20VC: Fintech OG Sheel Mohnot on Lessons from Investing in Flexport and ChipperCash and Missing Robinhood and Chime, Why Overly Large GP Commits are Dangerous, Biggest Mistakes Managers Make with Fund I and Emerging Markets; Which Survive?
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Release Date: 08/15/2022
20VC: Clubhouse Founder Paul Davison on What Went Right and What Went Wrong | What Does Clubhouse Do Now To Regain Mindshare? | Why Clubhouse is not a Content Platform? | What is the Next Wave of Consumer Social and Does Web3 Play a Role? |
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
is the Co-Founder and CEO @ , the startup that believes people are at the centre of every moment, providing a platform to talk with friends and meet new friends. To date, Paul has raised over $310M with Clubhouse from a16z, DST, Elad Gil, Naval Ravikant, and many more. Prior to co-founding Clubhouse, Paul was the Founder of Highlight, a location-based consumer social service backed by Benchmark. Before Highlight, Paul actually spent time at Benchmark as an EiR. In Today's Episode with Paul Davison We Discuss: 1.) Entry into Startups: How Paul came to found Highlight in the early days...
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20VC: Why Greed is the #1 Enemy of Venture Returns, Why Not Enough VCs Play to Win and Lessons from Scaling to $100M and 1,200 Employees and Then Cratering with Julio Vasconcellos, Founder @ Atlantico
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
is the Founder and Managing Partner @ , one of the leading early-stage funds in Latin America. Prior to the world of venture, Julio got his break in the world of startups as Facebook’s first country lead for Brazil. Julio then went on to co-found Peixe Urbano, a company he scaled to over 1,200 employees and $100M+ in revenue. Post the sale of Peixe Urbano, Julio became an EiR @ Benchmark Capital where he met Scott Belsky. Scott and Julio went on to co-found Prefer, a Benchmark backed company transforming the future of work. If that was not enough, Julio has a stellar angel track record...
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20 Product: The No 1 Metric You Need To Look at When Building Product | Why the Best in Product Have No Domain Experience | Why You Should Not Hire From Incumbents & The Difference Between Good vs Great PMs with David Lieb, Visiting Group Partner @ Y Comb
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
is one of the product OGs of the last decade. As the founder of Bump David pioneered how over 150M users shared data, contacts and more before the company was acquired by Google. At Google, David took this one step further by creating Google Photos, which he has led with immense success for the last 9 years. In the last few weeks, David announced his latest move, to join Y Combinator, one of the world's leading accelerators as a Visiting Group Partner. If that was not enough, David also has a stellar angel portfolio with the likes of Rippling, Flexport, Tally, Maven and many more. In...
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20VC: From Struggling to Raise Funding to IPOing at Close to $9BN Just Five Years Later; The $8BN Company You Might Not Know | How To Build Large Companies with Small Teams | The Biggest Hiring Lessons and Mistakes with Seba Kanovich, CEO @ dlocal
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Seba Kanovich is the CEO @ , the #1 payments leader with a single solution focused on Latin America and other emerging markets. In June 2021, dlocal raised $617M in their NASDAQ IPO listing valuing the company at nearly $9BN. Before their IPO, dlocal raised from some of the best including General Atlantic, Bond Capital, and Oren Zeev to name a few. Prior to dlocal, Seba was CEO @ AstroPay, a leading payment solution provider in Emerging Markets. In Todays Episode with Seba Kanovich We Discuss: 1.) The Journey to CEO of an $8BN Company: How Seba made his way to the role of CEO of an...
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20 Sales: How To Interview Sales People; The Red Flags and What to Look For, How Sales Leaders Should Change Goals and Quotas in Harder Markets and What Reps Can Do To Ensure They Hit Their Numbers in These Markets with Eleanor Dorfman, Sales Leader @ Ret
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
is a Sales Leader @ , the company that allows you to build internal tools, remarkably fast. Prior to Retool, Eleanor joined Retool when there were only three account executives and has scaled the sales org sales to over 30 AEs, many SEs, and an entire SDR team. Before Retool, Eleanor was at Segment, where she built out the company’s customer success operations team before pivoting to creating an expansion sales team, renewals team, and a new business sales team. Finally, before Segment, Eleanor made her way into startups, starting as an unpaid intern at Clever, just four...
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20VC: Why 95% of Venture Capital is Not Really "Venture Capital" | The Five Core Levers Needed To Assess Risk and Price a Startup | The Future of Venture; Who Wins, Who Loses, What Happens to the Crossover Funds with Will Quist, Partner @ Slow Ventures
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
is a Partner @ . Over the last decade, the team at Slow Ventures have invested in the earliest rounds of over 500 companies including Robinhood, NextDoor, Airtable, Solana and many more. As for Will, prior to Slow he spent over 8 years at Industry Ventures and before industry, cut his teeth in the world of finance at Banc of America. In Todays Episode with Will Quist We Discuss: 1.) Entry into Venture: How Will made his way from 6th generation San Francisco to Partner @ Slow? What are 1-2 of the biggest takeaways from his early 1-1s with Don Valentine? What does Will know now that he...
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20VC News: Anchor Founder, Mike Mignano Joins Lightspeed as Partner: The Future of Social Media | Why Clubhouse Has a Challenging Model | Why TikTok Could be a $2TN Company | Why BeReal is Defensible | What Happens To OpenSea in a New World for NFTs
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
is a Partner @ , one of the most successful venture firms of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Snap, Affirm, Epic Games, Mulesoft and more. As for Mike, prior to venture, he was Head of Talk for Spotify where he led the podcast, live, and video businesses for the world’s leading audio streaming platform. Michael came to Spotify through their acquisition of Anchor, a company he co-founded and is credited for democratizing podcasting globally. Mike has also been a prolific angel investor with a portfolio including Cameo, Pipe, Sandbox VR and Stir. In Today's Episode...
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20VC: Arm CEO Rene Haas on How The Best Leaders Make Decisions and The Trade-Off Between Speed and Quality | Leadership Lessons from 7 Years at Nvidia | How Companies Can Retain Speed, Innovation and Agility at Scale
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
is the CEO @ Arm. The technologies that Arm creates are used in over 230+ Bn devices with everything from sensors to smartphones to servers. In 2016 Softbank made Arm it's largest ever acquisition with a reported price of $32Bn. As for Rene, he was appointed CEO in February 2022 having spent the last 8 years in numerous different roles within the company. Before Arm, Rene was Vice President & General Manager of the Computing Products Business Unit at Nvidia where he enjoyed a very successful 7 years with the team there. In Today's Episode with Rene Haas We Discuss: 1.) Entry into...
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20Product: Calendly CPO Annie Pearl on Why All PLG Companies Eventually Need to Embrace Enterprise, Why it is Easier to Scale into Enterprise than Visa Versa and the Calendly PLG Playbook; What Works and What Does Not?
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
is the CPO @ , the company that makes scheduling meetings simple and painless. The company now has over 10M users around the world and over 50,000 companies loving the product. As for Annie, before Calendly, Annie led Glassdoor's product vision and user experience, managing a 70 person product and design org. Prior to Glassdoor, Annie led enterprise product teams at Box both before and after their 2015 IPO. If this was not enough, Annie is also on the Board of WorkRamp and Well Health. In Today's Episode with Annie Pearl We Discuss: 1.) Entry into Product From Consulting: How did...
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20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
is a Managing Director @ , a firm with a portfolio including the likes of Stripe, Nubank, Twilio, Netflix, Snowflake and many more incredible names. As for Logan, at Redpoint he has led investments in the likes of Ramp, Monte Carlo, Cribl, Crossbeam and Acuity MD to name a few. Before joining Redpoint, Logan spent over 5 years with the team at Battery where he made investments in Pendo, Amplitude, Dataiku, Braze and Kustomer. In Today's Episode with Logan Bartlett We Discuss: 1.) Entry into Venture: How Logan made his way into the world of venture joining Battery Ventures? What are...
info_outlineSheel Mohnot is a Co-Founder and General Partner @ Better Tomorrow Ventures, a $225M fund that leads rounds in pre-seed and seed-stage fintech companies globally. Sheel and Jake (his co-founder) invested for many years together before founding BTV and wrote checks into Mercury, Flexport, Ramp, and Hippo Insurance to name a few. As for Sheel, before BTV he ran 500 Fintech for close to 7 years, and before that was a founder, founding two companies, both of which were acquired. If that was not enough, Sheel is also a master at measuring the width of swimming pools and making cameo appearances in music videos with Justin Bieber.
In Todays Episode with Sheel Mohnot We Discuss:
1.) Entry into Venture:
- How Sheel made his way into the world of venture having founded 2 fintech companies?
- Why did no LPs give Sheel money in the early 500 Fintech days? What were some of his biggest lessons from investing in 100s of companies with 500 Fintech?
- How did BTV with Jake come together most recently? What are the biggest differences to Sheel of being a fund manager vs being an investor?
2.) The Power Law:
- How does Sheel define "the power law" in venture capital? What multiple of return would be power law status?
- Given the size of outcome available with these power law returns, how does Sheel approach portfolio construction? Would it not be best to invest in 100s of companies?
- Who does Sheel believe has done the indexing approach best? Why?
3.) Venture Capital has Never Been Less Collaborative:
- Why does Sheel disagree with Harry that venture capital has never been less collaborative?
- Why now, for the first time, are large multi-stage funds taking single-digit ownership?
- Does Sheel agree with Harry it is moronic to have "guaranteed pro-rata"? How does Sheel approach re-investment decision-making? When does he pay up vs not?
4.) The Biggest Wins and Misses:
- What have been Sheel's biggest wins from a cashback and a multiple perspective?
- How did Sheel miss the chance to invest in both Robinhood and Chime early on? What did he not see? How would he have thought differently with the benefit of hindsight?
- How have Sheel's biggest hits and misses impacted how he invests today?
5.) Emerging and Frontier Markets:
- Does Sheel share Harry's concern for the removal of capital from emerging markets?
- Why does Sheel believe that India, South East Asia and LATAM will be fine?
- Why does Sheel believe Pakistan and Africa are most in trouble?
- What advice does Sheel give to his emerging markets founders today?
Items Mentioned in Today's Episode:
Sheel's Favourite Book: Enders Game