20 VC 081: From YC to VC with Weston Gaddy @ Bain Capital Ventures

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4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 21 October 2015

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Weston Gaddy is a Senior Principal at Bain Capital Ventures where he focuses on investments in early-stage companies and assists the portfolio operations group. Weston is also a YC alum with Frogmetrics, a handheld survey device company, he co-founded in college and received funding from Founders Fund, Y Combinator and Alexis Ohanian at Reddit. Outisde of the tech and VC world Weston was a Weston worked as a strategy consultant for media, financial service, and consumer product clients at Bain & Company in New York.

In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How did Weston make his way into the technology and VC?

2.) What was Weston's biggest takeaway from the YC experience? Has the experience impacted his investing strategy?

3.) Why is the world of branding changing from dominant players using traditional mainstream channels to a more open opportunity for startups to connect with consumers? What is changing?

4.) On the topic of brand loyalty how brands create brand loyalty in the fickle generation of young millenials often with a mercenary outlook?

5.) What sectors have most opportunity to exploit this revolution in branding? Why do you say those sectors? Have you based any of your investments around these assumptions?

6.) How important is it for VCs to specialize and have superb sector knowledge in something?

Items Mentioned In Today's Show:

Weston's Fave Book: The Sixth Extinction

Weston's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Dan Primack's TermSheet

Weston's Most Recent Investment: Jet.com

As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Weston on Twitter here!

If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the 20 minute VC with your host Harry Stebbings and what a special episode do we have in store for you today as we welcome Weston Gaddy.
0:09.2	Weston is a senior principal at Bain Capital Ventures where he focuses on investments in early stage companies and assists with the portfolio operations of the group.
0:18.6	Weston is also a Y combinator alum with Frog Metrics at a handheld survey device company.
0:24.6	He co-founded in college and received funding from Founders Fund, Y Combinator and Alexis
0:30.5	Ohanian at Reddit.
0:32.2	And outside of the tech and VC world, Weston was a strategy consultant for media, financial service and consumer product clients
0:39.3	at Bain & Company in New York. And in stage show with Weston, we actually slightly follow on from
0:44.9	our previous interview with Patricia Nakashay by discussing how the behaviour of the emerging
0:50.3	millennial market is affecting start-ups and brand loyalty, and what sectors have the
0:55.6	most opportunity to exploit this revolution in the branding industry? But first, would you like the
1:01.6	chance to win Bradfeld's amazing book Venture Deals? If so, I want feedback. Now, there's a strict
1:08.2	rule. There can be no positive feedback. I want to hear what you guys do not like, what you want more of, guests you'd like to have on the show and questions you'd like to hear answered. To do this, all you need to do is email Harry at the 20 minute VC.com, all in letters, with the suggestions that you'd like to make. So when you email in the feedback, you'll be automatically submitted in to the competition
1:31.1	to win Bradfeld's signed copy of venture deals.
1:34.3	And to let you all know, we will begin releasing the names of the winners of this competition
1:38.6	on Monday the 26th of October.
1:41.3	So stay tuned and enter now.
1:43.7	But it is now time for me to pass the microphone
1:45.7	to welcome Weston Gaddy, Senior Principal at Bain Capital Ventures.
1:55.6	You have now arrived at your destination. Well, Weston, it's an absolute pleasure to have you on the 20-minute VC.
2:02.6	Thank you so much for joining us today.
2:05.6	Happy to be here.
2:07.6	Now, I'd love to hear a little backstory about you and how you made your way into the VC industry.
	...

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