20VC: What Metrics LPs Really Use To Measure Manager Success, Why 10 Year Fund Structures Really Do Not Work & Why Venture Is So Similar To The Movie Business with Will Porteous, General Partner @ RRE Ventures
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 31 July 2017
⏱️ 26 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Will Porteous is the General Partner & COO @ RRE Ventures, one of New York's leading venture funds with investments in the likes of Buzzfeed, The Huffington Post, Giphy and Paperless Post just to name a few. As for Will, he works primarily with media and hardware companies, where he is a Director of BuzzFeed, Paperless Post, Spaceflight, and Spire. Prior to VC, Will held senior management positions with SupplyWorks and NetMarket, the e-commerce pioneer now owned by Cendant Corp.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Will made his entry into VC and came to be the hardware and media specialist as General Partner and COO @ RRE Ventures?
2.) Why does WIll believe VC is like the movie industry? How can VCs be prepared to movie producers? How does the talent required to make a great movie resemble that of making a great startup?
3.) Why does Will think the current venture model of 10-year life cycles is broken? How would he like to see LP liquidy opened with iterations on the current venture model? How can the secondary market be revolutionized to provide such liquidity?
4.) Why does Will believe that location awareness will drive a wave of value creation an order of magnitude greater than anything we have seen before? What is the thesis behind this? What are the barriers, both from a technology and cultural perspective?
5.) What were Will's biggest takeaways from being mentored by the legend, Bill Campbell, Former Chairman and CEO @ Intuit? What did he learn about leadership and incentivising a workforce from Bill? What example does Bill provide from seeing this at Google?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Will’s Fave Book: Radical Candor; Be A Kickass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity
Will’s Fave Blog: AVC by Fred Wilson
Will’s Most Recent Investment: The Outline
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Will on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Do you know how difficult it is to do different and fun intros when you've done a thousand podcasts? |
| 0:04.8 | But still I try. So here goes. And here we are with another week in the world of venture with |
| 0:08.8 | the 20 minute VC and me, your host, Harry Stebbings. And you can find me on Snapchat at H. Stebbings |
| 0:13.8 | with two Bs. And I'd love to see you there where you can suggest guests and questions for future |
| 0:18.1 | episodes on the show. But to the show today, and having interviewed the fantastic Steve Schlaffman at RRE, |
| 0:23.2 | if you haven't listened to that one, by the way, it really is a must listen. |
| 0:25.9 | But I'm thrilled to welcome his colleague today, Will Porteus, |
| 0:28.6 | general partner and COO at RRE Ventures, |
| 0:31.4 | one of New York's leading venture funds, |
| 0:33.2 | with investments in the likes of BuzzFeed, the Huffington Post, Giffy and Paperless Post, just to name a few. |
| 0:38.7 | As for Will, he works primarily with media and hardware companies, where he's a director of |
| 0:42.9 | BuzzFeed, Paperless Post, Space Flight, and Spire. |
| 0:45.9 | I do also have to say a massive thank you to Steve Schlaffman for the intro to Will today, |
| 0:49.4 | without which this episode would not have been possible. |
| 0:51.7 | But before we dive into the show today, I want to tell you about WePay. WePay helps online platforms increase revenue through integrated payments processing, |
| 0:59.5 | constant contact, equid and GoFundMe use WePay. Why? Because WePay uniquely helps platforms offer |
| 1:05.4 | ROI positive integrated payments to their users, within their U.X and without taking on |
| 1:10.2 | fraud and regulatory exposure, |
| 1:11.8 | others make you trade off between UX friction or fraud, not WePay. WePay also offers award-winning |
| 1:16.9 | support and can even work with your team through Slack or Zendesk. Get the payments revenue you |
| 1:21.6 | want without getting bogged down every time your user has a payments question. But don't trust me, |
| 1:26.1 | visit wepay.com forward slash Harry. |
... |
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