20 VC 033: The Pros and Cons of Venture Capital, Atomico and Entrepreneurship with Chris Dark, President International @ C2FO

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

🗓️ 4 May 2015

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Quote of the Day: “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard." John F. Kennedy

Chris Dark is President International at C2FO, the Union Square Ventures backed company is the priceline for working capital where companies 'name their own price'. Prior to C2FO, Chris was VP at Atomico, the London based venture fund founded by Nicklas Zennstorm. At Atomico, Chris was on the boards of Chemist Direct, Fab, Hailo, Quipper, Wrapp, Knewton, Bebestore, and Gengo. If that wasn't enough Chris has also held roles at AOL, Bain & Co and started his own company GameReplays.org, an early esports community, which Chris built to 1 million uniques per month!

Items Mentioned in Today's Show

In Today's Show You Will Learn:

Where it all began for Chris and how he made his move into venture?
What skills Chris learnt from founding his company and how he applied them to the venture industry?
What were the hardest aspects of building Chris' company and how did he overcome them?
What are the best reasons to want to join the venture industry?
What made Chris leave his VP role at Atomico to rejoin the entrepreneurial game with C2FO?
Having both invested in startups and raised funds as a startup, what tips would Chris give to founders potentially entering a round of funding?
How does Chris feel the tech eco system in London is developing and what Chris believes can be done to further improve it?

We finish today's show with a lightning round where we hear Chris' thoughts on whether university is necessary or not, the next 5 years for him and his most recent investment and why he said yes?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to episode 33 of the 20 minute VC with your host, Harry Stebbings.
0:05.9	Now, a quick shout out to Stefan Heller for introducing me to today's guest, Chris Dark.
0:11.7	And what an awesome guest Chris is today. He is a true entrepreneur.
0:17.1	He founded GameReplays.org, an early e-sports community in 2002, building it to 1 million
0:24.0	uniques per month. Following game replays, Chris has held leadership positions at AOL and Bain, before making
0:31.5	his foray into venture capital with Atomico, the London-based venture fund founded by Skype founder Nicholas Zendstorm.
0:39.3	Soon Chris became VP at Atomico, however his entrepreneurialism could clearly not be repressed
0:45.3	and Chris therefore left to join C2FO as President International.
0:50.3	Now it's time for me to shut up, so without further ado, here's Chris Dark.
0:54.9	Three, two, one, zero.
1:00.0	You have now arrived at your destination.
1:03.1	Chris, thank you so much for coming on the show. I'm so excited to have you here.
1:07.1	Thanks, Harry. Great to be here.
1:08.5	Now, you've enjoyed an incredible career, but can you start from the
1:12.0	beginning and tell us where it all began and how you made your move into venture? Sure. So I've had
1:18.5	kind of one of those, I'd say a bit of a Jack of all Trade Master of None careers. So I started off
1:23.8	when I was doing my PhD at Oxford, I started my first business.
1:29.0	And that was a games company.
1:31.3	It was one of the very early e-sports companies.
1:34.9	Not like now when we've got Twitch that just got bought for a billion dollars and people
1:38.6	winning five million pound prizes or five million dollar prizes in gaming.
1:41.9	We were back in 2002, three, we knew this would be big, but we were back in 2002 three um we were kind of we knew this
	...

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