20VC: NEA's Scott Sandell on SPACS and Why Liquidity is One of the Challenges of our Time, Why We Are At An Inflection Point For Secondaries & Why There Is Nothing To Suggest The Boom Will Not Continue
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 11 March 2021
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Scott Sandell is the Managing General Partner of NEA, one of the leading firms of the last 3 decades with now close to $24Bn under management and a portfolio including the likes of Salesforce, Robinhood, Plaid, Databricks and many more incredible companies. As for Scott, since joining the firm in 1996 he has led investments in many industry-transforming technology companies including Salesforce.com, Tableau Software, WebEx and Workday. Scott also serves on the board of rocketships including Robinhood, Cloudflare, Coursera and Divvy to name a few. As a result of this investing success, Scott is among the most frequently named venture capitalists to the Forbes Midas List.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Scott made his way into the world of venture close to 3 decades ago back in 1996? How he came to be Managing General Partner of NEA today? What is entailed in the role of "Managing General Partner"?
2.) What has been the single biggest change in the venture landscape that Scott has observed since his entering in 1996? How did the boom and bust of the dot com and 2008 impact his investing mindset? Consequently, how does Scott advise founders to think about capital efficiency and business model flexibility? What concerns Scott today?
3.) Why does Scott believe "this is an incredible moment in history for the asset class of venture"? How does Scott think about the core physics of company building changing? How is it companies are able to scale and grow so much faster today? Does their speed of growth change their capital requirements?
4.) Does Scott agree with Bill Gurley, "the biggest challenge is the oversupply of capital today"? How does Scott analyse his own relationship to price and price sensitivity? What is Scott's framework for determining when to pay up vs when to remain disciplined? How does Scott feel about the rise of SPACs? How will this shake out over the coming years?
5.) How much have NEA companies raised over the last decade? Of that, how much did NEA invest? Is the answer to continuously scale AUM? How does NEA approach investment decision-making with the size of partnership it has? What does Scott mean when he says, "we vote on the process"? How do you create a partnership of trust at scale?
Item’s Mentioned In Today’s Episode
Scott's Favourite Book: The Old Man and the Sea
Scott’s Most Recent Investment: Loanpal
As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | We are back. This is the 20 minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings. And following our incredible episode |
| 0:03.9 | with Spotify founder and CEO, Daniel Eck on Monday, we return to the wonderful world of venture |
| 0:08.2 | with the legend of the industry. He's been in venture for the same amount of time I've been |
| 0:12.0 | on earth and just a wonderful, wonderful person. And so with that, I'm very excited to welcome |
| 0:16.3 | Scott Sandell, managing general partner at NEA, one of the leading firms of the last three decades, |
| 0:21.5 | with now $23 billion under management. And since joining the firm in 1996, Scott has led |
| 0:26.9 | investments in many industry transforming technology companies, including Salesforce, Tableau |
| 0:31.8 | Software, WebEx, and WorkDate, to name a few. Scott also serves on the boards of rocket ships, |
| 0:36.9 | including Robin Hood, |
| 0:38.1 | Cloudflare, Coursera and Divi. And as a result of his incredible investing success, Scott is among |
| 0:43.2 | the most frequently named VCs to the Forbes Midas list. And I'd also want to say a huge thank you |
| 0:47.4 | to Rick Yang and Vanessa Larker at NEA, R mad at One Concern, Blake at Divy, Lily at Transfix, and Hicham at Enigma for some amazing input on |
| 0:55.5 | the schedule today. Really a team effort there and I so appreciate that. But before we dive into |
| 1:00.1 | the show today, did you know that more than 80% of US public stock is owned by just 10% of Americans? |
| 1:05.6 | This divide is even greater in the private markets. Carter makes it as easy to issue equity |
| 1:10.0 | to your employees as it is to issue payroll and for it as easy to issue equity to your employees as it is |
| 1:11.5 | to issue payroll and for employees as easy to accept it too. More than 16,000 companies issue equity |
| 1:17.4 | to their employees through Carter. Whether you're just starting out or getting ready to go public, |
| 1:21.7 | the team that Carter can help. Learn more at Carter.com. And speaking of amazing products with Carter there, |
| 1:26.9 | founders funds Keith |
| 1:27.9 | Rabe believes that the best way to run finance at any growing company is to adopt Ramp. |
| 1:32.6 | The fastest growing corporate card in America, join thousands of founders and finance leaders |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Twenty Minute VC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Twenty Minute VC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.