Venture Unlocked: The playbook for venture capital managers

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 Michael Silton and Alejandro Guerrero of Act One Ventures, a Los-Angeles based firm that invests in pre-seed and seed-stage .

Before becoming Managing Director of Act One, Michael was Executive Director of the UCLA VC Fund for three and half years. He was also CEO & Founder of RainMaker Systems(to which he took public) and co-founder of UniDirect Corp. Prior to being General Partner at Act One, Alejandro was Volunteer Associate at UCLA Ventures from 2013-2016,  Co-Founder & CEO of Uniq Apps and Co-Founder & President of the Live Entertainment Network.

We chatted with them about their unique partnership, how they tangibly drive real diversity into cap tables, and how they navigate in today’s white-hot market.

A message from our sponsor

Anduin is revolutionizing fund management with streamlined fund operations, digitized fund subscriptions, and real-time status updates. 

Traditional, paper-based subscriptions are costly, tedious and error-prone, with up to 80% of submitted documents being incorrect and considered not in good order.

Fund managers lack real-time visibility, facing manual processes, endless back-and-forth and a mountain of emails, documents and spreadsheets.

Anduin’s investor onboarding workflow improves the investor experience, bringing clarity, guidance, and efficiency to fund subscriptions which drastically reduces error rates.

The Anduin platform allows GPs to perform fund operations simply and efficiently with improved data accuracy, freeing up time so they can focus on what they do best... investing.

For more information, or to arrange a demo, visit fundsub.io/ventureunlocked

In this episode we discuss:

02:15 How the team got into investing

05:22 Why Michael started an independent firm, after so many years as an operator

13:10 Key lessons learned from raising their first fund

15:11 Staying positive when fundraising is going slow

22:53 The Act One Ventures investment model

26:34 Why learning from failures is a superpower

29:18 How their unique differences as a partnership drive value to founders

38:35 The Diversity Rider; What it means and why is it critical for the future of underrepresented GPs and founders.

Mentioned in this episodeAct One Ventures

I’d love to know what you took away from this conversation with Michael and Alejandro. 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

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 Sergio Monsalve, founding partner of Roble Ventures, a seed firm based in Silicon Valley that invests in solutions that help human progress. Their portfolio includes Kahoot, Mosaic, and Dragonboat, among others. 

Prior to Roble, Sergio spent 14 years at one of the longest standing VC firms in the world, Norwest Venture Partners, where he led investments in companies such as Udemy and Adaptive Insights. Before he started his investing career, he held various roles in high-growth technology companies like eBay and Portal Software. He currently teaches at his alma mater, Stanford, on education and entrepreneurship. 

We chatted with Sergio about equity and diversity in the VC world, adapting to a smaller GP model after so much time at a large partnership, and how he thinks about investing in human enablement technologies.

A message from our sponsor

Anduin is revolutionizing fund management with streamlined fund operations, digitized fund subscriptions, and real-time status updates. 

Traditional, paper-based subscriptions are costly, tedious and error-prone, with up to 80% of submitted documents being incorrect and considered not in good order.

Fund managers lack real-time visibility, facing manual processes, endless back-and-forth and a mountain of emails, documents and spreadsheets.

Anduin’s investor onboarding workflow improves the investor experience, bringing clarity, guidance, and efficiency to fund subscriptions which drastically reduces error rates.

The Anduin platform allows GPs to perform fund operations simply and efficiently with improved data accuracy, freeing up time so they can focus on what they do best... investing.

For more information, or to arrange a demo, visit fundsub.io/ventureunlocked

In this episode we discuss:

02:19 Why Sergio decided to get into venture and the unique challenges he faced

04:47 Sergio’s departure from a large shop in Norwest to starting Roble

07:45 Transitioning from a partnership-driven ethos to being a single operator

10:23 The meaning of ‘human-enablement’ investing

13:27 Post-pandemic predictions

16:46 Why you must bring diversity on a team

20:31 Diversifying the decision making process and identifying implicit bias

24:44 Investing in highly competitive markets with discipline

28:19 Sergio’s parameters for investing

32:01 Capitalizing founders in the appropriate way in today’s market

36:19 What did Roble Ventures look to accomplish in the early days

39:58 The most counterintuitive thing Sergio ever learnt

41:27 Dominant trends coming up in venture

43:22 Investors he is inspired by

Mentioned in this episode

Roble Ventures

I’d love to know what you took away from this conversation with Sergio. 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

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 Semil Shah, founder and general partner at Haystack, a pre-seed and seed-stage supporting outlier founders. Haystack’s portfolio includes DoorDash, Instacart, HashiCorp, Figma, Applied Intuition and many more.

Semil is also Venture Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, and in 2017, was selected to the Midas Brink List.  He previously was a venture partner at both GGV Capital and Bullpen Capital.

We covered topics like the challenges Semil faced when trying to get into VC, how he’s evolved his approach over the years and his current and future view of the industry. 

A message from our sponsor

Anduin is revolutionizing fund management with streamlined fund operations, digitized fund subscriptions, and real-time status updates. 

Traditional, paper-based subscriptions are costly, tedious and error-prone, with up to 80% of submitted documents being incorrect and considered not in good order.

Fund managers lack real-time visibility, facing manual processes, endless back-and-forth and a mountain of emails, documents and spreadsheets.

Anduin’s investor onboarding workflow improves the investor experience, bringing clarity, guidance, and efficiency to fund subscriptions which drastically reduces error rates.

The Anduin platform allows GPs to perform fund operations simply and efficiently with improved data accuracy, freeing up time so they can focus on what they do best... investing.

For more information, or to arrange a demo, visit fundsub.io/ventureunlocked

In this episode we discuss:

02:26 Semil’s path into VC and some of the challenges

06:00 Initiating relationships with LPs

12:54 Scaling as a venture firm

16:15 Semil’s portfolio construction methodology

20:30 Were there any transferable elements from LSVP and GGV to running a seed fund?

23:21 Semil’s take on differentiation

31:06 Do LPs push venture firms to be too big?

33:25 Redefining venture scale outcomes

40:08 What it means to be disciplined

41:15 Semil’s view of the venture landscape today

43:50 The most counterintuitive lesson he’s learned being a VC

46:07 Underrated characteristics of successful VCs

Mentioned in this episode

Haystack Ventures

I’d love to know what you took away from this conversation with Semil. 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

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

Today we’re thrilled to bring you my conversation with Justin Fishner-Wolfson, co-founder and managing partner of 137 Ventures, a growth-stage venture firm that provides customized liquidity solutions to founders, investors, and early employees of high-growth private technology companies.

With a total AUM of $1.5B, 137 Ventures has backed some of the most impactful companies of the past decade, including Wish, Flexport, SpaceX, Uber, and Airbnb. 

Prior to launching 137 ventures in 2010, Justin worked on the investment team at Founders Fund.

A message from our sponsor

Anduin is revolutionizing fund management with streamlined fund operations, digitized fund subscriptions, and real-time status updates. 

Traditional, paper-based subscriptions are costly, tedious and error-prone, with up to 80% of submitted documents being incorrect and considered not in good order.

Fund managers lack real-time visibility, facing manual processes, endless back-and-forth and a mountain of emails, documents and spreadsheets.

Anduin’s investor onboarding workflow improves the investor experience, bringing clarity, guidance, and efficiency to fund subscriptions which drastically reduces error rates.

The Anduin platform allows GPs to perform fund operations simply and efficiently with improved data accuracy, freeing up time so they can focus on what they do best... investing.

For more information, or to arrange a demo, visit fundsub.io/ventureunlocked

In this episode we discuss:

02:10 Justin’s journey into venture capital

03:36 Learnings from Founders Fund

05:52 Differentiating yourself in tangible ways

07:45 How Justin thinks about the sales process

10:34 Fund sizing

14:59 Liquidity solutions for the future

17:42 How efficient are the secondary markets right now?

20:40 Justin’s philosophy on risk

26:00 The considerations of check size and ownership requirements

28:53 What are the toughest things to get right in building a firm?

31:01 Avoiding talent atrophy and ensuring generational succession

32:56 The hardest lesson learned in building a firm

39:47 The most counterintuitive lesson Justin learned in investing

42:19 Learnings from misses

43:47 Justin’s inspirations

Mentioned in this episode137 Ventures

I’d love to know what you took away from this conversation with Justin. 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

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.

A message from our sponsor

Anduin is revolutionizing fund management with streamlined fund operations, digitized fund subscriptions, and real-time status updates. 

Traditional, paper-based subscriptions are costly, tedious and error-prone, with up to 80% of submitted documents being incorrect and considered not in good order.

Fund managers lack real-time visibility, facing manual processes, endless back-and-forth and a mountain of emails, documents and spreadsheets.

Anduin’s investor onboarding workflow improves the investor experience, bringing clarity, guidance, and efficiency to fund subscriptions which drastically reduces error rates.

The Anduin platform allows GPs to perform fund operations simply and efficiently with improved data accuracy, freeing up time so they can focus on what they do best... investing.

For more information, or to arrange a demo, visit fundsub.io/ventureunlocked

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

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

Our guest today is Miriam Rivera, managing director and CEO of Ulu Ventures, an early seed stage venture fund in Silicon Valley focused on IT startups. Currently Ulu Ventures has an AUM of >$200MM and the team has invested in companies such as Palantir, BetterUp, SoFi, Guild, and Span [For full disclosure, Ulu Ventures is also an investor in my startup, Allocate).

Prior to Ulu, Miriam was deputy general counsel at Google, which she joined in 2001 as the second attorney.  She graduated from Stanford University, where she earned the AB, AM and JD/MBA degrees. Miriam is the co-founder, former co-president and on the board of Stanford Angels & Entrepreneurs, an open source network of Stanford alumni investors and entrepreneurs.

Listen to our conversation to hear Miriam’s thoughts on moving from angel investing to starting a firm, being a husband and wife team, the reasons behind Ulu’s large portfolio strategy, and why diversity is so important to her.  

A message from our sponsor

Standish is the largest provider of fund administration services to Venture Capital funds globally. Currently, we serve approximately 750 Venture Capital funds and have more than $150 billion in committed capital under administration.  

Standish has been designed by experienced Chief Financial Officers with a deep understanding of the service needs of both finance departments and General Partners at every stage of the product life cycle.  Standish can handle all of the needs of finance department so General Partners can focus on investing.

Standish is an employee owned company.

https://www.standishmanagement.com/

In this episode we discuss:

02:05 Miriam’s journey into the investment side

03:23 Why they started Ulu and raised outside capital

05:22 The challenges of starting a fund as a wife-husband duo

08:14 Navigating their working relationship

11:33 Their unique view on what portfolio construction should be

14:06 What the stats say on returns

16:53 Trade-offs between size of portfolio and ownership

20:20 Strategies for venture investing at the seed-stage

23:14 Ulu’s unique decision making framework

29:15 Benefits of investing in diverse teams

31:58 Changes that can be made in the LP/VC ecosystem

35:06 LPs with diverse managers

38:18 The social vs. financial impetus in making investments in diverse managers/ partners

40:39 Miriam’s most counterintuitive learning as an investor

42:00 Companies Ulu missed out on

43:36 Inspirations in the VC world

Mentioned in this episodeUlu Ventures

I’d love to know what you took away from this conversation with Miriam. 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

Follow me @samirkaji for my (usually) daily thoughts on the world of venture capital.

We’re pleased to provide this week’s episode with Ben Casnocha, founding partner of Village Global.

Prior to Village, Ben was an entrepreneur and also acted as Chief of Staff at LinkedIn and Greylock working directly with Reid Hoffman. Ben has also co-authored two New York Times bestselling management books, The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age (with LinkedIn chairman Reid Hoffman and entrepreneur Chris Yeh). and The Start-Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career (with Reid Hoffman).

Village ventures has $250M AUM and was co-founded with Erik Torenberg, Founder and current chairman of On Deck, and Product Hunt’s first employee. Together, they’ve invested in over 200 companies, and use a very unique community driven approach to serve their founders. The firm is based in Silicon Valley and backed by some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs in Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Reid Hoffman, and Sara Blakely.

We chat with Ben about the importance of curating networks, how they use an unique incentive model within the Village community, how they performed their portfolio construction model, and what venture trends are here to stay.

A message from our sponsor

Standish is the largest provider of fund administration services to Venture Capital funds globally. Currently, we serve approximately 750 Venture Capital funds and have more than $150 billion in committed capital under administration.  

Standish has been designed by experienced Chief Financial Officers with a deep understanding of the service needs of both finance departments and General Partners at every stage of the product life cycle.  Standish can handle all of the needs of finance department so General Partners can focus on investing.

Standish is an employee owned company.

https://www.standishmanagement.com/

In this episode we discuss:

02:10    Why Ben doubled down on venture capital

04:43    Ben’s learnings from working with Reid 

08:08    How the fund leverages its relationships with luminary LPs

11:27    Curating networks for scale

14:30    Monetary and access incentives for collaborators in the VC community

18:08    What characterizes a great founder/ learnings from luminaries

21:55    The firm’s feedback framework

25:08    How Ben and team constructed their portfolio

29:49    Village’s acquisition and exit models

32:39    How does Ben think about flexibility and rules when it comes to ownership

34:50    Trends driving the current venture ecosystem

38:26    Relationship between institutions and seed funds

40:45    Looking into the future: What does Fund 5 look like for Village

42:22    What Ben has learned so far

43:18    How his thinking has changed over his career

45:44    Ben’s biggest inspirations

Mentioned in this episode

* Village Global VC

* Ben’s blog

* Ben’s books

Disclaimer: This presentation does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any security. No representation is being made that any investor or portfolio will, or is likely to, achieve profits or losses similar to those discussed. Targets discussed have been established based on several assumptions that may vary depending on the type of investment.  There is no guarantee that the conditions on which such assumptions are based will materialize as anticipated and will be applicable to Village Global’s portfolio investments.

I’d love to know what you took away from this conversation with Ben. 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

Today’s episode is with Lan Xuezhao, founding partner of Basis Set Ventures which has raised $301M across two funds. Lan has extensively studied AI, data science, and human psychology, and with Basis Set, she has combined those elements to bring a very unique approach to investing.

Lan’s background in corporate development at Dropbox and management at McKinsey has contributed to her data driven approach to sourcing and investing. She has a PhD in Psychology from the University of Michigan. 

We chat about Lan’s unique investment philosophy, how she found GP/LP fit for Fund 1 and then Fund 2, how her firm has many shared characteristics of a portfolio company, and what makes for a founder super power.

A message from our sponsor

Standish is the largest provider of fund administration services to Venture Capital funds globally. Currently, we serve approximately 750 Venture Capital funds and have more than $150 billion in committed capital under administration.  

Standish has been designed by experienced Chief Financial Officers with a deep understanding of the service needs of both finance departments and General Partners at every stage of the product life cycle.  Standish can handle all of the needs of finance department so General Partners can focus on investing.

Standish is an employee owned company.

https://www.standishmanagement.com/

In this episode we discuss:

02:18    Lan’s journey into venture capital

07:40   How did she go unconventional on fund size

10:06    Lan’s learning about GP/LP fit

13:57    Constructing a different LP base in Fund 2 vs. Fund 1

17:18    The structure of the fund’s tech and investment team

21:01    Eliminating bias

22:56    Founder psychology + super power thesis

26:00 Top two key traits of the best founders

28:31    How Lan sees BSV’s place in the market today

31:25    Future of firms in her size range

34:14    Her Anti-Portfolio

36:09    Inspirations from the investment world

Mentioned in this Episode

* Basis Set Ventures

* Thesis on What Makes a Successful Founder

I’d love to know what you took away from this conversation with Lan. 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

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

In today’s show, we have the pleasure of speaking to Braughm Ricke, who has worked closely with emerging managers throughout his career, first serving as CFO of True Ventures, and then starting Aduro Advisors, which started in 2012 originally to focus on the new era of VC. He was also a early Advisor and Investor in Carta and has been an active investor.

Thanks to working with over 350 venture fund clients, Braughm has unique insights on effective fundraising, what makes for a institutional back-office, and broad venture trends.

In this episode we discuss:

01:01    What Braughm saw in 2012 when he started Aduro Advisors to focus on Emerging VC’s

05:49    How the emerging manager space has grown and evolved

06:42    What is different today from the early days

08:49    The fundraising landscape for emerging managers

11:49    Tactics for breaking into family offices

13:51    What managers often need to do between rounds

16:19    The workload for solo GPs

18:12    The support systems GPs need so they can spend more time on core activities

22:56    Common traits amongst successful managers

25:22    The most common mistakes he sees managers make

26:45    What the future holds for venture

29:55    The speed of new firm creation

Mentioned in this episode:

* Aduro Advisors

We’d love to know what you took away from this conversation with Braughm! Follow @SamirKaji and give your insight and questions using 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 a direct message on Twitter.

Podcast Production support provided by Agent Bee Agency

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

We’re so pleased to bring you my discussion with Monique Woodard of Cake Ventures, a seed-stage firm investing in demographic change. To date, Monique has invested in startups such as Blavity, Court Buddy, Mented Cosmetics, and Silvernest. 

Cake Ventures invests in a thesis that is based on a “three-layer” philosophy that the future of technology is being driven by certain major shifts:

* The aging Baby Boomer population

* The shift of minorities driving culture

* The increased spending power of women.

Monique herself has a diverse background in government, venture capital and inclusive entrepreneurship. She was previously venture partner at 500 Startups, an investment scout for Lightspeed Ventures, and she is also the co-founder of Black Founders. 

We chat about a wide-range of topics, from her work in Sub-Saharan Africa, why she chose to start her own fund vs joining a large fund, raising capital, and the importance of building community in venture.

A message from our sponsor

Standish is the largest provider of fund administration services to Venture Capital funds globally. Currently, we serve approximately 750 Venture Capital funds and have more than $150 billion in committed capital under administration.  

Standish has been designed by experienced Chief Financial Officers with a deep understanding of the service needs of both finance departments and General Partners at every stage of the product life cycle.  Standish can handle all of the needs of finance department so General Partners can focus on investing.

Standish is an employee owned company.

https://www.standishmanagement.com/

In this episode we discuss:

01:56    Monique’s journey into venture capital

04:26    Why she joined 500 Startups

06:51    Key insights on the globalization of startups from her time at 500 Startups

08:57    Transitioning from 500 Startups to Cake Ventures

11:10    The three layers of the Cake that form her thesis

13:39    Early days of Cake Ventures

17:30    Raising capital in a virtual environment

20:32    Institutionalizing yourself and your portfolio

22:52    Why Monique decided on being a solo GP

28:46    When you should think about bringing on additional partners

31:13    The future of diversity in the seed ecosystem

35:08    Monique’s biggest learning as an investor

37:00    Some missed opportunities

38:23    Inspirations in the investment community

Mentioned in this Episode

* Cake Ventures

* Gray New World - 2020 Report on Aging

* 500 Startups

I’d love to know what you took away from this conversation with Monique. 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