Fireside with a VC

Episode #86 Flint Capital investing in Israeli startups coming to the USA

Fireside with a VC speaking with Andrew Gershfeld at Flint Capital based in Boston and Tel Aviv talking about funding and supporting Israeli startups and helping them grow into large US companies.

Find this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/3sEIYeIri_E.

Episode #85 Building startups on SalesForce – Place RevOps automation and connectivity

Fireside with a VC talking to Brandon Metcal, CEO of Place, about RevOps (revenue operations) to solve financial forecasting and cash management with sales starting in 2020. Also discussing automating and synchronizing sales to finance, to human resources and other components to streamline SaaS companies that run on SalesForce and now SalesForce CPQ.

Talking about lessons learned from both Place and his previous business where Brandon raised $28m in funding and sold the business making a profit for investors, founders and employees.

We also take a deep dive on how to partner with SalesForce and lessons learned from over 20 years of working within the SalesForce ecosystem.

Place has also carved out a slice from their last funding round for investors on WeFunder to increase the network of support for the company.

Fireside with a VC discussing flipping your business into a US Delaware C corporation from outside of the US. Many startups and teams are born in Europe, South East Asia, Middle East, Africa, LatAm, Canada and everywhere and need to consider if they should flip to the US and if yes, technically how to do it. Considerations on attracting new investors from the US vs the country in which the business was created as well as tax considerations of flipping early or flipping later. Discussing specific tactics to minimize the tax burden and consequences for existing and new investors as well as founders and early employees.

Fireside with a VC discussing how technology has evolved from mainframe-dumb terminal architecture to client-server architecture and making sure that all the right software is on each endpoint, making sure each endpoint is configured correctly, quickly, and efficiently, making sure cybersecurity attacks do not happen, and if they do rapidly rebuild from ransomware for new clients, eliminate vulnerabilities, reduce risk, automate application packaging, deployment, and reduce IT headaches. The economics of modern smart IT and keeping all software up to date. Reducing months to weeks for new customers that have been hacked.

The types of vulnerabilities are changing. How Aiden is staying ahead of the puck on what IT thresholds are changing to and how to program alerts and keep organizations in their own redefined compliance thresholds and providing that information to client organizations. Providing visibility of IT business intelligence to the CEO and C-suite.

#82, Understanding pre & post SAFEs, convertible notes vs priced rounds with Daniel Zimmermann, Partner, WilmerHale

Fireside with a VC is hosting a series of discussions on specific legal topics with the best lawyers from Silicon Valley and around the world. This episode is designed to help founders, VCs, advisors and supporters of startups understand everything they need to know and all the moving parts in convertible notes, pre-money and post-money SAFEs compared to priced equity financings. We start out explaining the key parts everyone needs to understand and then quickly get into an in-depth detailed conversation about how important these legal matters are and how it can be the difference between making a great return or not from an investor's perspective and steering clear of icebergs that can sink your startup or have you end up owning much less of your startup on the day of exit.

Daniel Zimmermann is a legendary corporate securities lawyer in Silicon Valley, a Partner at law firm WilmerHale and an absolute experienced expert on this topic.

Legals is something every founder, angel and VC should be an expert on and we are amazed on a daily basis how many investors and founders fail to understand the basics and moving parts, which ones to push for when negotiating and the finer subtleties that normally only come from decades of experience.

Find this episode on all podcast platforms: https://open.spotify.com/show/57V2XYhekz5ETiOwtanWIn?si=a835a3f3b5804cbb.

YouTube: https://youtu.be/pI6J1Q6W6dU

https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-zimmermann-lawyer/

Fireside with a VC hosting Brian Nugent, Founding General Partner of Sway Ventures at Professor Romans’ class on VC at Chapman University. Discussing a wide range of topics including:

· Brian’s path to VC from Cisco to startups to venture capital.

· Career advice for junior and senior folks to break into a career in venture capital.

· ESG, women and minorities in venture.

· How venture capital works.

· Each stage of funding from friends and family, pre-seed, late stage seed, series A, B and growth funding rounds and considerations.

· Pros and cons of investing at seed vs growth rounds, ownership targets / expectations for dilution, returns, timing and risk / reward profiles.

· How Sway Ventures adds value.

· Tactics for proprietary deal flow, avoiding bidding wars with other VCs, and delivering value to portfolio companies.

· Primary sources of deal flow.

· Common threads of most successful Sway portfolio companies. What are the characteristics of winning companies?

Find this episode on all podcast platforms: https://open.spotify.com/show/57V2XYhekz5ETiOwtanWIn?si=a835a3f3b5804cbb.

YouTube: https://youtu.be/t17ruj6yFK0

Fireside with a VC speaking with Aakash Shah and Surya Viswanathan, the founders of neonVest, how their platform is democratizing access to VCs for early-stage startups. NeonVest allows founders to instantly get Zooms with VCs, successful founder operators and other superchargers to help with funding, refining and improving their pitch, company strategy, financial model, SaaS metrics, exit preparation, referrals, operations, tech and product, valuation, culture, sales & marketing, pitch deck, pricing & biz models, term sheets, legal, market dynamics, talent & hiring, ideation & user testing, board formation, market sizing and everything else from angel and VC funding to company building and exiting. We also dive into the value prop to VCs and other superchargers and why they participate in this marketplace for Zooms and meetings. We close talking about the current market dynamics for Seed to late stage growth financings in Silicon Valley and around the world.

Fireside with a VC diving into a round table discussion with The Band of Angels, one of the oldest and most active angel groups in Silicon Valley covering the current seed and early stage investing and fundraising market environment and conditions. How are valuations and terms changing, the importance of QSBS tax and when to use priced rounds, convertible notes and the dangers of SAFE notes.

Disclaimer: many of these angel groups are LP investors in our VC funds and active members of our network sourcing deal flow, conducting due diligence, taking board seats, actively adding value to our portfolio companies, impacting our exits and helping us raise more LP capital for our VC funds. Many of the members of The Band are highly successful senior executives from large tech titans as well as successful entrepreneurs that have founded startups, raised angel and VC funding and experienced the spectrum of positive and negative outcomes making them more valuable than many VCs to have in your corner in good and bad times along the startup journey.

On all podcast platforms: https://open.spotify.com/show/57V2XYhekz5ETiOwtanWIn?si=a835a3f3b5804cbb

YouTube: https://youtu.be/D_3mqnLF-7w

#78, Jack Guedj, Band of Angels, one of Silicon Valley’s oldest & most active angel groups

Fireside with a VC diving into current seed and early stage investing and fundraising market environment and conditions. How are valuations and terms changing, the importance of QSBS tax and when to use convertible notes and the dangers of SAFE notes.

Next episode #79 includes the roundtable discussion with the Band of Angels. Jack Guedj is also an active member of Sand Hill Angels. Disclaimer: many of these angel groups are LP investors in our VC funds and active members of our network sourcing deal flow, conducting due diligence, taking board seats, actively adding value to our portfolio companies, impacting our exits and helping us raise more LP capital for our VC funds. Many of the members of The Band are highly successful senior executives from large tech titans as well as successful entrepreneurs that have founded startups, raised angel and VC funding and experienced the spectrum of positive and negative outcomes making them more valuable than many VCs to have in your corner in good and bad times along the startup journey.

On all podcast platforms: https://open.spotify.com/show/57V2XYhekz5ETiOwtanWIn?si=a835a3f3b5804cbb

Episode #74, Charles Hudson, Managing Partner, Precursor Ventures on Generative AI

*Discussing how investors and founders can think about new generative AI startups that appear to have build products in days or weeks compared to years.

*What this new technology means for developing moats or barriers to entry for startups that can create working products so quickly.

*Early days of emerging managers with SoftTech VC / Uncork Capital and working with other emerging managers generating much higher returns than the large 30 year funds.

*Founding a new VC emerging manager and migrating from small ticket LPs to larger institutional LPs.

*Portfolio construction for early seed and strategies for follow on investing.

YouTube: https://youtu.be/qTz9frTbkq8

Episode #76, Claus Skaaning, CEO of DigiShares tokenizing real estate assets

· Discussing tokenization of real estate and other assets via white label solutions as well as launching their own real estate crypto exchange in the US and Europe enabling users to not touch crypto on or off ramps with everything working legally, licensed and compliantly.

· Why tokenization is important?

· How it lowers backend costs saving money and improving the performance of customers?

· What kind of assets are being tokenized other than real estate?

· The importance of fractionalization and democratization of the asset class.

· Creating trading liquidity and growing the demand for finite real estate supply.

· Raising money from investors in the current marketplace.

· How the world will be different as a result of all this digitization of large asset classes in 5 or 10 years from now?

Contact: cs@digishares.io

https://digishares.io/

Episode #75, Hadley Harris, cofounder, ENIAC Ventures, NYC Seed Fund

· Discussing strategies for Seed investment as well as Opportunity Funds for doubling down in winners.

· How much diversification is required for optimal risk mitigation and impact of winners to fund results

· Evolution of the New York startup ecosystem over the past 13 years since ENIAC’s first fund

· Acquisition market in New York

· How to price a seed round and determine the right amount of capital to raise.  

· How much dilution is expected in a first pre-seed round.

· What milestones are expected to get to the next late stage seed round.

· Convertible notes vs SAFE notes vs priced rounds

· What tech sectors are getting the most interest

· Making sure startups have more than a thin layer on top of ChatGTP

https://youtu.be/Lj0OffldWyQ

Recording of the VC Insight Panel at the sold out 7BC Venture Capital event in New York City at Pillsbury March 7, 2023.

VC Insight Panel

Andrea Lamari, General Partner, Manhattan Venture Partners (MVP)

Steve Brotman, Managing Partner, Alpha Partners, Senior Advisor, Pritzker Group

Wiz, Chief Astronaut, Spacecadet Ventures, The Marketing VC

Jonathan Shriftman, Partner, Expanding Capital

Andrew Romans, General Partner, 7BC Venture Capital, moderator

Talking about everything from seed to growth stage capital, dynamics around pro rata equity rights to complex structured secondaries.

Many thanks to sponsors and partners Fidelity, Better Engineering by Salsa Mobi, neonVest and Pillsbury.

Episode #72, Krishna Srinivas, cofounder, LiveOak Venture Partners on Fireside with a VC

Ahead of SXSW very happy to share our podcast with one of Austin’s VC OGs discussing:

• Ten lessons on entrepreneurship from summiting Mt. Kilimanjaro with his wife and kids
• 100% all-in on Texas, early stage, tech and tech-enabled services, Seed to Series A entry point
• Close to $500m AUM at LiveOak
• The evolution of the Austin, Texas VC startup scene
• What sectors and topics founders were working on and how this evolved to today
• Who were the VC funds in the 90s, early 2000s when there were literally fewer than 5 active VCs, then 15 VCs with representatives from NEA, Polaris and other big funds and then the collapse back to 5 to 8 active funds and the rise to today with Austin being a leading city with one of the highest concentrations of VC funds per capita
• The perfect storm of conditions for Austin to become a #2 market after California with huge tech talent and still total lack of local VC capital
• Lessons from the 2000 dot-com crash relevant to today’s 2023 market, how the current batch of startups will move forward from early to growth stage

YouTube: https://youtu.be/1zRJeFouxPA

Episode #71, Andrea Lamari, General Partner, Manhattan Venture Partners (MVP) on Fireside with a VC

Episode #70, John Frankel, cofounder, ff Venture Capital on Fireside with a VC discussing:

· Learnings from Goldman Sachs applied to VC

· Launching the largest VC fund in Ukraine

· Launching a VC fund in Poland

· Managing the 6 VC funds based in New York, but investing across the US

· What percentage of companies get to $100m of ARR and how this drives portfolio construction

· What is the true work and lifestyle in running a VC business from raising capital, sourcing and diligencing deals, reporting, helping startups, numbers, and repeating

· The types of investors John got into fund I and how this changed with characteristics of raising a fund II, III, IV up to fund VI

· The true time table of starting to getting to exits and into carry

· The difference between investing early, mid stage and late stage within the context of a changing dynamic economy

· QSBS tax breaks for LPs, VCs and founders. No tax on the greater of 10x cost or $10m

· Details on why convertible notes are bad and SAFEs are worse

· The best way to construct a board of directors from pre-seed onwards

· Where is the market going? When is the bottom of the market and why?

· Breaking "the economy" into at least 6 different economies

· How the standoff on falling valuations will play out as we recover

· The complex relationship of public markets and private markets

Episode #69, Martin Tobias, founder, Incisive Ventures in Seattle on Fireside with a VC discussing:

· How is Seattle different from Silicon Valley, Austin, or New York startup VC ecosystems?

· Getting away the very last IPO as CEO before the dot-com crash and lessons learned and how these apply to today’s climate.

· Old days of Microsoft and becoming a super angel and launching a Seed VC fund.

· Investing in Google, DocuSign, Ron Conway’s SV Angel I and II Funds

· Figuring out which of his 200 angel investments were the best and developing an investment thesis around this.

· Top meta themes & screening process

YouTube: https://youtu.be/iCl0_4i_rqM

Spotify: https://rb.gy/chjrsf

Episode #68, Steve Brotman, Managing Partner, Alpha Partners & Advisor to the Pritzker Family Office discussing:

· The Alpha model to partner with Seed to Series A VC funds to invest in their pro-rata growth rounds of top winners and share carry with the Seed to Series A VC funds.

· Dynamics of early-stage VC funds deciding to double down or create an SPV to put more capital into winners versus partnering with growth specialists like Alpha Partners.

· Is it bad to let your fund LPs get overexposed to single deals via SPVs.

· The trend of LPs trying to do more directs coinvesting with their GPs and now LPs pulling back from making direct investments and “coinvestments” becoming a bad word.

· Investing in growth rounds in this new 2023 macro-economic environment.

· Expectation of multiples and holding times for growth stage investing.

· What are sensible multiples of ARR to pre-money valuations?

· What revenue year-on-year growth rates are expected for growth stage venture backed startups?

· How growth companies can get to profitable unit economics for growth companies and restructure businesses that were selling $100 to customers for $50.

· Are we heading into a worse economy or is the economy improving over the next 6, 12, 18 months?

YouTube: https://youtu.be/3EXtUiunpcQ

Episode #67, ​Mike Smerklo, cofounder, Next Coast Ventures, $600m+ Austin-based VC and author on Fireside with a VC discussing:

· Moving from Silicon Valley to Austin, Texas

· Cofounding a VC in Austin, Texas with over $600m in AUM focused on Series A and B rounds within 6 years currently investing out of a $310m Fund IV closed in early 2022

· Timing of a perfect vintage within the macro-economy

Episode #66, ​Mark diTargiani, Venture Debt and Startup Banking, Pacific Western Bank on Fireside with a VC. Mark presented to Andrew Romans’ venture capital class at Chapman University as a guest speaker discussing:

· Explaining how Venture Debt works, when it makes sense and when it does not make sense.

· Startup banking and general advice on startups and raising capital.

· The importance of relationships and understanding how to help people in your network to develop your relationships and achieve success.

· Networking within the startup VC ecosystem.

Episode #65, Fireside with a VC speaking with Alex Moore, 1st employee of Palantir ($14.5bn market cap), cofounder of Backplane (one of my investments), cofounder of Nodeprime (one of my investments), Partner at 8VC with $6bn+ of AUM discussing:

• Early days of Palantir up to today where he is a board member

• Focusing on defense related tech startups when most of Silicon Valley did not or does not want to support the U.S. defense industry

• Creating startups with a dual defense + commercial revenue / customer model

• Selling into government / intelligence / military

• Culture of recruiting engineers and founders to focus on military / defense tech

• Startups leveraging data in vertical models

• Venture Studio / incubation models that work within the VC machine, ownership models, founder equity, engineering equity / ESOP pool, attracting follow on funding from classic VCs

• Vesting schedules for founders and employees

• How to retain high value engineers and employees

• Valuations in today’s current market for funding and exits

• How many months runway should startups raise for in today’s uncertain market

• How real is the conflict between the West and Russia & China

• Working with Joe Lonsdale & Peter Thiel

• Opportunity to build software for most of the economy that is not leveraging technology yet, but must

• How the demise of crypto is good for real tech startups

• What makes a great entrepreneur and what makes a fundable founding team

• Succeeding in the current economic environment and growing individual careers

Episode #64, Fireside with a VC speaking with Greg Coquillo, 2x Top Voice on Linkedin for AI, Data Science, Technology and Innovation with 160k followers on LinkedIn, senior exec reducing cognitive overload for users by delivering AI/ML solutions at large FAANG in Seattle. Discussing:

· How he got 160k followers on LinkedIn.

· Having the confidence to be right but also to be wrong and learn via engagement with LinkedIn community talking technology.

· Latest trends in Generative AI, what it means, what works now, and what needs to happen for many breakthroughs for humanity and business.

· Update on AI, ML and Cognitive AI.

· How coming from the world of manufacturing taught him to think differently about the world of software.

· Most fulfilling achievements as a Pricing Optimization Product Manager for one of the largest companies in the world.

· His latest angel and advisory investment DAGsHub.

· Quantum computing and technologies that will take the world by storm.

· Personal journey of moving from Haiti to tech at a top FAANG in Seattle and the drive to give back.

Episode #63, Fireside with a VC speaking with Dan Harvey, Vice Chairman of CBRE discussing WaaS Workplace as a Service and all the changes in a post-Covid world on how to maximize PIC (Productivity, Innovation & Collaboration). Discussing how startups and large companies can get the correct mix of in-office, work from home (#WFH) & offsite events mixing office space, technology and techniques for maximal results. What to measure and how to measure various outputs impacting how companies attract and retain talent in a talent war and how can startups or corporates get the best results from their teams? Money is not free any more. EBITDA matters. Productivity matters. Is it cheaper to build the best mix of technology and methods in-house or outsource any of this.

Episode #62, Fireside with a VC speaking with Brandon Metcalf, CEO of Place discussing challenges for creating and scaling SaaS companies. Brandon is an Austin-based 4x founder, podcast host, board director, advisor, software creator, Salesforce expert and investor. Discussing:

· Fundraising from angels and VCs

· How to track key SaaS metrics for success and tying that to growth, staffing and fundraising

· The balance of investing in more product engineering or growth vs milking what you have for sales and profitability

· Going from point solutions to adding modules, reaching end-to-end solutions and how that impacts customer win rates, changes whom you are selling to and closing business

· “Must have” vs “nice to have” technology in today’s macro-economic environment

· What has changed in fundraising, cash runways, how to deal with investors and employees

· Hiring, firing and growth during an economic downturn

· Lessons learned from fundraising and M&A exits from previous startups

· Working with Salesforce and how to be successful in this massive ecosystem

Episode #61 Fireside with a VC speaking with Kyle Kling, Head of MDI Ventures, the CVC of Telekom Indonesia at Chapman University in Southern California. Discussing:

· The evolution of Corporate Venture Capital (CVC)

· Specifics around “on the balance sheet” vs “off the balance sheet” issues around CVC

· Unique issues for Telekom Indonesia with a board of commissioners including government voting, Singtel and Singapore minority ownership of Telekom Indonesia ownership

· Conglomerate culture, privately held family office culture in South East Asia

· The conglomerate Telekom Indonesia, owns not only a mobile network operator more than twice the size of Verizon, but also pharmaceutical, healthcare clinics, IT services, data centers, financial services, music and entertainment, and 30 other major businesses

· Investing in US companies and other companies outside of South East Asia

· Methodologies for valuing startups in a VC portfolio

· Working at a CVC vs an independent VC

· Compensation and other issues for CVCs

Episode #59 Fireside with a VC talking to Arthur Andrew Bavelas, Managing Partner, Family Office Insights, discussing why the recession is making the current vintage of VC perform better, talking about secondaries, VC strategies to return LP capital back faster via SPVs and secondaries and how to involve LPs in the VC process.

Episode #56, Update on the war in Ukraine from the front lines in Kiev with Eric Kadyrov, Founder at Private Tech Network.

Talking about specific numbers and the state of the war with images, videos and how he has helped move weapons around the country and done direct outreach to thousands of companies to stop doing business with Russia from HP and Cisco to startups.

In this episode Eric is a guest speaker to my class I teach at Chapman University on Venture Capital. Eric is also the founder of Private Tech Network, an AI driven VC as a Service platform where I am an advisor.

Episode #54 Brian Laung Aoaeh, GP @REFASHIOND Ventures on Fireside with a VC sharing his story of going from his home country of Ghana to becoming a VC at KEC Ventures and now cofounder of REFASHIOND Ventures focused on supply chain and sharing research on how family offices can best play in the early-stage venture capital space.

Episode #52 Cindy Padnos, Founder & Managing Partner at Illuminate Ventures. Discussing:

· What it was like being a woman founder and CEO raising VC funding in Silicon Valley decades ago.

· What it has been like being a woman solo GP launching a VC fund in Silicon Valley compared to being a man doing the same.

· Talking about the practical realities of how relationships are formed for women to men and women to women in MBA programs, the VC industry, and how Cindy has navigated and pioneered this reality in Silicon Valley over decades.

· How Cindy has leveled the playing field while purely focusing on financial returns.

· Building personal confidence and overcoming fears.

· Talking about the reality of diversity investing and how this is changing at the VC and founder levels.

· Valuations of SaaS startups now and portfolio construction.

· How the market has been shifting up and down on valuations and what this means for founders and investors.

· The enterprise investment focus of Illuminate Ventures.

· Unique model of forming a 50-person advisory council for Illuminate Ventures with over 50% women.

· How startups and VC funds will perform well even if the economy tanks.

If English is your first language, please play us at 1.5x or 2x faster speed.

Video: https://youtu.be/bdQpwhZRXHI.

Subscribe to Fireside with a VC on YouTube, Spotify and all podcast platforms: https://anchor.fm/FiresideVC.

Episode #51 Kelly Perdew, Cofounder & Managing Partner of Moonshots Capital, Entrepreneur, Military Veteran, Winner of Season 2 - The Apprentice, and father of twins! Discussing:

· Advice to founders on how to raise angel and VC funding.

· How Kelly went from being a VC-backed founder to making angel investments, pooling angel investors together into running a Syndicate on Angel List and then managing his own Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs), and then his own VC funds but still doing SPVs.

· Strategies for investing in late stage seed and late stage pre-IPO growth.

Episode #50 Alan Patricof, godfather of the VC and PE industries, he’s 87 years old now, and founded legendary VC firm Greycroft and seminal PE firm Apax. Alan founded VC fund Patricof Company Ventures with a $2.5m fund in 1969.

· Greycroft has over $2bn of AUM with a reputation trying to keep things from getting too big and follow the path of Apax which has AUM of over $60bn. Their last fund I believe closed in January of 2021 at it’s hard cap of $11bn.

· Alan rather than just add more zeros to Apax, which I think stands for Alan’s initials Alan Patricof Associates Cross-Border, Alan moved on from Apax to found Greycroft. Proving his passion for investing early Greycroft raised its first fund (Greycroft I) with $75 million. Some of Alan’s investments include Steve Job’s Apple Computer, AOL, Xerox, New York Magazine, HuffPost, Audible, Axios, Venmo, Goop, Crafy which we invested in before Greycroft and alongside Greycroft a few weeks ago, Office Depot, and many others.

· Now Alan has teamed up with Abby Miller Levy to launch a new VC fund Primetime Partners focused on funding early stage companies that can transform the quality of living for older adults. At 87 Alan may have some insight and opinions there.

Episode #49 Nicolai Wadstrom, Founder, CEO and General Partner BootstrapLabs, AI focused VC on Fireside with a VC discussing:

· What is real AI compared to AAI (artificial artificial intelligence).

· Founding a VC fund from scratch that is not a spinout of a large existing VC fund.

· Tips and tricks for raising initial LP capital.

· Raising LP capital for a first VC fund and then a second and third VC fund.

· Building a VC brand and finding differentiators.

· Investment strategy for investing in early stage startups.

· Valuations and returns pre-during and -post pandemic.

· What makes a great AI startup.

Episode #48 John Vitti, founder & CEO of VersusGame, a prediction game of culture discussing:

· How he raised $25m in his Series A Funding round and built this company from scratch to transacting over $100m in 2021 with payouts to players, game creators and his startup.

· Being transparent and authentic and developing relationships as a key driver of success.

· The importance of listening to other people and developing empathy leading to spotting trends and being able to form vital partnerships.

· How he and his team came up with a prediction game of culture where players can play for free, for sponsored prizes or cash.

· His belief of how knowledge should be rewarded and how the game is designed to not be a vice or corrupted like Wall Street.

· How to take valuable content and find ways for partners to monetize their content and content creators without advertising, which everyone hates.

· Increasing engagement and developing new rewards for content creators.

· Raising seed capital and venture capital, pivoting and learning from failure.

· Talking about the launch of the VersusGame TV show this summer.

Episode #45 Zach Coelius founder of Coelius Capital an active San Francisco early stage VC fund. Discussing:

· Brutal war story of how Facebook exploded his startup in a good and bad way.

· Working with Mark Zuckerberg as a partner.

· Crashing and burning and rising from the ashes as a person and professional.

· How Zach successfully pivoted from entrepreneur to VC.

· How to launch a Syndicate on Angel List, rolling fund and VC fund without institutional LP investors.

· Advantages of leveraging a diverse network on Angel List.

· Advice to founders on finding product market fit and fundraising.

· Advantages of being a hands-on VC with real founder experience of both success and failure.

· How to raise LP capital from angels and family offices over Zoom.

· Access to deal flow vs being shackled by strict portfolio construction adherence.

· Valuations for startups sane or insane and how to make strong returns in today’s valuation landscape.

Leave a comment to join the discussion.

Subscribe to audio only podcast on all platforms, Apple, Google, Spotify, etc.

Find Zach Coelius’ fund on Angel List.

Episode #45 Ryan Welsh, CEO & cofounder of Kyndi, Natural Language Processing (NLP) AI company, raised $43m in funding from 7BC Venture Capital, Dick Kramlich, Pivot North, Intel Capital & Darling Ventures on Fireside with a VC. Discussing:

· How deep AI is good or bad for humanity and threats to the human race.

· Impact AI will have on economies of different countries and impact on human happiness.

· How NLP is a leap forward for humanity and business.

· Ability to take search to entirely new level and reading and intelligently processing unstructured data in limitless documents beyond human capabilities.

· Investment case for enterprise to adopt NLP and AI.

· How fundraising is different for a B2B AI NLP company compared to a SaaS company.

· Understanding details of AI at the technology level and Kyndi’s pioneering methods of mixing AI methodologies to fuse new methods and capabilities.

· Understanding searching text in the old way, the new way, how Kyndi does it and others by breaking it down into different types of search.

Subscribe to our Audio podcast and YouTube channel. Video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/n2WF8wCVGO0.

• Discussing strategies and advice for first moves when starting a business and then how to raise the first capital for a potentially high-growth high-tech business.

• Characteristics of great founders, recruiting cofounders, advisors, angels and VCs that add value.

• How to triage or think about startups that come into your inbox or orbit.

• What are the key things you try to figure out when looking at a deal for the first time.

• Discussing current 2021 valuations for raising venture rounds and valuations of exits.

• How many boards should a VC be on.

• What is the point of a board, how to run a board meeting and the role a board should play.

• Dynamics of boards and how to communicate across a board and lobby for a specific outcome.

• When should a startup form its first board of directors.

• Understanding key terms to negotiate for and how to communicate and come through with an agreement.

• Investing in startups and VC funds.

• Investment themes changing over time.

• Is the current vintage of VC a good vintage considering entry point valuations and exit point valuations.

• Advice on self-actualization and building a culture or cultural norms that matters more than cash or stock option compensation at a startup?

• How to maintain cultural norms at a high-growth company over time as things change.

• What are you optimistic about?

• Life after death, the universe, the meaning of life and how that focuses decisions we make now.

Episode #42 Andrew Romans talking to Yuri Rabinovich, MD at Tribe V, at their VC Masterclass taking a deep dive on M&A for investors and venture backed startups.

· Different types of M&A exits and considerations: all cash, cash and stock, all stock, milestone based earnouts, PE exit structures & secondaries.

· Different types of M&A buys and specific dynamics: acquihire, team buy, geography buy, tech buy, revenue buy, customer buy, DCF buy, sector buy, PE buy and how this impacts founders vs early or late VCs.

· Secondaries and the direct impact and dynamics around the next fundraising and M&A.

· How a funding round and the post money valuation and cash-on-cash exit return will impact the options for exits and what will satisfy the newest investors.

· Pricing of fundraising rounds considering the exit value and who can buy the company.

· M&A as it fits into venture capital portfolio construction.

· Having the network and speaking to your network to understand the dynamics and multiples for that specific industry. Know this before you found your company or before you invest in that company to understand the entry point valuation and exit expectations and track these multiples of the industry and performance of the startup.

· Integrating M&A valuations and dynamics into your VC investment decisions.

· Lessons learned from Instagram being wanted by Twitter, feared by Facebook and courted by VCs driving optimal perfect storm outcome for Instagram exit. Absolutely nothing to do with DCF at the time of exit.

· Lessons learned from Yahoo! Buying Flickr and Google buying Picasa.

· Q&A with Tribe V about M&A.

Episode #41 Fireside with a VC - Louis David Mangin CEO & Co-founder at Confiant, one of our successful Fund II portfolio companies based in NYC in the cybersecurity malvertising sector protecting users of publishers and advertisers against bad actors attacking their devices, data and stealing wealth via fraudulent investment scams. Confiant is the industry leader in Detecting, Preventing, and Resolving Ad Issues.

Episode #40 Jonathan Fish, CEO & cofounder of QSBS Expert, explaining how to pay zero capital gains / no taxes on your gain up to $10m in tax savings or 10x the cost of your investment, whichever is bigger. Qualifications for Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS) tax exemptions. The small business must have assets of less than $50m on the balance sheet (not valuation) at the time of the investment including the size of the round, must hold the stock for at least 5 years or roll or tack the exit gain into another QSBS qualifying investment within 60 days and hold for a total combined 5 years. Multiple rollover / tacks are permitted. Discussing which states adhere to federal QSBS and which states charge their own capital gains tax on QSBS stock disregarding the federal laws. How founders can best benefit from $10m or more in tax savings from their own gain of their QSBS startups and which documents to file as founders and when to start the 5 year clock ticking. How to gift some of your QSBS stock to trusts which can each get up to $10m+ from a single QSBS stock gain distributed to multiple trusts. Advice and recommendations on not being too overzealous with the QSBS programs and gifting strategies. How the federal Build, Back Better Infrastructure Plan may remove QSBS to free up more revenue to pay for the Infrastructure Plan and how that may stymie job growth, lost payroll tax and the multiplier effect of this program. How startups and investors can document and keep all records in good conduct to ensure benefiting from QSBS and other services offered by QSBS Expert and their other tax expertise. Note: 7BC Venture Capital and Andrew Romans are not offering any tax advice. This blog post and podcast are offered with the understanding that neither 7BC Venture Capital nor Andrew Romans is engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional service. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought.

https://www.qsbsexpert.com/

Video: https://youtu.be/RXl1Cs5g7C8

Episode #39 Brian Cohen, General Partner, New York Venture Partners, Chairman Emeritus, New York Angels, legendary angel investor in Pinterest, Comixology, actively making 3 new investments per week, 100+ and NYVP. Advice to founders on how to raise angel and VC funding, make an emotional and personal connection with the angel, smile a lot, be funny, have breakfast, lunch and dinner with each company before investing, likes startups that understand the customer better than they understand themselves. All startups pivot, iteration is the new innovation, why taking too much capital too early is a huge mistake. I’m not in the investment business; I’m in the exit business. Must see a 20x return to buy into a current valuation and invest. A million reasons why to never invest in SAFEs. SAFEs do not get QSBS tax treatment. Love your investors that loved you and believed in you first. Check out part II of my chat with Brian in episode #41 as we continue our discussion.

Episode #38 Jeff Epstein, Operating Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners and Lecturer at Stanford University, ex-CFO at Oracle, $250bn market cap, ex-CFO at DoubleClick sold to Google for $3.2bn. Talking about key milestones and metrics for VC investors. What VCs want. How many financings rounds a startup should go through on a path to an IPO exit, how much funding a startup should raise at each financing round, what valuations should be, what kind of dilution, how frequently they should raise, how many months of cash runway is healthy, what metrics should the startup show to VCs with regards to revenue, how much of an increase year over year during the life of the startup, other key metrics such as CAC to payback rather than CAC to LTV, churn, # of paying referenceable customers, product market fit survey, % of sales team reaching quota, churn of sales team, annual revenue growth, annual growth of revenue per customer, net renewal rate, gross margin, efficiency score, cash conversion score, customer concentration, Net Promoter score, when to double revenue, when to triple revenue, what it takes to justify a $1bn valuation, comparing metrics for SaaS companies, marketplaces and consumer companies. The changing dynamic of 2021 compared to previous years.

Bessemer Venture Partners was founded in 1911, has over $8 billion AUM,135 IPOs, 20 investing partners, 210+ active portfolio companies, offices in Silicon Valley, New York, Boston, London, Tel Aviv, Bangalore & Beijing.

YouTube: https://youtu.be/8LhFSiUG64c