August 03, 2021

Jeff Morris, Jr. on finding your own fund/market fit, having like Lightspeed and Sequoia as LPs, and the ever-changing dynamic between entrepreneurs and VCs

45 minutes

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

Today’s episode is with Jeff Morris, Jr., founder of Chapter One Ventures, an early stage product fund that has invested in Cameo, Pipe, Alt, and Roam. After a significant track record as an angel investor (including investing in Lyft) he started Chapter One in 2019 that featured tier one investors such as Lightspeed and Sequoia as LPs.

Jeff was previously the VP of Product at Tinder, spearheading popular features like Boost and Tinder Gold. He graduated with an MBA from UCLA’s School of Management and is a frequent speaker on monetization, product, and growth.

We chat about finding your product market fit as an investor; thinking about scaling yourself, and the ever-changing relationship between entrepreneurs and VCs.

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In this episode we discuss:

02:11 Jeff’s journey into investing

05:43 Jeff’s learnings as an angel investor to being a scout to starting a firm

08:38 The main differences between being an angel investor and a full-time venture capitalist

11:13 Adjusting to doing venture full time

13:51 How Jeff evolved along each step of the way in his investing career

16:22 How he constructed his LP base, and him taking on capital from Tier 1 VC’s

17:58 How Jeff thought about fund sizing and what he learnt from his first fundraising

22:14 Why bring a Chief of Staff onto a VC firm

24:47 The debate between optimizing for # of companies vs. ownership

27:27 Learnings from Sequoia about investing and entrepreneurship

30:23 Jeff’s decision-making model

34:39 The future of the VC

37:17 The pros and cons of having a brand on Twitter/ social media

39:52 The most counterintuitive lesson Jeff has learned

41:20 Lessons learned from companies that he missed

43:26 Inspirations in the VC world

Mentioned in this episode:Chapter One Ventures

I’d love to know what you took away from this conversation with Jeff. Follow me @SamirKaji and give me your insights and questions with the hashtag #ventureunlocked. If you’d like to be considered as a guest or have someone you’d like to hear from (GP or LP), drop me a direct message on Twitter.

Podcast Production support provided by Agent Bee Agency

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ventureunlocked.substack.com

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By Samir Kaji

4.9

8080 ratings