20 VC 031: Investing in Gaming, Luxury Goods and Disruption with Maha Ibrahim, General Partner @ Canaan Partners

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

🗓️ 27 April 2015

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Maha Ibrahim is General Partner at Canaan Partners. Maha is renowned in the venture industry for her ability to to spot technology trends extremely early, proven through Maha being one of the 1st investors to recognise the huge potential of social gaming. As a result, Maha led Canaan's early investment in social games pioneer PicksPal (acquired by Liberty Media) and was a seed investor in Kabam, the world's largest developer of massively multiplayer social games. Due to Maha's incredible success in venture, she was included in Silicon Valley the '40 Under 40' award by The Silicon Valley Business Journal and is a regular on Bloomberg TV.

Items Mentioned in Today's Show:

In today's episode you will learn:

How Maha made her transition into the world of Venture Capital?
As one of the 1st investors in social gaming, what did Maha see that other people did not?
With the gaming industry being as fast moving and fickle as it is, shown through the likes of Zynga's troubles, is Maha concerned for her gaming portfolio companies, in their ability to maintain their dominant presence in the sector?
Maha is an investor in The Real Real, a company which had revenues of over $100m last year. What does Maha believe is the reason for this incredible success and where does she see the future for The Real Real?
Increasing amounts of capital means increasing competition for VCs, what does Maha believe VCs can bring to the table to beat off the competition?
What is Maha most impressed by, in terms of entrepreneurs pitching to her?
Where does Maha believe the next big forms of disruption are coming from?

We finish today's episode with a quick fire round where we hear Maha's thoughts on the hardest part about being a VC, how Maha measures her success as a VC and her most recent investment and why she said yes?

You can follow Maha on Twitter here!

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You are listening to episode 31 of the 20 minute VC. Now on today's show, I am thrilled to welcome
0:06.5	Maha Ibrahim, general partner at Canaan Partners. Maha is renowned in the venture industry for her
0:13.4	ability to spot technology trends early, proven through Maha being one of the first investors to
0:19.2	recognize the huge potential of social gaming.
0:22.2	She led Canaan Partners' early investment in Social Games pioneer Pix Lab, which was acquired
0:28.0	by Liberty Media, and was a seed investor in Kabam, the world's largest developer of massively
0:33.9	multiplayer social games. As a result of Mahas incredible success, she was included in the
0:40.0	Silicon Valley 40 under 40 list and is a regular on Bloomberg TV. We had such a great time recording
0:46.8	this and I can't wait to hear what you think. So without further ado, here is Maha.
0:51.3	Three, two, one, zero.
0:57.7	You have now arrived at your destination.
1:01.0	First, I'd like to start off by hearing a bit about your background and how you got into
1:05.4	the technology industry and then later made your transition into the world of venture capital.
1:10.3	Could you tell us a little bit about that?
1:12.4	Absolutely.
1:13.2	Thank you for having me.
1:14.8	I joined venture 15 years ago during the first bubble, and about a year later, it subsequently popped.
1:24.4	I had spent my years prior to that thinking that I would go into academics.
1:31.2	So I have a PhD in economics from MIT.
1:36.4	And my desire was to go into academics.
1:40.8	When I was in graduate school, I noticed that it was a pretty solitary existence and decided thereafter not to go into academics, but more to go into industry.
1:51.4	So I went to BCG in San Francisco for eight months and looked outside my window and said there's all this technology innovation happening.
	...

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