20VC: Why Investors Have The Biggest Problem with Bias, Why Our Job Is To Maximise Risk & Why It Is Essential To Get Good at Losing with True Ventures Founder, Jon Callaghan
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 6 September 2017
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jon Callaghan is a founder of True Ventures, one of the West Coast's leading early stage funds with a portfolio including the likes of Fitbit, recent unicorn Peloton, Automattic (makers of Wordpress) and more amazing companies. Jon also led the deals and sits on the board of Fitbit, Brightroll, Peloton and Glu Mobile, just to name a few. Prior to True, Jon founded 3 of his own companies, the first being in 1986 with Mountain Bike Outfitters Inc. Following several years founding companies, Jon made his move into VC with Summit Partners and then enjoyed roles with AOL's venture incubator, CMGi's Venture group and Globespan Capital.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Jon made his first forays into the world of VC and came to co-found True with Phil Black?
2.) How does Jon look to straddle the divide of "founder/VC"? Why does Jon believe it is crucial to have an entrepreneurial mindset as an investor?
3.) Why does Jon believe VCs biggest bias is loss aversion? Why does Jon always believe that the role of the VC is to maximise risk? What 1 thing must all prospective investors get good at very quickly?
4.) How does Jon view reserve allocation? True invest -1% per deal in each company, how do they look to efficiently deploy reserves? What must the communication be between founder and VC with regards to attaining follow on funding?
5.) Why does Jon believe that current board meetings do not serve startup founders? What are the characteristics of the best board members and how they conduct themselves? What is the single biggest problem boards bring to founders?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Jon’s Fave Book: Moby Dick
Jon’s Fave Blog: Dave Pell: NextDraft
Jon’s Most Recent Investment: Brava
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Jon 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 | We are back on the 20 minute VC with your host Harry Stebbings at H. Debings with 2Bees on Snapchat |
| 0:05.0 | for part two of this very special feature of True Ventures, one of Silicon Valley's leading early |
| 0:09.7 | stage franchises. And if you haven't heard Monday's episode with True Ventures co-founder |
| 0:13.5 | Phil Black, then that really is a must. Because today, we're joined by Phil's other half, |
| 0:17.8 | his co-founder at True, John Callahan. John has enjoyed an incredible career |
| 0:21.3 | in venture since 1991, and at True, John has led the deals and sits on the board of Fitbit, |
| 0:26.8 | Bright Roll and Peloton, just to name a few. Prior to True, John founded three of his own companies, |
| 0:31.9 | the first being in 1986 with Mountain Bike Outfitters Inc. But following several years founding |
| 0:36.7 | companies, John made his move into VC with Summit Partners, |
| 0:39.8 | and then enjoyed roles with AOL's Venture Incubator, CMGI's Venture Group, and Globespan Capital. |
| 0:45.5 | And a huge thanks to John's partner at True, Tony Conrad, for the intro today, |
| 0:49.1 | without which this episode would not have happened. |
| 0:51.3 | But before we head into today's episode, Pendo helps companies create |
| 0:54.7 | products that customers love. It was founded when alumni from Raleigh, Google, Cisco and Red Hat, |
| 0:59.9 | combined their heads and their hearts to build something they wanted but never had as product |
| 1:04.4 | managers, a complete platform for product teams. With Pendo, you can understand product usage and |
| 1:09.5 | rapidly make data-driven decisions. |
| 1:11.6 | Survey users in-app for NPS and feedback, deliver contextual help to improve UX and user onboarding, promote new features in product to drive adoption without requiring any engineering resources. |
| 1:23.1 | Pendo is the proven choice of innovative product leaders at Salesforce, optimizely, Citrix, and many more |
| 1:28.5 | leading companies. Learn more today at go.pendo.io slash harry. That's go.pendo.combo.com. But what if you're |
| 1:36.3 | starting out in the industry and want to learn to code? Like I was four years ago, I went to Treehouse, |
| 1:41.1 | the online school where you can learn how to build websites and apps. |
... |
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