20VC: Why Market Is More Important Than Team, The 4 Key Roles of A Board Member & Why Founders Get Market Sizing So Wrong with Rory O'Driscoll, Founding Partner @ Scale Venture Partners

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

The Twenty Minute VC

Finance, Venturecapital, Tech News, News, Siliconvalley, Technology, Investing, Startups, Business

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 28 November 2016

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Rory O’Driscoll is a founding member and Partner at Scale Venture Partners. An active investor for the past 20 years, Rory is focused on early-in-revenue software companies benefiting from the move to Software as a Service and the wider transition of enterprise computing to the cloud. Rory currently sits on the boards of Axcient, Bill.com, Box, Chef Software, DataSift, DocuSign, DroneDeploy, Forter, Katch, OneLogin, Pantheon, WalkMe and Wrike. Prior investments include ExactTarget (ET; Acq: SFDC), Omniture (OMTR; Acq: ADBE), ScanSafe (Acq: Cisco), Frontbridge (Acq: MSFT), Placeware (Acq: MSFT) among others. Rory has been recognized by the Forbes Midas List and AlwaysOn Power Players in Venture Capital for his investments.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Rory made his way into the world of venture and came to be a Partner @ Scale.

2.) How does Rory address market size? Does he utilise the bottom up or top dpwn approach? What is his strategy?

3.) Why are markets more important to Rory than management? What do each element have a different role in achieving?

4.) How does Rory look to navigate board conflict? When conflict does arise, how does Rory look to resolve a CEO who does not listen?

5.) What are the 4 fundamental roles of a board member? Why is competence underrated? What should founders and CEOs look for in prospective board members?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:

Rory's Fave Blog: Term Sheet

Rory's Fave Book: SuperForecasting: The Art & Science of Prediction

Rory's Most Recent Investment: DroneDeploy

As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Rory 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	Hello and welcome back to the 20 minute VC with your host Harry Stebbings on Snapchat at H. Stebbings and on the
0:05.3	amazingly named new blog MahitoVC.com, I'd love to hear your thoughts. It's slightly risky, slightly out there,
0:10.9	but it'd be great to have your feedback. However, to the show today, and I think this show might be one
0:15.2	I'm more proud of than any other actually. For me personally, it was a massive learning experience and the guest was simply exceptional. So time to meet the man himself, Rory O'Driscoll, founding member and partner at
0:25.5	scale venture partners. And Rory is an active investor for the past 20 years, focusing on early
0:30.9	in-revenue software companies benefiting from the move to software as a service and the wider
0:35.2	transition of enterprise computing to the cloud.
0:37.7	Rory currently sits on the board of some incredible companies, including bill.com, box, data sift,
0:43.4	docuSign, one login, and many more incredible names. And due to Rory's incredible investing career,
0:48.5	which also includes investments in the likes of the exact target and omniture, Rory's been
0:52.5	recognized by Forbes Midas List and always on
0:55.2	power players in venture capital for his investments. However, before we meet Rory, accounting
1:00.0	always used to be a tricky one for me and then Zero came along. Zero is beautiful,
1:04.5	easy to use online accounting software for small businesses. With Zero, you can easily manage your
1:09.2	accounting anytime, anywhere from your computer or mobile device. When you add zero to your small business, you can easily manage your accounting anytime, anywhere from your
1:11.1	computer or mobile device. When you add Zero to your small business, you are able to send
1:15.6	online invoices and get paid much faster, get an instant view of your cash flow, track your
1:20.4	payroll and keep tabs on your inventory. You can also partner with your accountant and
1:24.6	bookkeeper in real time whenever you like. You can also customize
1:28.0	your Zero experience with over 500 business apps, including advanced solutions for point of
1:33.0	sale, time tracking, e-commerce, and much more. It's no wonder over 860,000 customers in more
1:38.9	than 180 countries use Zero. Sign up for a free 30-day trial at zero.com slash 20 VC that's zero.com
	...

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