20VC: Insight Managing Director, Deven Parekh on The Current Funding Mania, Compression of Round Timelines, Fund Deployment Speeds Increasing & How To Think Through Price and Time Allocation Across the Portfolio
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 17 May 2021
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Deven Parekh is a Managing Director at Insight Partners, one of the leading investing franchises of the last 25 years with $30Bn+ in capital commitments, 400+ primary investments and over 200 portfolio acquisitions. Deven himself has made more than 90 investments since joining in 2000 including in the likes of Twitter, Alibaba, JD.com, Chargebee and Automattic (WordPress) to name a few. Deven also sits on the boards of Checkout.com, Calm, Saks.com, Optimizely and 1stDibs, again naming a few. If that was not enough, Deven also serves on the Board of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Board of the Tisch New York MS Research Center. As a result of his investing success, Deven has been named on Forbes Midas List 5 time and has been selected as a Top 100 Venture Capitalist by CB Insights 4 times.
In Today’s Episode with Deven Parekh You Will Learn:
1.) How Deven made his way into the world of venture and how that led to his becoming a Managing Director @ Insight, way back in 2000?
2.) How does Deven analyse the current fundraising mania? Does portfolio discipline and temporal diversification matter anymore? How has Deven and Insight seen the velocity of fundraises change over the years? What can Deven and Insight do to get compress their decision-making timeliness with the compression of fundraising timelines?
3.) How does Deven assess his relationship to price and price sensitivity? What have been some core lessons for Deven when comparing deals that they did which were "cheap" vs "expensive"? How do Insight think about required levels of ownership today? Does Deven believe it is possible to build ownership over time? What is required to do so? What are the challenges?
4.) How would Deven describe his style of board membership today? How has it changed over time? What advice does Deven have for younger board members scaling into the role? How does Deven think about his time allocation across the portfolio? What is the optimal? How does this differ from reality? Why do your winners never need you?
5.) How does Deven evaluate his own insecurities and self-doubt today? In what way have these changed over time? How does Deven analyse the "weight of his words" within Insight? How does Insight structure the internal decision-making process to ensure that everyone's voice is heard? In what ways can firms foster that security for young partners to feel they can bring anything to the table?
Item’s Mentioned In Today’s Episode with Deven Parekh
Deven's Favourite Book: What We Know About Climate Change (The MIT Press), Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process
Deven’s Most Recent Investment: TetraScience
As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We are back. Welcome to 20VC with me, Harry Stebbington. What a show we have for you today? In the |
| 0:04.3 | Hot Seat, one of the biggest capital deployers in the market with over 30 billion in capital commitments |
| 0:09.2 | and over 400 portfolio companies. They are one of the leading investing franchises the last 25 years. |
| 0:15.0 | And so with that, I'm thrilled to welcome Devin Parack, managing director at Insight Partners, |
| 0:19.4 | where Devin himself has made more than 90 investments, |
| 0:22.1 | including in the lights of check this out. Twitter, Alibar, J.D.com, charge, be vinted and automatic, |
| 0:28.6 | the makers of WordPress, to name a few. Devin also sits on the boards of checkout, where we had |
| 0:33.1 | Guillaume on the show just last month, Calm, Sacks.com, optimisedly in first dibs, again, to name a few. |
| 0:39.4 | And if that wasn't enough, Devin also sits on the boards of the Carnegie Endowment for International |
| 0:43.6 | Peace and one that's very close to my heart in the board of the Tish, New York MS research |
| 0:47.7 | centre, with my mum obviously having multiple cirrhosis, really meaningful one for me then. |
| 0:51.8 | As a result of his investing success, Devon's also been named |
| 0:54.4 | on the Forbes Midas list, no less than five times. And I do want to say a huge thank you to |
| 0:58.7 | Guillermo at checkout, Jeff Lieberman and Thomas at Vinted for some amazing question suggestions |
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... |
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