20VC: How I Lost Airbnb at Seed Because of an Exploding Term Sheet | Investing Lessons from Roelof Botha & Peter Thiel | Why VC is Less Collaborative Than Ever and Great Companies Are Being Destroyed by Too Much Cash with Kevin Hartz @ A*
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 22 July 2024
⏱️ 63 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kevin Hartz is a Co-Founder and General Partner at A*, an early-stage venture capital firm. Prior to founding A*, Kevin co-founded Eventbrite, a publicly traded company, and served as the CEO for the first 11 years of the company. Before Eventbrite, Kevin co-founded Xoom, a money remittance company that was acquired by PayPal in 2015 for over $1BN. Kevin is also a prolific angel investor having backed companies such as PayPal, Airbnb, Pinterest, Ramp, Trulia, and Anduril at the seed stage, and was an early investor in Uber, Palantir, SpaceX, Square, Gusto and many others.
In Today's Episode with Kevin Hartz We Discuss:
1. What Makes the Best Founders:
- What questions does Kevin always ask founders in the investment process?
- Does Kevin prefer serial or first time founders? Why?
- Does Kevin prefer founders who are new to a problem or who are insiders and experts?
- When Kevin has gotten a founder bet wrong, what did he not see that he should have seen?
2. The Exploding Term Sheet That Cost $10BN:
- How did an exploding term sheet for the seed round of Airbnb cost Kevin $10BN?
- What did Kevin see in the seed round of Airbnb that so few other investors saw?
- Does Kevin agree that the best businesses often start off as ridiculous or toys?
3. From World's Greatest Angel to VC with $600M AUM:
- Why does Kevin think a barbell strategy of Seed and Series C is best today?
- Does Kevin agree that the Series B and growth stage is dead today?
- Why does Kevin strongly disagree that seed is the hardest stage of the market?
- Why does Kevin think that venture is less collaborative than ever?
- How does Kevin approach when to sell vs when to hold a position?
- What are his biggest lessons from seeding and holding Opensea?
4. Learning From the World's Best Investors:
- What have been Kevin's lessons from his relationship with Peter Thiel?
- What have been Kevin's biggest takeaways from investing alongside Roelof Botha in many deals?
- What have been Kevin's biggest lessons from watching and observing the great Pierre Lamond?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I have strong conviction that we're in the early years of the biggest bubble. |
| 0:05.0 | Invidia becoming the most valuable company on the planet is just the precursor towards the bubble of all bubbles. |
| 0:11.0 | What are your biggest lessons from Peter? |
| 0:13.0 | He just views the world under a different lens. |
| 0:16.0 | And with that lens, he'll see something very different from everyone else. |
| 0:19.0 | If you look historically over the decades, |
| 0:21.6 | if you just sit on all the companies and most will go to zero, your power law winners will be so massive. |
| 0:28.6 | They'll just dwarf everything else. I'm not in the practice of selling. I'm in the practice of finding and building companies and sitting on these things for life. |
| 0:35.6 | My word, what a 20 VC we have in store for you today as we welcome Kevin Harts to the |
| 0:39.5 | hot seat. Now, do we think Kevin is the most successful angel ever? Check this out. He did |
| 0:45.0 | Airbnb, Pinterest, PayPal, Ram, and Andrew as an angel. He's now the co-founder and GP of A-Star |
| 0:52.2 | with over $600 million in assets. |
| 0:54.5 | And before becoming a full-time venture investor, Kevin co-founded Eventbright, a publicly traded that he served as the CEO for the first 11 years of the company's lifetime. |
| 1:03.2 | But before we dive in, when a promising startup files for an IPO or a venture capital firm loses its marquee partner, |
| 1:10.1 | being the first to know gives you an advantage |
| 1:12.0 | and time to plan your strategic response. Chances are the information reported it first. The |
| 1:18.1 | information is the trusted source for that important first look at actionable news across technology |
| 1:23.4 | and finance, driving decisions with breaking stories, proprietary data tools and a spotlight on |
| 1:28.8 | industry trends. With a subscription, you will join an elite community that includes leaders |
| 1:33.4 | from the top VC firms, CEOs from Fortune 500 companies, and esteemed banking and investment |
| 1:38.9 | professionals. In addition to must-read journalism in your inbox every day, you'll engage |
| 1:43.5 | with fellow leaders in |
... |
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