Jeff Bonforte explains the CFIUS regulatory timeline and forced divestiture process following national security concerns over foreign ownership of Grindr.
Insight
Bonforte: Only naive beginners and 20-year veterans succeed in venture capital
“We say freshmen and seniors make all the money in, in the venture business, like in the entrepreneur business. So you either don't know the rules. So you go into your business and you break a bunch of rules without knowing, or you know all the rules and you bu…”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Bonforte: Ron Conway's SV Angel Fund I generated a multiple-hundred-x return
“Like Ron Conway's hit rate for SV Angel in, in one was unbelievable. He had like a multiple hundred X on SV Angel one.”
Insight
Bonforte: Founders must commit 20 years to overcome venture capital's luck variance
“If you want to be an entrepreneur, be successful, do it, commit yourself to 20 years. You know, be an entrepreneur for 20 years. Do four or five startups, because the amount of luck that has to overlap from externalities and internal things that have to cross …”
Insight
Bonforte: Negative emotions like anger drive customer behavior changes better than delight
“Instead people tended, entrepreneurs tend to focus on making customers Like, delighting customers, making customers happy, and I said, we really should focus more on pain and frustration and anger. It's the negative emotions that drive behavior changes, not th…”
Assertion Supported
Bonforte: Grindr was a rare retroactive CFIUS divestiture of a foreign buyer
“And this was one of the only cases ever where CFIUS had actually retroactively unwound a deal. CFIUS had denied deals with foreign buyers, but they had never, what they're trying to do with TikTok today over the years is TikTok would be the second one after Gr…”
Assertion Partly supported
Bonforte: Grindr faced privacy lawsuits from 13 state attorneys general upon acquisition
“We were being sued at that point by 13 attorney generals in the U.S. Over privacy and data leakage, something the company had not done, but it was everyone believed the company had done.”