20VC: 'The Best Seed Investors Hunt' with Paige Craig @ Arena VC
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 30 March 2016
⏱️ 23 minutes
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Summary
Paige Craig is a Founder and General Partner of Arena Ventures. He is an experienced angel investor who has invested in over 110 startups in the last seven years, including companies like Lyft, AngelList, Wish, Postmates, Twitter, Styleseat, Zenpayroll, Quizup and more. Paige spent the first half of his career in the Marine Corps and US Intelligence Community and later launched a defense contractor, driving alone into Iraq in 2003 with just $10,000 and expanding operations across the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Africa and Southeast Asia.
1.) How Paige made his way into the wonderful world of VC?
2.) What were Paige's biggest takeaways from his previous career in the military? How did this shape his investment thesis?
3.) Arena VC have both the fund and the AngelList syndicate, why did Paige choose this dual model? What have been the drivers of it's success?
4.) What does Paige believe makes a great VC? What aspects of himself would he like to improve upon? Is an inherent fight mode common among VCs?
5.) What advice would Paige give to someone looking to start a syndicate? What would Craig recommend to someone looking to join a syndicate?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Episode:
Paige’s Fave Book:
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I am Harry Stebbings and you are listening to the 20 minute VC and starting the show with something a little |
| 0:05.2 | different today. Two product recommendations. Not at all sponsors, I hasten to add that I've been using |
| 0:10.8 | very much lately and absolutely loving. The first is Blinkist, which you might have heard from our |
| 0:15.8 | episode with Ellie Wheeler at Greycroft. Basically, Blinkist condenses all these really long business books into |
| 0:22.3 | awesome 15 minute read summaries with the key points so you can read five to 10 books a day even. |
| 0:28.3 | I absolutely love that and that's a must check out. That's Blinkist. And then number two, |
| 0:32.3 | I have to plug my own and I would love to hear what you think of my latest podcast with Jason |
| 0:36.9 | Lempkin at Saster, |
| 0:38.3 | taking you inside the world of SaaS, speaking to the biggest and best operators and VCs, |
| 0:44.1 | on all things hiring, scaling, marketing, and much, much more. |
| 0:48.2 | And I'd love to hear what you think of that, and you can find that on Saster, S-A-A-S-T-R, on iTunes. |
| 0:57.0 | But now, back to the show today, and I'm so delighted to introduce a phenomenal guest in the form of Paige Craig. Now, Paige is the founder and general |
| 1:02.8 | partner of Arena Ventures. He's also an experienced angel investor, who's invested in over |
| 1:08.3 | 110 startups in the last seven years, including some pretty |
| 1:12.2 | incredible companies. So let's name some. There's Lyft, there's Angel List, there's Postmates, |
| 1:18.1 | there's Twitter, there's Wish, and many more incredible companies. And another awesome thing about |
| 1:23.2 | page is there's no McKinsey, Bain, Goldman background, because we all know how much I love |
| 1:28.3 | those types. Instead, he spent the first half of his career in the Marine Corps and US intelligence |
| 1:33.5 | community and later launched a defence contractor driving a loan into Iraq in 2003 with just |
| 1:40.2 | $10,000 and expanding operations across the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Africa |
| 1:46.0 | and Southeast Asia. But before we dive into the show with Page, I'd also like to tip our hats |
| 1:50.8 | to the kind folk at Matamark, who've provided all the data and analysis for the show today. |
... |
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