20VC: How Both Founders & GPs Should Construct Their Pitch, Why VCs Are Eternal Optimists & What Makes The Best Post-Investment VC/Founder Relationship with Brian Ascher, Partner @ Venrock
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 31 May 2017
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Brian Ascher is a Partner @ Venrock, a leading fund with prior investments including Nest, Dollar Shave Club, AppNexus and many more. At Venrock, Brian invests broadly across enterprise and consumer markets and has enjoyed no less than 10 of his investments exit successfully. Due to this exit rate,Brian has been named to the Forbes Midas List multiple times, for the VCs who have backed the most profitable winners in the last four years. Prior to Venrock, Brian was a Senior Product Manager at Intuit responsible for Quicken and Quicken.com.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Brian made his way into the world of VC and came to be a partner at Venrock?
2.) Does Brian believe that in today's world of 'ask for advice and get money', that slide decks are necessary anymore?
3.) How does Brian like pitches to be structured? How should the deck start? Why should the deck not start with the team or the origin story? Should the deck include the amount being raised?
4.) What are the most common mistakes that entrepreneurs make in pitches? How can they turn these into an advantage and show the VC their unparalleled insight?
5.) How does Brian view the post-investment relationship with founders? What makes for the optimal relationship? Is it possible for VC to be both friend and board member? How does Brian look to scale the relationship curve when getting to know a founder?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Brian’s Fave Book: Extreme Ownership
Brian's Most Recent Investment: Socrates
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We are back and welcome to the 20 minute VC with me, your host, Harry Stebbings. |
| 0:03.7 | I'd love to see you on Snapchat at H. Stebbings with 2Bs. |
| 0:06.7 | All ads get a personal message from me. |
| 0:08.6 | But for the show today, and I'm not sure I've quite had a VC on a show, |
| 0:11.5 | who's had such a good hit rate with investments exiting as our guest today. |
| 0:15.1 | So joining me on the show today, we have Brian Asher, partner at Venrock, a leading VC fund with prior investments in the likes of Nest, |
| 0:21.7 | dollar shave club, app nexus, and many more. At Venrock, Brian invests broadly across enterprise |
| 0:26.7 | and consumer markets and has enjoyed no less than 10 of his investments exiting successfully. |
| 0:31.5 | Due to this exit rate, Brian's been named to the Forbes Midas list multiple times for the VCs |
| 0:36.0 | who've backed the most profitable winners |
| 0:37.6 | in the last four years. Prior to Venrock, Brian was a senior product manager at Intuit, |
| 0:42.2 | responsible for Quicken and Quicken.com. I do also want to say a massive thank you to previous |
| 0:46.7 | guests, David Patman and Nick Beime at Venrock and Alex Rosner, IDG, for the intro to |
| 0:51.5 | Brian today, without which this episode would not have been possible. |
| 0:54.6 | But before we head into the episode today, a lot of people ask me, Harry, you do so many calls |
| 0:58.8 | and interviews, but what do you use? My response? Zoom. The number one video and web conferencing |
| 1:04.3 | service providing one consistent enterprise experience that allows you to an array of activities, |
| 1:09.1 | including online meetings, video webinars, |
| 1:11.6 | collaboration-enabled conference rooms, and business I.M, just to name a few. And it's the easiest |
| 1:16.6 | solution to use, buy, and scale, and for sure, the most straightforward pricing. But hey, |
| 1:21.4 | don't take my word for it. Their partnership with Sequoia in their latest 100 million |
| 1:25.2 | funding around says it all. Zoom really is a must |
... |
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