20VC: K9's Manu Kumar on His Approach To Risk, Valuation & Believing What Other People Don't

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The Twenty Minute VC

Finance, Venturecapital, Tech News, News, Siliconvalley, Technology, Investing, Startups, Business

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 23 May 2016

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Manu Kumar founder and Chief Firestarter at K9 Ventures, a pre-seed and seed stage micro-VC fund based in Palo Alto, according to K9 they invests ‘frighteningly early’ and like to be the first institutional capital invested in a startup. K9 is an investor in Lyft, Twilio, Occipital, eShares, and their companies have been acquired by the likes of Linkedin, Facebook, Dropbox, Paypal and more. Prior to K9, Manu was either the founder or co-founder of 4 companies, 3 of which with successful exits and the 4th being the fantastic eshares!

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How did Manu come to found K9 and what was his route into VC? How does Manu define entrepreneurialism and how did this play out in his early life?

2.) “The best buys are found in things most people don’t understand or believe in.” How does this play out in Manu's investment strategy? ?

3.) “The riskiest thing is the belief there’s no risk.” How does risk assessment feature in Manu's investment mentality? How does Manu transition this to your portfolio construction? ?

4.) Josh Koppelman states “What has to be remembered is the defining role of price.” How much of a role does valuation play in Manu's investment decision making process?

5.) “An absence of losses can give you a great start toward a good outcome.” As a seed fund how does Manu approach inevitable losses? How does Manu try and minimize mortality rate?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Episode:

Manu’s Fave Book: The Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll

Manu’s Fave Blog: Strictly VC, Dan Primack: Term Sheet

Manu’s Most Recent Investment: GradeScope

As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Manu on Twitter here!

If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to another week in the world of the 20-minute VC with your host, Harry Stebbings, who you can add on Snapchat at H. Stebbings with two Bs, to see inside the world of the latest and greatest VCs and start-ups.
0:12.2	And talking of the greats of VC, I'm delighted to welcome Manu Kumar to the show today.
0:17.0	Now, Manu is the founder and chief fire starter at K9 Ventures, a pre-seed and seed stage microvc
0:23.5	fund based in Palo Alto. And according to K9 themselves, they invests frighteningly early and
0:28.9	like to be the first institutional capital invested in a startup. And K9 is an investor in Lyft,
0:35.0	Twilio, Oxypital, e-shares, and their companies have been acquired by the
0:39.8	likes of LinkedIn, Facebook, Dropbox, PayPal, and many more. And prior to K-9, Manu was either
0:45.7	the founder or the co-founder of four companies, three of which had successful exits, and the
0:50.3	fourth is the fantastic e-shares. So quite a phenomenal track record there. But before we
0:55.0	dive into our chat with Manu today, did you know that napping just six minutes a day can improve
1:00.0	your memory and boost productivity by up to 8%? I'm sure that only works though if you have a nap in a
1:05.7	Lisa mattress. So why would only Lisa mattresses work for this? Well, it could be that they're
1:10.5	expertly crafted with three distinct layers, one of memory foam and one of latex light foam designed to keep you cool. They also completely avoid the showroom experience, offering an all-online experience, meaning they have a lower cost structure, which is reflected in their prices. It's really simple and really transparent pricing.
1:28.7	And once bought online, the matches are then shipped to your door if you live in the UK,
1:32.7	the US and Canada for free, and you get a 100-night trial to ensure that the mattress is perfect
1:37.7	for you. So get yours now by heading over to Lisa.com forward slash VC and enter the promo code
1:43.4	VC-75 at checkout for an incredible $75 off.
1:47.6	I also want to say to everyone if you haven't signed up for the Matamark daily already, then please do.
1:52.3	It's a must and it's all you need to stay on top of all things VC and tech.
1:56.5	Thank you so much to At Think on Twitter for that.
1:59.2	But now it's time to meet the chief fire starter himself, so I'm delighted to welcome
2:03.0	Manu Kumar, founder at K9 Ventures.
	...

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