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The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

20VC: Investing Lessons From Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham @ USV, How CEO's Can Operationally Utilise Their Board & The Single Most Important Quality of A CEO with Andrew Parker, General Partner @ Spark Capital

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

4.4637 Ratings

🗓️ 29 January 2018

⏱️ 24 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Andrew Parker is a General Partner @ Spark Capital, one of the best performing funds of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Twitter, Slack, Oculus, Medium, PostMates, Cruise (acq $1Bn) the list goes on. As for Andrew, he has led Spark’s investments in CartaKik, PanoramaEducationSocraticSplashParticle and Quantopian. Prior to joining Spark in 2010, Andrew was a member of the investment team at Union Square Ventures. Before becoming an investor, Andrew did UI design and user-experience testing at Homestead Technologies and was a web developer at Groupspace.org.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Andrew made his way from UI design and user-experience testing to joining the investment team @ USV and then joining Spark?

2.) Andrew credits USV with 2 big takeaways that influence how he invests today, what are they? What were his big lessons from working alongside Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham? How did this experience change and improve his thinking of developing and investing in a thesis??

3.) Question from Henry Ward @ eShares: What is the most important quality in a CEO? How does Andrew balance between founder naivety and realism? What are the signs that although a vision is present, a founder is also realistic?

4.) What is the most important quality in being a board member to a CEO? How has Henry @ eShares constructed his board to allow them to have maximum impact in the internal operations of the company? How does this further improve board meeting? What does Andrew view as his biggest strengths and weaknesses as a board member?

5.) How does Andrew think about pricing and how the importance of pricing changes along the investing spectrum from seed to later stage? What does an investor's response to price reveal about the proposition? How does Andrew analyze capital allocation on reserve financing? What does this decision-making process look like?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:

Andrew’s Fave Book: Snow Crash

Andrew’s Fave Blog: Money Stuff by Matt Levine

Andrew’s Most Recent Investment: Particle

As always you can follow HarryThe Twenty Minute VC and Andrew on Twitter here!

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

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

You are listening to the 20 minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and mixing it up a little here,

0:04.1

away from the usual Snapchat. You can see more from me and the team 20 VC on Instagram at

0:09.3

H Stebbings, 1996. That's H. Stebbings with 2Bs, 1996. It'd be great to see you there.

0:15.6

However, to the show stay, and earlier this month, we had a fantastic interview with Kevin Thor,

0:19.7

general partner at Spark Capital, and if you haven't had a fantastic interview with Kevin Thor, General Partner at Spark Capital.

0:21.4

And if you haven't had the chance to check that out, then that really is a must. And today,

0:24.7

I'm delighted to be joined by Kevin's partner. So I'm thrilled to welcome Andrew Parker,

0:28.8

general partner at Spark, one of the best performing funds of the last decade, with a portfolio

0:33.3

including the lights of Twitter, Slack, Oculus, Medium, Postmates and Cruise, acquired most recently

0:39.1

for a billion dollars. As for Andrew, he's led Spark's investments in Carter, Kick, Socratic, Splash,

0:45.0

particle, and Quantopian, just to name a few. And prior to joining Spark in 2010, Andrew was a member

0:50.3

of the investment team at Union Square Ventures. And before becoming an investor, Andrew did UI design and user experience testing at Homestead Technologies and was a web developer

0:59.2

at groupspace.org. I do also have to say a big thank you to Rob Go at Nextview and then Fred

1:03.9

Wilson at USV for all they did to make this episode possible with questions and introductions.

1:08.3

I really do so appreciate that. However, before we meet

1:11.3

today's guest, it's the new year and everyone is thinking of health and diet, and so this month's

1:15.5

partnerships will be aligned to that. And did you know that office snacks are the third most

1:19.5

requested perp by employees, with 83% suggesting it to be a huge perk? Well, that's where

1:24.9

Naturebox comes in. Naturebox is the first ever unlimited snacking

1:28.5

program for offices of all sizes, starting with just $12 per month per employee. You can choose the

1:34.4

plan that fits your team and ensure you never run out of snacks again. And if your body is a temple

1:39.2

like mine clearly is not with all those mehitos, then have no fear with NatureBox, real, simple ingredients,

...

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