20VC Roundtable: Why Early Stage Founders Should Not be Investing, Why Great Founders Have Low EQ, How the Structure of VC Firms Will Change, Will Founder-Led Funds Compete with Sequoia & Is Investing a Team Sport?
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 3 November 2023
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jack Altman is the Founder and CEO @ Lattice, the #1 people management platform, last valued at $3BN. Jack is an investor through his founding of Jack Altman Capital where he has invested in WorkOS, NexHealth, Owner.com, Mercury and more.
Auren Hoffman is the Founder and CEO @ Safegraph, the most accurate database of global points of interest, last valued at $550M. Auren is an investor through his founding of Flex Capital where he has invested in Chime, Checkr, Coinbase, Flexport, Vercel and more.
Jason Lemkin is the Founder and CEO @ SaaStr, the world's largest SaaS community. Jason is an investor through his founding of The SaaStr Fund. In the past, Jason has invested in Pipedrive, Algolia, Salesloft, Front, GreenHouse, Owner.com, Gorgias and more.
In Today's Episode on Founder-Led Funds We Discuss:
- Why have we seen the rise of "Founder-led Funds"?
- Are founder-led funds more empathetic to the founders they invest in?
- How do founder-led funds source and pick investments in a way that traditional VC does not?
- Will we see founder-led Funds truly compete against the Sequoias of the world?
- How does being an operator make you a better investor?
- How does investing help you be a better founder and operator?
- How do you communicate your investing practice and firm to your company and team?
- What are the biggest excitements and concerns LPs have for Founder-led Funds?
- Will we see the face of venture changing much more broadly and structurally?
- How do founder-led funds manage both time and company conflicts?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Well, most good founders have low EQ. |
| 0:02.2 | A lot of founders give tougher love or whatever you want to call it than I've seen investors do. |
| 0:07.2 | I think early stage founders spending real-time investing, it's just too expensive. |
| 0:13.0 | One of the things is really just the question is like, is investing in individual sport or is it a team sport? |
| 0:18.3 | I think the question is can a founder-led fund compete with Sequoia? |
| 0:22.0 | This is 20VC with me, Harry Stebbing. I love roundtable-style shows, and I wanted to focus the |
| 0:27.1 | roundtable today on the rise of founder-led funds. This is funds who actively are run by founders, |
| 0:33.7 | who manage their companies day-to-day, but they also have institutional outside capital |
| 0:38.8 | that they manage through a fund vehicle, and they actively invest at the same time as running |
| 0:43.1 | their company. |
| 0:43.9 | For this panel, there's no one better than Jack Altman, co-founder at Lattice, Oran Hoffman, |
| 0:48.8 | founder at Safe Groff, and Jason Lemkin, founder at Saster. |
| 0:52.2 | Now, I'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback on these shows. |
| 0:55.1 | Let me know on Twitter at Harry Stebbings, |
| 0:57.2 | and you can watch the full episode on YouTube by searching for 20VC. |
| 1:01.1 | But before we dive in today, |
| 1:02.5 | we have to talk about Canva. |
| 1:04.6 | Canva is on a mission to empower the world to design. |
| 1:07.6 | That is why they've introduced Magic Studio. |
| 1:10.1 | Magic Studio brings together the best AI-powered tools for you and your team to help you redefine the way you design. Magic Design creates custom designs for you in seconds. Just provide a text prompt or upload your media and Magic Design Crafts professional social posts, presentations and even videos. |
| 1:29.1 | And something that I in particular really love is Magic Edit. |
| 1:32.5 | It lets you add to, replace or edit your images with a single text prompt. |
... |
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