20VC: Investing In Sectors That Were Cool 2 Years Ago, What Accel's Facebook Fund Taught a Generation of LPs & Why LPs Need A New Discovery Process with Paul Martino, Founding Partner @ Bullpen Capital
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 16 November 2016
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Paul Martino is a Co-Founder and General Partner @ Bullpen Capital, the fund that finds overlooked companies by understanding biases in venture capital. Paul has led several of Bullpen’s key investments including FanDuel, Namely, Ipsy, SpotHero, Classy, and Airmap. Prior to forming Bullpen, he was an active angel investor and personally invested in the first rounds of Zynga, TubeMogul, and uDemy. Before becoming an investor, Paul was the founder of four companies including Ahpah Software (a computer security firm acquired by InterTrust); Tribe (one of the world’s first social networks), and Aggregate Knowledge (a big data advertising attribution company acquired in 2014 by Nuestar).
1.) How Paul made his way into early stage investing from founding and exiting 4 companies? What was the data that made Paul excited for venture?
2.) First has Paul witnessed the Series A Crunch? What does the crunch mean for founders? How should they navigate it and approach burn rates? How does this affect the fundraising time horizon? How does this affect how much startups should raise?
3.) How does the crunch affect valuation? How does this affect investor expectations of startups pitching them? How does Paul respond to Mike Maples' statement, 'bridge rounds are often because startups have simply not hit the metrics for Series A'?
4.) What would Paul most like to see change in the venture ecosystem? Why does Paul not believe there are enough innovative funds? Why is it so hard for innovative funds to raise from traditional LPs?
5.) What would Paul most like to see change in the LP ecosystem? What was the affect of Accel's Facebook fund on the LP community? Why is that such a problem?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Episode:
Paul’s Fave Blog: Matt Ocko
Paul’s Fave Book: The New Thought Police
Paul's Most Recent Investment: Cleanify
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You are listening to the 20 minute VC with your host Harry Stebbings and you can find me on Snapchat |
| 0:04.1 | at H, Stebbings with 2Bs, to see all things backstage with the 20 minute VC. |
| 0:09.0 | Now, for the show today, I'm delighted to be joined by Paul Martino. |
| 0:11.8 | Now, Paul is a co-founder and general partner at Bullpen Capital, the fund that finds overlooked |
| 0:16.6 | companies by understanding biases in venture capital, and Paul has led several of Bullpen's key |
| 0:21.4 | investments including Fanjual, Namely, Ipsy, Spot Hero, Classy, an airmap, just to name a few. |
| 0:27.8 | And prior to forming Bullpen, he was an active angel investor and personally invested in the |
| 0:32.1 | rounds of Zinger, Chew Mogel and Udemi. And before becoming an investor, Paul was the founder |
| 0:37.1 | of four companies, including the |
| 0:38.5 | lights of Tribe, one of the world's first social networks, an aggregate knowledge, a big data |
| 0:43.1 | advertising attribution company acquired in 2014 by New Star. |
| 0:47.3 | And Paul's early online gaming innovations in multiplayer user experience from almost 20 years ago |
| 0:51.8 | are the inspiration for several of the modern social |
| 0:54.2 | gaming offerings out today. I do also want to say that Paul and I recently went for dinner when |
| 0:58.4 | he was in London and rarely have I had such fun and entertaining dinner and it was not just the |
| 1:02.8 | mehito, so a huge thanks to Paul for that. But before we dive into the show with Paul today, |
| 1:07.0 | let's be honest, most problems start in the mind. Fear, anger, stress, anxiety, sleeplessness. |
| 1:12.8 | They begin in your head, but they can wreck your life. And meditation can really help. And |
| 1:16.8 | Headspace is meditation made simple. There's a mountain of science showing the positive effects |
| 1:20.9 | of meditation and mindfulness. And the Headspace app provides guided meditations you can use |
| 1:25.3 | whenever you want, wherever you want, on your phone, |
| 1:27.9 | computer or tablet. And they have sessions focused on everything from dealing with stress and anxiety, |
... |
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