20VC: Why Adaptability Is Key To Fundraising, Why Supply Is Always The First Priority In Marketplaces & Why Sometimes You Have To Hire Fast & Fire Fast with Nav Athwal, Founder & CEO @ RealtyShares
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 21 October 2016
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Nav Athwal is the Founder & CEO @ RealtyShares, a curated marketplace connecting real estate developers and operators with investors across the country. Realtyshares recently announced an incredible $200m funded deals through the platform and have raised from some of the world's best investors including Union Square Ventures, General Catalyst and Menlo Ventures. Before starting RealtyShares, Nav was a real estate and land use attorney at San Francisco based law firm Farella Braun & Martel, LLP.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Nav made his way into startups and came to found RealtyShares?
2.) As a marketplace founder, where did Nav start: supply or demand? Why does Nav think marketplace founders should always focus on supply first?
3.)How did Nav look to relationship build and network with the mentors that he wanted to have help him? What would Nav suggest to those looking to gain great mentors?
4.)How was the fundraising process for Nav with USV, Menlo and General Catalyst? What have been his big lessons from his 3 rounds of fundraising??
5.) What should founders optimize for in the fundraising process? Should founders look to instil a sense of realism with regards to valuation or let it be largely inflated?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Nav’ Fave Book: The Hard Thing About Hard Things
Nav’ Fave Blog or Newsletter: Fred Wilson: AVC, Mark Suster: Both Sides of The Table
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Nav on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
Angelloop is the leading post funding management platform for private market investors and their portfolio companies. They help investors manage and track their portfolio companies on the cloud while providing them with access to their investments performance data. Angelloop helps founders of startups track their performance, manage their cap table and keep their investors in the loop. Investors get free access while their portfolio companies pay only $49/Month. Use or share the promo-code 20MinVC to get your portfolio companies online with a two month trial.
This episode was brought to you by DesignCrowd, the online marketplace for custom graphic, logo and web design that helps startups, entrepreneurs, web developers and agencies outsource design projects to designers from around the world.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is the 20 minute VC with your host, Harry Stebbings. And for anyone that hasn't already, |
| 0:04.3 | you can add me on Snapchat at H. Stebbings with 2Bs. I'd absolutely love to see you there. However, |
| 0:09.0 | to the very special Founders Friday episode that we have ahead, I'm delighted to welcome |
| 0:13.0 | Nav Athwell, founder and CEO at Realty Shares, a curated marketplace connecting real estate |
| 0:18.5 | developers and operators with investors across the country. |
| 0:21.6 | And Realty Shares recently announced an incredible 200 million funded deals through the platform, |
| 0:25.9 | so a huge congratulations to them for that. And they've also raised funding from some of the |
| 0:29.7 | world's best investors, including the one and only Union Square Ventures, General Catalyst, |
| 0:34.6 | and Menlo Ventures. Before starting Realty Sh shares, though, Nav was a real estate and land use |
| 0:39.2 | attorney at a San Francisco-based law firm. And I'd also like to say a huge thank you to Ryan Koolbeck, |
| 0:44.3 | previous guest as founder of Circle Up, for the intro to Nav today, without which the interview |
| 0:48.8 | could not have happened. However, before we meet Nav, if you're a founder or entrepreneur looking |
| 0:53.8 | for logo design, site design, custom graphics, or even t-shirt and billboard design, design, design crowd is the place for you. Design crowd is the online marketplace for all things design, even big brands like HTC and Virgin Active use them. So how does it work? Simply launch a project. Designers begin submitting quality designs for you to review. |
| 1:12.8 | You quickly generate a large gallery of designs that fit your needs. And once you select your favorite |
| 1:17.5 | designs, you'll be sent all the files you need, and all of this can happen in just three days. |
| 1:22.6 | Much better and far more reasonable than an agency and perfect for small businesses and entrepreneurs, |
| 1:27.4 | looking for |
| 1:27.8 | fast response times and really reasonable pricing. So head over to design crowd.com forward slash |
| 1:33.1 | VC and enter the promo code VC100 and the kind folk at design crowd will give you an incredible |
| 1:38.8 | $100 off. And with design crowd being the go-to place for design, Angel Loop is the go-to place for managing |
| 1:45.1 | investor-to-founder relations. Angel Loop are the experts in facilitating communication and data |
| 1:50.2 | sharing between companies and investors. On the platform, founders can track their performance |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Twenty Minute VC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Twenty Minute VC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.