20VC: Are VCs Still “Open For Business”, How VCs Attitude To Risk Has Changed & The 2 Most Valuable Assets To Founders Today with Fred Destin, Founding Partner @ Stride VC

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

🗓️ 8 April 2020

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Fred Destin is a Founding Partner @ Stride.VC, one of Europe's newest and largest early-stage seed firms. Prior to co-founding Stride, Fred was a General Partner @ Accel where he was the lead investor and board member at Deliveroo, Pillpack (acq. AMZN for $1BN) and Carwow. Prior to Accel, he was a partner at Atlas Venture (now Accomplice) where he invested in and served on the board of Pillpack, Zoopla (IPO), Secret Escapes, Integral Ad Science (partial exit to Vista at $850M) and TheCurrencyCloud to name a few. Fun fact, his portfolio has a total enterprise value of more than $10BN and he generated in excess of $700M in exit value to investors.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How did Fred make his way into the world of venture and come to co-found one of Europe's newest and largest seed funds in Stride.VC?

2.) If you look to Twitter, all VCs are "open for business", does Fred really believe the market is still open for business? How will deal volume be affected? How bad does Fred think this could get? How does this downturn compare to that of the dot-com and 2008?

3.) Why did Stride decide to take the decision to pause on investing at this moment in time? How does Fred respond to the suggestion of better pricing and less competition at this time? How does Fred believe venture investors view of risk evolves at this time? What is the first to change?

4.) With many new funds deploying their first fund in 18 months, does Fred think we will see a gravyard of new fund managers out of cash and with cash hungry portfolios? What advice does Fred give to newer managers of other elements they have to be minfdul/aware of?

5.) How does Fred think about the right way for managers to communicate with their LPs at this time? What has Stride done that has worked? Does Fred believe we will see many LPs defaulting on their initial commitments? How does Fred think emerging managers can navigate this?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:

Fred’s Fave Movie: Mulholland Drive

Fred’s Most Recent Investment: Collective Benefits

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

Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Now, this is a very special episode of the 20-minute VC for a couple of reasons. First and
0:04.4	foremost, it's with my best friend and business partner Fred Destin. It is one of the biggest
0:08.1	privileges of my life to get to work alongside him. And then second, because we're focusing.
0:12.1	We're focusing on COVID, the landscape today and what it means for the investor mindset.
0:16.1	For those that don't know Fred, Fred and I co-founded Stride together and Stride is one of Europe's newest and largest early stage seed firms. Prior to co-founding Stride, Fred was a general partner
0:25.0	at Excel, where he was the lead investor and board member at Deliveroo, Pillpack, which was
0:29.0	acquired by Amazon for a billion dollars, and Carwale. Prior to Excel, he was a partner at Atlas Venture, now accomplice, where he invested in and served on the board of Pilpac,
0:43.6	Zupla, which IPO, integral ad science, which had a partial exit to Vista for $850 million,
0:45.9	and the currency cloud, to name a few.
0:50.4	Fun fact on Fred, his portfolio has a total enterprise value of more than $10 billion,
0:55.3	and he generated an excess of $700 million in exit value to his investors.
0:59.7	But that's quite enough from me. So now I'm very excited to handover to Fred Destin, founding partner at Stride VC.
1:01.4	Three, two, one, zero.
1:06.7	You have now arrived at your destination.
1:09.9	Fred, my dear friend, as you noted, is one of my life's biggest joyous to work with you.
1:13.9	So delighted to have you back on the show for a third time, but thank you so much for joining me once again, Fred.
1:18.7	It's my pleasure to be here.
1:20.0	I would love to kick off today, and I'll pretend like I've never heard this before, but for those
1:23.6	have maybe missed our prior episodes, how did you make your way into a world of venture?
1:28.1	And funny one for me to ask, but how did you come to co-found stride?
1:31.5	Well, I have one of the worst backgrounds of anybody you know in venture capital, given that I
1:35.5	started doing derivatives. But one day, I was actually working Goldman Sachs on hiding the Greek
	...

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