The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

20VC: Zoom From Series A to IPO, How VCs Can Provide CEOs with Additional Leverage and Why The Negative Effects of Signalling Are Very Real with Santi Subotovsky, General Partner @ Emergence Capital


Listen Later

Santi Subotovsky is a General Partner @ Emergence Capital, one of the valley's leading venture firms of the last decade focusing on enterprise & SaaS applications. Within their incredible portfolio is the likes of Salesforce, Zoom, Box, Veeva Systems, SuccessFactors and many more. As for Santi, he has led deals in the likes of Zoom, Crunchbase, Clearbanc, Top Hat and Chorus.ai to name a few. Before Emergence, Santi founded AXG Tecnonexo, a SaaS e-learning company in Argentina which he expanded to 150+ employees across Latin America and the U.S. Santi is also a founding board member of Puente Labs, an organization that helps founders of Latin American high-potential growth companies scale their businesses globally.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Santi made his way from founding a Latin American EdTech business to being one of the valley's most successful investors of 2019 with Zoom's IPO? What was the biggest barrier he faced when getting into VC? How did he overcome it?

2.) What does Santi believe his superpower as an investor is? What did Santi see in Eric Yuan and the 30 person team at the time that made him believe they would be successful? What made how Eric thinks about presents product so special? What did the relationship building process look like between Eric and Santi in the early days?

3.) How does Santi like to work with his portfolio companies? How does Santi think about time allocation across the portfolio? Why does Santi believe it is crucial to not just spend time with the CEO but the exec team also? Where does Santi most like to provide value and leverage to the CEO? Why does Santi believe all VCs are just sales reps?

4.) Why does Santi believe that a vertically focused fund is the optimal strategy to pursue today? What are the benefits? What are the drawbacks? How does Santi think about the obvious overlap between consumer and enterprise today? With the thematic focus, how does Santi think about loss ratio and batting average? How does Emergence approach the element of both ownership and price? Where do they optimise?

5.) With larger and larger funds, how does Santi see the future of venture? Why does he believe that we will see vertically focused capital-as-a-service? What does this look like in reality? Is Santi concerned by the extended window of privatisation that is now present in today's capital markets? How concerned is Santi by the compression of fundraising timelines and what does that to investor founder relationships?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:

Santi’s Fave Book: Candide by Voltaire

Santi’s Most Recent Investment: Openpath

As always you can follow HarryThe Twenty Minute VC and Santi on Twitter here!

Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The PitchBy Harry Stebbings

  • 4.4
  • 4.4
  • 4.4
  • 4.4
  • 4.4

4.4

479 ratings


More shows like The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

View all
This Week in Startups by Jason Calacanis

This Week in Startups

1,273 Listeners

a16z Podcast by Andreessen Horowitz

a16z Podcast

1,032 Listeners

The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors by SaaStr

The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors

175 Listeners

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy by Colossus | Investing & Business Podcasts

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

2,315 Listeners

Equity by TechCrunch, Mary Ann Azevedo, Kell, Theresa Loconsolo, Rebecca Bellan, Kirsten Korosec, Devin Coldewey, Margaux MacColl

Equity

338 Listeners

Masters of Scale by WaitWhat

Masters of Scale

3,995 Listeners

Y Combinator Startup Podcast by Y Combinator

Y Combinator Startup Podcast

217 Listeners

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg by All-In Podcast, LLC

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg

9,095 Listeners

No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups by Conviction

No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups

121 Listeners

The Ben & Marc Show by Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz

The Ben & Marc Show

135 Listeners

BG2Pod with Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley by BG2Pod

BG2Pod with Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley

461 Listeners

AI + a16z by a16z

AI + a16z

29 Listeners

Lightcone Podcast by Y Combinator

Lightcone Podcast

22 Listeners

Training Data by Sequoia Capital

Training Data

43 Listeners

Uncapped with Jack Altman by Alt Capital

Uncapped with Jack Altman

17 Listeners