20VC: Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed on Why Market Risk Is The Most Dangerous Risk To Underwrite As A VC, How To Determine When to Stretch vs Not on Price Today & The $TRN of Market Cap Up For Grabs Today In Enterprise

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

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 21 October 2019

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Arif Janmohamed is a Partner @ Lightspeed Venture Partners, one of the leading firms of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Snapchat, Mulesoft, Max Levchin’s Affirm, AppDynamics and many more incredible companies. Some of Arif's most notable companies that he has led or been involved with for LSVP includel; TripActions, Blend, Nutanix, AppZen, MoveWorks and more. Prior to Lightspeed, Arif worked in the corporate business development team @ Cisco as part of transaction leadership and execution on a number of deals including WebEx. Before WebEx, Arif founded WVP Ventures, a student-run venture capital organization.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Arif made his way into venture and came to be one of the valley's leading enterprise investors with Lightspeed?

2.) We are seeing pricing hit 100x ARR multiples, does Arif believe we are seeing enterprise investing as past it's peak? Are we seeing late-cycle momentum investing? Would Arif agree with matt Harris, "Series A pricing does not matter anymore?" How does Arif assess his own price sensitivity today? How has it changed over time?

3.) Why does Arif believe that market risk is the most dangerous risk to underwrite as a VC? How does Arif think about and assess market timing? What has changed over the last few years to unlock such quantums of capital into the enterprise market? With the acquisitions of Duo, Mulesoft, Qualtrics, will we have a next-gen incumbent set or will it be an environment of existing incumbent consolidation?

4.) What does Arif specifically believe founders need to get right when it comes to company design, in order to scale to a $5-10Bn market leader? In terms of the go-to-market, who does Arif think has nailed it most recently? Why? How does Arif test for a founding team's ability to execute on go-to-market when meeting them early on?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:

Arif’s Fave Book: Stumbling on Happiness, How Not To Die: Discover the foods scientifically proven to prevent and reverse disease

Arif’s Most Recent Investment: TripActions

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

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the 20-minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and if you'd like to suggest either guests or questions to future episodes, you can do that on Instagram at H. Stebbings-1996 with 2 UBs.
0:09.5	I do always love to see you there.
0:11.1	But to our episode today, and I'm thrilled to welcome to the hot seat today, Arifjan Mohammed, partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, one of the leading firms of the last decade, with a portfolio including the lights have checked this out. Snapchat, Mulesoft, Max Levchins, a firm, app dynamics, and many more
0:26.2	incredible companies. Some of Araf's most notable companies that he's led or been involved
0:30.4	with the deals in for Lightspeed include trip actions, blend, Nutanics, apps then, moveworks,
0:36.2	and more. And prior to Lightspeed, ARIF worked in the corporate business development team at Cisco
0:40.3	as part of transaction leadership and execution on a number of great deals, including the
0:44.5	likes of WebEx.
0:45.5	Before Cisco, Arif founded WVP Ventures, a student-run venture capital organisation, and I'd also
0:50.9	want to say a huge thank you to Nicole Quinn, Jeremy Liu and Alex Towsig for the fantastic question suggestions today.
0:56.7	I think it was a thoroughly team effort, so mehito's on me for that.
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	...

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