venture capital

“Sometimes to our fault, we're a bit more realistic. That can be a disadvantage in the venture capital space. You are rewarded for being bold and brave, not conservative and realistic.”

“I remember sitting in front of VC investors when I was not yet ready to take on VC money, and they're asking me to walk them through a pro forma, and I didn't even know what a pro forma was, let alone how to justify numbers on a spreadsheet.”

“In some cases, it actually benefits founders to not be forthright because they don't know where the company is going to go and To raise money. If you got, if a founder goes out and says, Hey, I'm shooting for a 30 to 50, sixty million dollar exit... And if you…”

“The general benchmark, I tell everyone below three to five in ARR is you generally need to be doubling every year at a least. I think if you're over five in ARR, it depends on your burn and everything else, but aim to double at least 50, 60, 70% year over year…”

“I think there's a ton of opportunities that you think about of smaller companies, that 20 to fifty million dollar is that some people call it the aqua hire, but right, it's like a founder can come in, your founders can come in, in 18 months, take a couple mill…”

“The first, the best piece of advice I think is, I think the best piece of advice I got is that I, when I started from the very beginning, as soon as you get in venture capital, assume you're always going to lose. And it's going to Las Vegas. You put the money …”

“I have had many opportunities to take the venture route throughout working on Tastry, and it never just felt quite right to go the venture route because of the uniqueness of our business and emerging technology in a traditional industry. It just takes too much…”

“Our investors, our private investors and the LP types of investors that these funds would typically fundraise from. So it had this relationship, this close relationship with my investors who Don't really run out of money and they just, we track progress. And w…”

“VCs and founders are not always a hundred percent aligned, so being ahead of the curve in the sense of, like, understanding where VCs are coming from is very helpful for founders Especially later stages, especially when you try to effectively manage your board…”

“I think we're looking at the industry that's on the brink of shrinking in a significant way. First of all, there's been too much capital that was pumped into this asset class, especially during the Zurb sort of heydays of 20, 20, 20, 21, 22, and some of that c…”

“I think venture in the future is going to look a lot more like private equity. I believe that the markets are getting, you know, smarter and these multiples that we've paid in the past, particularly in the 20 tens are not going to hold water going forward. Peo…”

“You should be having conversations with probably 60 plus VCs, and expect that will lead to one term sheet.”

“If you wait 24 months to raise, you're not gonna raise. I don't care how amazing you are, how amazing your technology is, you're off the venture tracks.”

“If you want to build a big company, then you need the money behind you, I think. But if you're just looking to build a product that you can get to market, get some success and sell it, bootstrap it as long as you can.”

“If you're going to get ventured at, you probably have to have raised around within the last quarter or two.”

“If I could go back in time, if I had the money, I would actually not raise money because raising capital, I think makes sense in certain environments when you're trying to like move things forward at a quick pace.”

“Cause without hundreds and millions of dollars in this market from a You know, taking hundreds of million from a VC, you just can't get a B to C product anywhere. It's just so expensive”

“In the last decade or so with the rise of online platforms and social networks and why Common Air has their private, I think it's called book phase, this internal network where people discuss and talk about investors. I think some of those bad actors in the ve…”

“The key point is that they are focusing on, on, on the 20% thing, and the what 80% thing is that you need to have a product market fit you need to have some chemistry and as a founder with potential investors and so on, and you need to know your niche.”

“Like, you have to know really weird stuff, and unless you come out of early stage early stage finance, like a VC, you don't know the questions to ask.”

“It's not about convincing one VC. It's a. 15 year road show you have to do. It's selling the story and the next story. And then you're consumed with building those VC relationship and building the hype and growing the business and you better deliver, but you'r…”

“In 21, you know, you meet a company, you need to make a decision in the next 14 days, or you're not going to get a chance to invest in this company. And so, like, that's, I think that could be seen as discouraging to founders, but at the same time, like, takin…”

“You go from zero to a million to 5,000,005 million to ten million dollars, but you don't sort of skip steps in the middle. And there's this common misconception in venture capital that you somehow just wake up one day and you're a hundred million dollars a yea…”

“I think it's one of the oversold cliches and ventures that were helpful.”

“The very first dollar in venture capital that you take, you make one permanent commitment, and that is you're going to provide liquidity. So you lose optionality in the business to just say, ah, I'm going to be a lifestyle business.”

“I would hear VCs refer to whether founders are coachable or not. I found that kind of offensive because I viewed this as a joint journey in that to me, the question is, are we going to work well together and make each other better through our engagement or not…”

“If you're kind of completely focused on bootstrapping yourself perennially, you miss the market. Because you miss making those investments and somebody else will come and accelerate and, you know, build that build that, you know, 10 X advantage.”

“And I think when you talk about actual thought leadership, it's founder driven, it's not VC driven.”

“I would sooner say we're going to see more PE-like consolidations either because someone agrees that, hey, we can get to an IPO faster and get our investors liquidity, or just because it's going to be a bigger and bigger roll-up, and that in itself will act li…”

“In twenty-twenty-four, the overwhelming majority of dollars raised in new funds was from the top 30 firms in the world”

“The IPO window being open seems to be such an interesting signal for the market generally but it really only impacts, you know, 10 companies maybe, right? I mean, it's really reserved for, like, the best of the best, and so I don't think that's necessarily the…”

“There's gonna, I think there's gonna be a lot of smaller funds that if they don't have that long-term track record and help trust with LPs you know, raising a new fund might be pretty challenging, and so I do think there is going to be a bit of a shift and sor…”

“Do I think that you can 10 X and eight billion dollar fund? No, probably not.”

“When you deal with something as early as what we are, and we're taking multiple bets, you know, across all these emerging fields of research generally difficult for VCs to invest at that point in time, you know, because they're pre, pre-formation of teams, you…”

“Had I pattern matched and said, oh, hotels is where investors have lost the most money. It's a really hard business. I won't do it. No, someone can out execute somebody else and solve a very complex problem that you may not be able to solve.”

“If we think there's. Potential for technology to be truly game changing, but there's a long commercialization road ahead of it, even if there is sort of one partner at the table that might be reflected in, you know, our expectations around valuation on entry o…”

“Our venture capital industry is more nascent than that in the US. Some LPs and major allocators actually consider Canada to still be an emerging market within this asset class.”

“I do, I, you know, I do think liquidity is going to be a big problem. And I think it's translating into how people put money to work. We're seeing a very, very hard fundraising environment as a result for companies in our portfolio that are going, they're goin…”

“Venture capital is not only an asset class, it's an access class. Your capital is the only thing that right now, you know, technology democratizes everything, information, but with venture, it's still a relationship driven. Right? You learn about deals. You ge…”

“Understand why this asset class is so important and deserve an allocation in the diversified portfolio and bring it to a retail client saying that you need to have five percent, 10% of your portfolio because this is so important because you want your portfolio…”

“Look, I'm of the use someone else's money mindset. Don't use your own hard earned money. What we're doing is high risk enough. What you're able to put in your bank account, you need to save and protect for your family. If you have something really good you kno…”

“Unlike in the pure venture capital place, it's essentially, you know, once you're out there raising cash, the terms are relatively clearly set. We're doing sort of a, using a set of forms that everybody's very comfortable with in this particular space. There's…”

“The pure venture capital play continues to be really, really active, at least in our In our firm. It continues to be active in a number of industries. And so we see it in digital infrastructure. We see it in financial services. We see it in insurance. We see i…”

“I think it's easier to generate cash on cash returns purely off good investments than it is to do financial returns. And find strategic value in companies.”

“Maybe VCs are typically me first. I think that's the wrong way. It should always be others first to network effectively.”

“A lot more VCs are starting to offer venture debt funds just because, and obviously I understand that, that Nova's in a different situation with a corporate Azure, your one LP, but, you know, I see that increasing demand for liquidity”

“I think what matters is expertise. And so your ability to deliver value to that person by bringing them a perspective or an insight that they hadn't had before, that's what makes you special. And it doesn't matter if you're 16 years old or 66 years old.”

“So my initial vision was actually launching platforms to space. It was pretty exciting actually thing with robotics capabilities, but I think that the market was, there was interest from NASA but, you know, pitching to various VCs, I think For good reasons, yo…”

“So once you move through the TRL scale with that seed funding from government, right? Especially if it's a technology that either NASA or DOD is interested in, then, you know, that gives you More credibility and also ammo to go and pitch to VCs, right?”

“And so that's, that, that's a natural thing where I think a lot of venture investors think a lot about when they get in, but they don't think as much about when they get out. And you need to be as rigorous about that decision as you do in the former.”

“In the first seven years of Renaissance, which is now known as the premier quant trading fund around the world, but the first seven years, we also had about half the money in venture, and for the first five years, venture dominated the returns.”

“The entry prices have gone up Way faster than exit prices, which means that returns are going to come down.”

“A regular venture fund would be great, but a fund of funds would Could work to engage dozens of venture funds in the region. And then this bringing in the major companies could add an extra element of interest in the whole thing where we're trying to invest in…”

“If you're taking bets on things that are already showing positive, you know, wins then you're not really fueling all the innovation from the bottom.”

“And I actually just read some research this morning that shows you know, investing in 50 companies in a fund actually gives you potential for better returns than picking very, very few select investments that knowing that like a third of them are going to fail…”

“Sitting in a room for hours watching pitches of founders that aren't, that don't fit your thesis is a huge waste of time for VCs. They would much rather be on, you know, on the phone having one-on-one calls with people catching up and hearing about a deal thro…”

“And I do think in this market where VCs are expecting more at an earlier stage accelerators feel, fill a unique gap where they're taking bets you know, taking bets really early on not expecting you to have really anything other than great team market, you know…”

“For VCs, you can attract them through a lot of online or digital presence on LinkedIn or X because they're more tech savvy, but you're not going to find much luck with you know, old school investment bankers or private equity funds who would, you know, who you…”

“Where everyone in the VC space thinks that, okay, out of 10, two may work. I feel that there's, every company should have a right life cycle, should be given enough rope to deal with it because not every company will become a billion dollar company, but it can…”

“Venture board members are normally distributed. The large group of them are in the middle. And they're fine. They have little to no operating experience. And they provide value in four ways. They make introductions. They write checks. They provide some strateg…”

“Our incentives aren't fully aligned. Yours are to common shareholders. Mine are to preferred. Mine are to my LPs and my partners. You, yours are to yourself and to your customers”

“So something I've learned is investors who really emphasize meeting in person and instead of giving news over an email, give it over a phone call. That's a green flag.”

“We started out bootstrapping, and then we got it in our minds that we're a startup. We need to go get raised venture capital, and I think we spent Three to four months too focused on trying to raise venture capital and not enough focus on building good fundame…”

“Every VC will ask you, what's your retention? And I'm like, this is not a business for retention. Venless businesses should never be measured on retention.”

“We know we've got 98% of all venture capital going to male founders”

“So far, what we found out is VCs don't know how to invest in an operating company and don't want to.”

“The biggest venture funds in the planet are fundraising Better than they ever have. But it's almost as though there's two separate venture markets. There's the emerging manager, smaller fund market, and then there's the massive manager, mega fund market. One i…”

“We might do the old T two D three triple twice, and then double, double, double over a period of five years in terms of revenue. That's a great revenue path, correct? And you kind of got to tell them, look, that used to be great. Now it's just good because gre…”

“This is the best time ever to start your own firm. Not necessarily the best fundraising environment, those things go in certain cycles, obviously, but the ability to raise capital, the ability to build a firm with having your back office taking care of your le…”

“Get a few people that believe in you to, and just get some capital together, or invest very small amounts even of your own capital, and just get going. I think that's more important than, you know, going to school and going to get your MBA, even though I got m…”

“If I were to ask the, whatever the typical staff or the typical member of Congress was, if they weren't on a committee that, like a banking committee or financial services committee or something like that, if I were to ask them, what do you know about venture …”

“In the last year or so, I think we're at 63 or 64% of kind of total venture dollars.”

“This is, Essentially the outsourced R&D arm of every industry. And I think, you know, it's important to remind policymakers of that. There's no more Bell Labs. You know, there's no more all the innovation happens in some lab and some big Fortune 500 company. T…”

“Less than one percent of venture dollars are going into this sector.”

“Something like 56% of all twenty-twenty-five venture capital dollars were raised in the San Francisco Bay Area.”

“I think that the future of innovation is going to come from the Less flashy industries than what we've seen historically. I believe it's going to come from the regions and areas that, as I, listen, I born and raised California, love the West Coast. I do believ…”

“There's only so many large enough seminal companies in an era that you're either in them or you're not. And if you're in them, then the valuation doesn't matter.”

“You got growth investors who usually do CD doing A's and B's. You got A and B investors doing Seeds, you got seeds doing pre-seeds, you got pre-seed investors trying to invest in people before they know they have an idea, right? So it's like this knock-on effe…”