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

20VC: Kleiner Perkins' MZ Zaveri on Why Success In Venture Is About The 3 F's, How VCs Can Manage Deal Heat & Is There Too Much Venture Dollars At Seed

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 May 2017

⏱️ 26 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

MZ Zaveri is a Partner @ Kleiner Perkins, one of the world's most prestigious venture funds with prior investments in the likes of Google, Amazon, Twitter, Square and Airbnb just to name a few. Prior to KPCB, MZ was with Tencent, where he was part of the investment team in Palo Alto, working on investments in companies such as Vurb, Tile, Satellogic, and Weebly to name a few. Prior to Tencent, Muzzammil co-founded Proxino, a Y Combinator (S11) backed startup in the JavaScript error detection space.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How MZ made his way into the world of VC and came to be a partner at Kleiner Perkins?

2.) What were MZ's biggest takeaways from his time with Tencent? How does that inform how he evaluates and analyses startups today with KPCB?

3.) MZ has said before, 'success in venture is all about the 3 F's'. What does he mean by this? Question from Niko Bonatsos @ General Catalyst: How does MZ look ensure the best opportunities are in the pipeline? How does MZ then look to manage and optimise that pipeline?

4.) What are MZ's thoughts on deal heat? How does MZ look to avoid being sucked into echo chambers of Silicon Valley of what is "hot or not"? What does MZ mean when he says "deal heat can be a false positive when there are more seed funds than ever"?

5.) How does MZ evaluate the seed market today? Does he believe it is over financed with the 10x increase in funds we have seen over the last 10 years? What fund model innovations is MZ most excited by and why?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:

MZ’s Fave Book: Neverwhere by Neil Gaimon

MZ’s Fave Blog/Podcast: The Twenty Minute VC

MZ's Most Recent Investment: UJet

As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and MZ 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, your host Harry Stebbings, on the trusty Snapchat

0:04.3

at H. Stebbings with 2Bs, and all ads get a personal message from me. It would be fantastic to see you

0:09.5

there. However, to the show today, and I'm very excited to welcome a very special guest, MZ Zaviri.

0:14.6

Now, MZ is a partner at Kleiner Perkins, one of the world's most prestigious venture funds, with prior investments in the likes of Google,

0:21.5

Amazon, Twitter, Square and Airbnb, just to name a few.

0:25.4

Prior to Kleiner Perkins, MZ was with Tencent, where he was part of the investment team in Palo Alto,

0:30.1

working on investments in the likes of Verb, Tile, Satter Logic, and Weebly, just to name a few

0:35.2

incredible companies. And prior to 10 cent, MZ co-founded Proxino, a Y-combinator-backed startup in the JavaScript

0:41.5

error detection space.

0:42.9

I do also want to say a big thank you to Nico Bonatzos at General Catalyst for the intro

0:47.2

to MZ today, without which this episode would not have been possible.

0:50.8

But before we head into the episode today, a lot of people ask me, Harry, you do so

0:54.6

many calls and interviews, but what do you use? My response? Zoom. The number one video and

0:59.8

web conferencing service providing one consistent enterprise experience that allows you to an array

1:04.7

of activities, including online meetings, video webinars, collaboration enabled conference rooms

1:10.0

and business I am, just to name a few.

1:12.2

And it's the easiest solution to use, buy and scale, and for sure, the most straightforward

1:16.3

pricing. But hey, don't take my word for it. Their partnership with Sequoy in their latest

1:20.8

100 million funding around says it all. Zoom really is a must checkout for your business. I cannot

1:25.3

emphasize that enough. And you can find them at zoom.com.

1:28.3

Speaking of video, though, to power your company there with Zoom, you must check out, Voodit.

1:32.9

Vood It is a free video recording tool that makes it easy for organizations to embrace

...

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