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

20VC: Investing Lessons From Observing Doug Leone and Bill Gurley, Why It Is Easier To Be Contrarian As A VC Than As An Angel & What It Takes To Run Tinder's Product and Revenue Alongside A Seed Fund with Jeff Morris Jr, Founder @ Chapter One

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

🗓️ 19 November 2018

⏱️ 35 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Jeff Morris Jr is the Founder of Chapter One, an early stage seed fund investing in blockchain assets, mobile and subscription businesses. Chapter One's Portfolio includes the likes of Lyft, Brandable, Crypto Kitties and many more incredible companies. However, Jeff is unique as Chapter One is only one of his hats, Jeff is also the Director of Product & Revenue @ Tinder and when asked to lead the revenue team they were ranked #17 in the app store. Within a year, under Jeff's leadership, Tinder became the #1 top grossing app in the world.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Jeff made his way into the world of startups and angel investing, how that lead to his role as Director of Product and Revenue @ Tinder and a leading early-stage investor with Chapter One?

2.) Jeff has previously said, "apply an investor mindset to every product decision I make". What are the foundational questions involved? What are the inherent challenges of being so deep in product and investing simultaneously? What does Jeff think of VCs giving product advice to founders? What should the founders look for? What advice does Jeff give to the common question of "how do I get into investing and VC"?

3.) Why does Jeff disagree with the platform shift and the downturn in consumer mobile? What core innovations will drive the next wave of consumer mobile? Valuations in the space are often lofty, how does Jeff think about price and evaluate his own price sensitivity? How does Jeff think about scalable customer acquisition today in a world where incumbents dominate and price up the traditional channels?

4.) Jeff has said before that "investors treat crypto teams as if they are superhuman", what makes Jeff think this? How do their interactions differ than towards non-crypto teams? Why are lofty expectations dangerous for valuations? How does that put undue pressure on employees? Why are lofty expectations dangerous for product development? How do they affect the product roadmap negatively?

5.) How does Jeff approach the diligence aspect when it comes to investing? What have been some of his major lessons from making over 35 investments on the right diligence framework? How do shortened fundraising cycles negatively affect investor diligence processes? What can founders and investors do under these constrained time frames?

6.) Having worked with some of the greats from Doug Leone to Bill Gurley, what are some of the common traits in how the very best investors engage with founders? What were Jeff's personal learnings from seeing these greats in action? How did it change the way Jeff thinks about founder interaction and engagement?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:

Jeff’s Fave Book: The Catcher In The RyeGoogled

Jeff’s Most Recent Investment: Radar Relay

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

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

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This is the 20 minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings, at H. Stebbings 1996 on Instagram, and my word,

0:05.7

I could not be more excited for our episode today. Our guest today, he's truly unique, as he doesn't

0:10.5

only manage to wear both operating and investing hats simultaneously, but my word, he does it

0:15.5

with insane success. And I'm also probably his biggest fanboy on Twitter, and you must check him

0:20.0

out at JMJ. That might have given it away, though, but I'm thrilled to welcome biggest fanboy on Twitter, and you must check him out at JMJ.

0:21.1

That might have given it away, though, but I'm thrilled to welcome Jeff Morris Jr. to the hot seat today.

0:25.6

Now, Jeff is the founder of Chapter 1, an early stage seed fund investing in blockchain assets, mobile, and subscription businesses.

0:32.6

Chapter 1's portfolio includes the likes of Lyft, brandable, crypto kitties, and many more incredible companies.

0:38.4

However, Jeff, as I said, is unique, as Chapter 1 is only one of his has.

0:42.4

Jeff is also the director of product and revenue at Tinder.

0:45.1

When asked to lead the revenue team, they were ranked number 17 in the app store.

0:49.0

Within a year, under Jeff's leadership, Tinder became the number one top grossing app in the world.

0:53.7

Absolutely incredible

0:54.6

journey and as I said, that's a must follow on Twitter at JMJ. I'd also want to say a huge thank you

0:59.4

to Andrew Farrant density for the intro to Jeff today. I really do so appreciate that Andrew. But before

1:04.5

we dive into the show today, I want to talk a little bit about hymns, the new wellness brand for men. So I'm going to draw an interesting analogy,

1:11.1

so stick with me here. But I think hair is quite like customers. When you start to notice hair

1:15.7

loss slash customer loss, it's probably too late. And like customers, it's easier to keep the

1:20.6

customer slash hair that you have than try and regain what you've lost. So it's time to be

1:25.0

proactive about hair loss and head over to 4 hymns.com,

1:28.5

the one-stop shop for hair loss, skincare and sexual wellness for men. But back to our analogy,

1:33.3

and unlike churn, baldness is optional today and hymns connects you with real doctors and medical

...

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