20VC: Matrix’s Ilya Sukhar on How The Seed Ecosystem Could Be Optimised, Why The Bar For The Break-Out Series A Has Risen & The Art of Effective Referencing
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 9 September 2019
⏱️ 35 minutes
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Summary
Ilya Sukhar is a General Partner @ Matrix Partners, the firm steeped in 40 years of history with over $4Bn invested enjoying 110 acquisitions and 65 IPOs. As for Ilya, at Matrix he has led deals in the likes of FiveTran, Flock Safety, Slab and Height just to name a few. Prior to Matrix, Ilya was a part-time investing partner @ Y Combinator and before that was Head of Developer Products at Facebook. His time at Facebook came about as a result of his former company, Parse, being acquired by them for close to $100m in April 2013. If that was not enough, Ilya also has one of the best angel tracks in the business with a portfolio including the likes of former guest Scale, Checkr, Algolia, Airtable, Gitlab the list goes on.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Ilya made his way into the world of technology and startups having moved to SF from the Soviet Union? How did his growing up in the Soviet Union and moving to the US shape his thinking, operating and investing mentality today?
2.) How did Ilya's mindset change with the shift from angel investing to institutional investing? How does Ilya assess how his operating experience has impacted the way he works and engages with founders today? What are the pros? What are the cons? Why does Ilya believe the engineering CEO is so crucial?
3.) How does Ilya feel the seed ecosystem is serving startups today? What are the core ways that Ilya believes it is not optimised? How does Ila think about advising founders on the right amount to raise and the appropriate amount of runway? How does Ilya feel on the subject of bridge rounds? How does Ilya approach price and price sensitivity? What have been his learnings on price from observing his angel portfolio?
4.) Why does Ilya believe that "referencing is one of the most important skills for founders and investors"? How should founders structure their referencing? Who should they speak to? How many people is an appropriate dataset? What are the core questions to ask? How can references lead one astray? What must you watch out for?
5.) How has becoming a father changed Ilya's investing mentality today? How has it affected how he selects the projects he wishes to work on? How has it changed his relationship to time and productivity? Why in many ways does Ilya wish he had had kids earlier?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Ilya’s Fave Book: When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long Term Capital Management, The Stranger
Ilya’s Most Recent Investment: FiveTran
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Ilya on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back. You are listening to the 20 minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and you can send all |
| 0:04.0 | feedback and guest suggestions to me on Instagram at H. Stebbing's 1996 with two Bs, and I respond to all |
| 0:09.9 | messages there personally. However, to our episode today, and I'd wanted to do this one for so long now. |
| 0:15.1 | Why? Well, because every amazing founder I had on the show, I saw this very individual's name always on the cap table, |
| 0:21.0 | and I'm thrilled to say after two years of persistence and stalking, he caved in and agreed to do the show. |
| 0:25.8 | And so with that, I'm very excited to welcome Ilya Succar, general partner at Matrix Partners. |
| 0:30.5 | The firm steeped in 40 years of history, with over $4 billion invested, enjoying 110 acquisitions and 65 IPOs. As for Iliat, at Matrix's led deals in the |
| 0:40.5 | likes of 5Tran, flock safety, slab and height, just to name a few. Prior to Matrix, Ilya was a part-time |
| 0:46.6 | investing partner at Y Combinator, and before that was head of developer products at Facebook. His time |
| 0:51.2 | at Facebook came about as a result of his former company, Pass, being acquired |
| 0:55.0 | by them for close to $100 million in April 2013. And I mentioned his incredible angel portfolio earlier. |
| 1:01.0 | Check this one out. He has one of the best tracks I think I've seen in the business, including |
| 1:04.6 | the lights of former guests last week in the form of scale, checker, Algolia, Alegelia, Airtable, |
| 1:10.0 | GitLab. The list goes on and are incredible portfolio |
| 1:12.9 | there. But before we dive into the show state, I have to talk about the company that's taken this |
| 1:16.9 | ecosystem by Storm, Brex, the company which built the corporate card for startups and who is the |
| 1:21.9 | fastest company to reach unicorn status in history. Brax's founders, Henrique and Pedro, built a |
| 1:26.8 | payments business in Brazil, |
| 1:28.2 | but kept getting rejected for a corporate card in the States. So they built Brex with no personal |
| 1:32.7 | liability, up to 20 times higher card limits, and huge rewards like 7x points on Uber and Lyft, |
| 1:38.6 | 4x on Brex travel and 2x on SaaS software. If you're a VC-backed startup based in the US, |
| 1:44.0 | see if you qualify for a Brex card at brex.com |
... |
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