20VC: Semil Shah on Why The Most Important Thing An Investor Can Do Is Attract Follow On & The Fundamentals of VC Branding

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

🗓️ 25 July 2016

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Semil Shah is the founder of Haystack, an early stage investment firm now investing out of it’s third fund, with previous investments being Instacart, DoorDash, Managed by Q. In the past he has also been a consultant to some of the leading funds in the valley including the likes of Kleiner Perkins, DFJ, General Catalyst and more. If that was not enough, Shah also has an extensive career in media having been a contributor for both TechCrunch and the Harvard Business Review in the past. Due to all of this Shah was listed by Marc Andreesen as one of his '55 Unknown Rockstars in Tech'.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Semil made his way into VC? How did he come to create Haystack?

2.) What were the challenges and concerns for Semil in raising and establishing his own fund?

3.) Question from Michelle Tandler: How does Semil send deals through to Series A? What is his 'cool' process? What are the commonalities of those that make it to Series A and those that do not?

4.) How has Semil approached the aspect of personal VC branding? How does he evaluate the rise of the personal VC brand in the last few years?

5.) Why does Semil believe he is not 'founder friendly' in the conventional sense?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:

Semil’s Fave Book: Burmese Days by George Orwell

Semil’s Most Recent Investment: AquaCloud

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

If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Snapchat here!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the 20 minute VC with your host Harry Stebbings at H Stebbings on Snapchat.
0:05.1	And if you follow me there, you'll get to see me taking my first holiday in a year and a half right as we speak.
0:09.9	So think of me, me mehito in hand on a beach.
0:12.5	And enjoy this show today with our fantastic guest, Semil Shaw.
0:16.0	Now, it really is tricky to surmise Semmel's background so quickly in this intro, but here goes.
0:25.8	Setmill is the founder at Haystack, an early stage investment firm, now investing out of its third fund, with previous investments including Instacart, DoorDash, managed by Q, and many
0:31.8	more fantastic companies. In the past, he's also been a consultant to some of the leading
0:35.9	funds in the valley, including the likes of Kleiner Perkins, DFJ, General Catalyst, and many more incredible funds.
0:43.1	If that wasn't enough, Shah has also had an extensive career in media, having been a contributor
0:47.8	for both TechCrunch and the Harvard Business Review in the past.
0:51.3	Due to all of this, Shah was listed by Mark Andreessen as one of his
0:54.8	unknown rock stars in tech. But before we meet the rock star, Les Semil, and on the theme of
0:59.9	rock stars, I don't think I ever truly appreciated the importance of having a rock star designer
1:04.7	until I began using Design Crowd. Design Crowd is the online marketplace for custom
1:09.9	graphic, logo and web design with an incredible
1:12.8	500,000 registered designers on the platform you're sure to find the rock style designer for you
1:18.0	and i also love the super simple process of using design crowd all you have to do is launch your project
1:23.3	sit back and watch as tons of incredible designs come in from designers around the world and then
1:28.5	simply choose your favourites. The designs are then sent to you and you can have the entire process done
1:33.2	in just three days. Perfect for entrepreneurs and small businesses who need fast turnaround times
1:38.3	and reasonable pricing. So check it out and head to designcrowd.com forward slash VC and enter the
1:43.8	promo code VC100 for an incredible $100 off your project.
	...

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