, they've got plenty of options for getting where they get the capital. It didn't used to be the c…”
Bill Trenchard Dec 9, 2021 ▶ 27:46 Bill Trenchard - First Round Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.23)
Insight
Former operators turning VC often mistakenly evaluate ideas instead of founding teams
“Think about the chef versus the recipe. This is advice I got relatively early on in my career as an investor. Think about the team bet that you're making and whether they can execute this, not how you would execute this idea. A lot of times early on as an inve…”
Bill Trenchard Dec 9, 2021 ▶ 29:08 Bill Trenchard - First Round Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.23)
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 700 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.