20VC: True Ventures' Puneet Agarwal on Why EQ Is Going To Separate The Best Firms In Venture Over The Next Decade, The Negatives of Attribution in Venture & What Makes A Truly Efficient Venture Partnership
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 12 August 2019
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Puneet Agarwal is a Partner @ True Ventures, one of the leading early-stage VC funds of the last decade with big wins including Fitbit, Peloton, Ring, Hashicorp, Duo Security and Blue Bottle Coffee, just to name a few. As for Puneet, at True he has led deals in Duo Security, Tray.io, Lumity, Solo.io and more. Before the world of VC, Puneet spent 6 years in product management with Geodesic Securities and BEA. Before product management, Puneet actually cut his teeth in the world of VC as an associate at Mayfield which he joined post a 2-year stint at JP Morgan.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Puneet made his way into the world of venture from JP Morgan? How seeing the boom and bust cycle impacted his investing mindset today? How his career in operations led to his joining True?
2.) Why does Puneet believe that EQ is going to separate the good from the great in venture firms over the next decade? What can VCs do to remove the barriers to access them? What have been Puneet's biggest lessons on what it takes to build real relationships of trust and respect with founders? What is a test of a strong founder
VC relationship?
3.) What does Puneet believe are the 2 feelings a board member can bring to a board meeting? Why would an investor bring fear to the board meeting? Why is this a sign and result of the culture of their own venture partnership? What have been Puneet's biggest lessons on how investors can bring the feeling of safety to a board meeting? How has Puneet changed his style of board membership over the last decade?
4.) Why does Puneet strongly advocate for a venture structure without attribution? What are the benefits of not having attribution? How does this also impact the re-investment decision-making process? How does Puneet think about how he spends his time across the portfolio? What have True done to optimise the investment decision-making process? Why is unanimity not required?
5.) How does Puneet and True think about portfolio construction today? What amount of initial checks give them enough diversification to feel comfortable but also enough reserves to double down? Does Puneet believe that ownership can be built over time? Where does Puneet believe there is a whole in the funding environment? How does True think about minimizing risk on the first check?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Puneet’s Fave Book: Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World
Puneet’s Most Recent Investment: Upsie
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Puneet 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 | Hello and welcome back to another week in the world of the 20 minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings, |
| 0:03.8 | and I'd love to welcome you behind the scenes on Instagram at H. Stebbings, 1996 with 2Bs. |
| 0:08.8 | It'd be awesome to see you there. But to the show today, and my respect for Phil Black and John |
| 0:13.1 | Callahan, in all that they've built with True is well known. But I couldn't be more excited to stay to be joined by one of True's rock stars in the form of Puneet Agarwal, partner at True Ventures, |
| 0:21.8 | and as a little context, True is one on a leading early stage VC funds of the last decade, |
| 0:26.3 | with big wins including the lights of Fitbit, Peloton, Ring, Hashikorp, Duo security, and blue |
| 0:32.1 | bottle coffee, just to name a few. As for Puneet, at True, he's led deals in Duo security, Trey.io, Lomity, solo.io, and more. |
| 0:40.5 | And before the world of VC, Puneit spent six years in product management with geodesic |
| 0:44.4 | securities and B.E.A. Before product management, Poonid actually cut his teeth in the world of |
| 0:49.2 | VC as an associate at Mayfield, which he joined post a two-year stint at J.P. Morgan. I'd also want to say |
| 0:54.3 | huge thank you to a wonderful person, friend, and founder, Rich Waldron at Trey. Huge thank you, |
| 0:59.3 | my friend, for the intro. Many mehito's on me for that. But before we dive into the show today, |
| 1:03.7 | we need to talk about Air Base, the ideal cloud-based spend management platform for growing |
| 1:08.0 | startups. It's a game changer for finance teams that need to |
| 1:11.0 | keep up with company growth, and for me, it's so awesome for three key reasons. One, you can |
| 1:15.5 | use Airbase to issue virtual and physical cards for card payments, as well as checks and |
| 1:20.1 | ACH transfers for invoice payments. Second, they have an incredible pre-approval system for expense |
| 1:25.1 | requests, meaning you see expenses as employees |
| 1:27.6 | request them instead of only learning about them when the statement comes in at the end of the |
| 1:31.2 | month. And finally, because all of the transactions flow through the Airbase system, they can |
| 1:35.1 | help automate a lot of the accounting work, like coding expenses, collecting invoices and |
| 1:39.6 | receipts, and much, much more. And that's why the likes of gusto, front, and segment all love Airbase, |
... |
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