20VC: Multi-Stage Funds Investing At Seed Are Option Value Investing, Why The Biggest Enemy For Venture Firms Is Group Think and How Running Companies Changes Your Investment Mentality with Manu Kumar, Founder @ K9 Ventures
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 23 March 2020
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Manu Kumar is the Founder @ K9 Ventures, one of the leading seed firms of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Carta, Lyft, Twilio, Auth0 and Lucidchart to name a few incredible companies. 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 Carta. Manu also has an incredible model with K9 where he not only invests in companies but also founds them and is currently the founder and CEO @ HiHello, the company that allows you to network smarter providing digital business cards designed to help you curate and grow your network.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Manu made his way into the world of venture having founded 4 prior companies and how he came to found K9 and be one of the OG's of pre-seed funding, having coined the term?
2.) What does Manu believe have been the biggest and most significant changes in the early stage market over the last 7 years? How does Manu evaluate the rise of operator and scout funds? Would Manu agree with Semil Shah, "founders are voting with their feet and taking multi-stage money at seed?" What advice does Manu give to founders on taking multi-stage money at seed? How does Manu evaluate their aggressive movement back into the seed stage? Why is it?
3.) Given Manu only makes 3-4 new investments per year, how does Manu think about and assess his own portfolio construction today? How does Manu think about building temporal diversification into the portfolio? What does Manu believe is the biggest mistake early-stage managers make in the first few years? Why does Manu believe that "group think" is so dangerous for funds today? What can they do deliberately to avoid it?
4.) Manu not only invests but also founds companies at the same time, how does Manu split his time and what does his day look like? What are the benefits of investing and operating simultaneously? What are the biggest challenges and drawbacks? What elements did Manu believe as an investor before starting his new company, HiHello, that he has now changed his mind on, post founding the company?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Manu’s Fave Book: How to Win Friends and Influence People
Manu’s Most Recent Investment: Workona: A Better Way To Work
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Manu 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 | You are listening to The 20 Minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and with self-isolation, there is more to see on Instagram, and so you can see all things behind the scenes there at H. Stebbings, 1996 with 2B seed firms of the last decade, with a portfolio, including |
| 0:21.3 | the lights of check this out, Carter, Lyft, Twilio, Orth Zero and Lucid chart, to name a few |
| 0:26.4 | incredible companies. And prior to K-9, Manu was either the founder or co-founder of four companies, |
| 0:31.7 | three of which with successful exes, and the fourth being the fantastic Carter. Manu also has an incredible model with K9 where he not only |
| 0:38.6 | invests in companies but he also founds them and is currently the founder and CEO at Hi Hello, |
| 0:43.2 | the company that allows you to network smarter providing digital business cards designed to help |
| 0:47.5 | you curate and grow your network. I'd also have to say a huge thank you to Michael Kim at |
| 0:51.7 | Sandana and Henry Ward at Carter for providing some |
| 0:54.2 | fantastic questions suggestions today. I really do appreciate that. Before we move into the show today, |
| 0:59.2 | though, I wanted to take a moment to mention HelloSign, a great example of a company that found |
| 1:03.3 | success in building a product focused on user experience. HelloSign is an effortless e-signature |
| 1:08.5 | solution used by millions to securely send and request |
| 1:11.7 | legally valid digital signatures and agreements. |
| 1:14.7 | They raised a total of $16 million in funding and recently got acquired by Dropbox for an |
| 1:18.9 | impressive $230 million. |
| 1:21.1 | Check out HelloSign.com forward slash 20VC to join the thousands of companies and founders, |
| 1:26.6 | including me, who value fast, secure, |
| 1:29.0 | and simple e-signatures, it really is a must. And speaking of amazing products there with |
| 1:33.3 | HelloSign, the team over at Pendo, the product cloud company, just launched a free product |
| 1:37.4 | performance benchmarks micro site where you can see how your product status up against your peers. |
| 1:42.7 | And they gave me this incredible sneak preview of it. |
| 1:44.8 | And my reaction was, bleep me. I know so many founders who are desperate to compare their |
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