20 VC 005: Be The Best CEO with Kent Godfrey

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

The Twenty Minute VC

Finance, Venturecapital, Tech News, News, Siliconvalley, Technology, Investing, Startups, Business

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 19 January 2015

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In episode 5 of The Twenty Minute VC, we are joined by Kent Godfrey, General Partner at Pond Ventures. Prior to entering into the VC industry Kent was Chairman and CEO of Andromedia before merging it with MacroMedia. Kent was also CEO of Frictionless Commerce concluding with the sale of the company to SAP in 2006.

Kent has previously served on the board of numerous companies including LiveRail (acquired by Facebook), TRM Corporation (Nasdaq:TRMM), HipBone Communications (acquired by Kana) and Vocal Point Inc (acquired by Telecom Italia).

In this session you will learn:

What is the most challenging aspect of being a CEO?
Should CEO's have a clear and precise strategy for the future?
What can a CEO do to position themselves to be more successful?
How can an individual develop the skills to be a successful CEO?
What Kent learnt from his meetings with Steve Jobs?
What is the most challenging aspect of transitioning from CEO to VC?
What do VCs do when concerned about an investment?
What is the best aspect of being a Venture Capitalist?
Is it possible to go straight into the Venture Capital industry from University?

We end the episode with a quick fire round where Ken describes the future of the Internet Of Things (IOT). Why Founders are better than a Founder? Plus, what the biggest misunderstanding of the Venture Capital industry is?

For all the resources mentioned in today's show heav on over to www.thetwentyminutevc.com

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the 20 minute VC with Harry Stebbings session number five.
0:06.0	This is the first episode recorded after the release of the podcast, so I just wanted to thank you all so much for helping us get to number two in the investing section of iTunes and the top 10 for business.
0:18.0	But moving on to today's show, we have Kent Godfrey. Now, Kent has had a stellar
0:23.5	career in the tech industry. He was CEO and chairman of Amdra Media and later CEO of Frictionless Commerce
0:30.2	before joining Pond Ventures in 2005. But before we jump into the interview, would you like to win
0:36.6	all the books mentioned in the first 10 episodes and a chance to pitch to one of the VCs we have interviewed?
0:42.9	If so, all you have to do is leave a review on iTunes and email Harry at the 20 minute VC.com with the name you left the review under.
0:51.8	Now you've heard enough from me, it's time to jump straight into the interview.
0:59.4	You have now arrived at your destination.
1:02.9	Absolute pleasure to have you on the 20 minute VC.
1:05.7	Let's dive straight into it.
1:07.5	All right, same here, happy.
1:09.1	Very happy to do it.
1:11.0	Could you tell us a little bit about your background and what was the driving force for your
1:16.4	entering into the venture capital world? Yeah, I think, well, as you probably know, my background
1:24.1	is entrepreneurship all the way through from the early 80s till present and you
1:30.1	know 20 years of doing it on the company side and then after 10 years of being the CEO at two
1:38.0	different companies i really decided i wanted to focus on the things i really did well and be able to apply them to multiple
1:47.4	companies simultaneously rather than a single company. So in a nutshell, I'd say that was my
1:53.0	driving motivation. So your aha moment was the specialization of doing the thing that you were best at.
2:00.3	Yeah, exactly, exactly.
2:02.2	I mean, as a CEO, you know, you deal with all sorts of things.
	...

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