Ari Newman explains why Massive VC deferred raising a traditional blind-pool fund in 2020.
Insight
Newman: Corporate VC right of first refusal creates de facto poison pills
“When a corporate leads and as soon as legal gets involved, they usually want things like right of first refusal and most favored nation. And sometimes that can be absolutely fine. And sometimes if you're in a highly competitive industry, that becomes sort of a…”
Insight
Newman: Mandatory investment committee consensus filters out outlier deep tech deals
“The deals that get done are the obvious ones. And the one, you know, and because if somebody doesn't understand, especially in deep tech or advanced technologies if there's somebody that doesn't get it, like, They like, or they did one deal four years ago and …”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Newman: Space, energy, and quantum deep tech markets will rapidly expand
“We believe these are markets that absolutely are going to grow and are essentially existential for humanity and certainly the Western world to continue to thrive over the next 10 or 20 years.”
Assertion Partly supported
Newman: Raising a debut Fund I now takes at least two years
“Have David and I spent the, you know, year or now two years it takes to go raise a fund one, you know, it's at least two years now.”
Insight
Newman: Institutional LPs discount SPV track records compared to pooled vehicles
“When you're talking to institutional allocators and professional
LPs, family offices and endowments, when you've got a basket of SPVs, they don't look at it the same way as a pooled capital vehicle for obvious reasons.
and so if you really think ultimately w…”
Insight
Newman: Invest in startups once at least one risk vector is resolved
“We knew that the right time to get onto a cap table was when a company had solved at least one of the multiple vectors of risk.
There's team risk, there's market risk, there's product risk, regulatory risk in some domains, all these vectors of risk.”