- Partner track is much less risky / easier. Raising a fund is a 12 month commitment then you have to build a track record.
- “This is a get rich slow industry.”
- The advantage of starting a new fund is that you can design a thesis yourself.
- Operationalizing a fund is the key differentiation today.
- Founders in transition are forgotten about.
- Spouses have more say in careers than we think.
- Companies with a clear roadmap to profitability continues to be the thing to monitor. Relying on future funding puts you at cyclical risk.
- Milken identified financing gap in market. Was leader in financing these types of companies; being first matters.
- More and more data becoming available for companies. There was no way to scrape job listings 20 years ago.
- It’s hard to use analytics when you don’t have data.
- In public markets, hedge funds have changed ways we think about investing. Because they have a lot of money they pour significant money into operations as a competitive advantage.
- The bar is low for the VC tech stack. Many are not using the power of the tool; have to be diligent about implementing it.
- Investing in the right CRM and customizing it for specific use case is the backbone for VCs.
- The richest person in NYC is Bloomberg; he did this by selling into investors.
- Can your product evolve to meet the needs of investors?
- There are 11 steps to value creation; most underserved step is portfolio acceleration (First Round Capital as an example)
- Especially at the earliest stages, the things you can help with most are with hiring and customer intros.
- There are always ways to add / destroy value to a company.
- 90% of calories spent at larger shops / hedge funds is spent on origination; other steps in process are automated.
- You used to work in GM and work your way up the ladder. Now you join different companies and bounce around. This has been great for helping people in the startup community attract talent.
- Have a high bar for the company you join.
- More focus is on diversity; most of this signaling is synthetic if you look at actual data.
- Most of the time, you can’t talk actual numbers in a public context (unless raising through general solicitation)
- Of Inc 5,000 companies, 6.5% of companies raise VC.
- Standard structures used by VCs works for a narrowly-defined company. Most wealthy people in the world didn’t get rich by selling off part of their business early; they did so by tightly controlling equity and bootstrapping until an exit offer came.
- Traditional VC encourages great risk; great risk is a privilege that comes with an affluent background.
- Underrepresented founders don’t want money just in order for funds to hit a quota.