20VC: Why The Engineer Will Replace The MBA As CEO, Why The Peace Dividends From The Autonomous Car Wars Will Generate More Value Outside of Transport & Why Old and Boring Industries Are The Most Exciting To Build In with Avidan Ross, Founding Partner @ R

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

🗓️ 5 November 2018

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Avidan Ross is the Founding Partner @ Root Ventures, one of Silicon Valley's most exciting newer generation of funds dedicated to backing bold engineers at seed. To date they have backed some incredible companies such as Nautilus Labs, Dusty Robotics, Tortuga AgTech and Instrumental.ai just to name a few. Prior to founding Root, Avidan was CTO at The CIM Group, with an aggregate of $15Bn AUM, Avidan was responsible for establishing the company’s technical vision and leading all aspects of the company's technology investment. Before that, he built algorithmic trading platforms as Director of Technology at WHW Capital.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Avidan went from building algorithmic trading platforms to back the next generation of revolutionary engineers with Root?

2.) What does Avidan mean when he says "the peace dividends of the autonomous car wars will generate more value outside of transportation?" How does the commoditisation of these core components affect subsequent industries? With their commoditisation, does it not become a raise to the bottom on price and margin?

3.) How does Avidan approach the layering on new software products to emerging hardware devices? What does this mean for the margin required both for the hardware and the software? How does Avidan's investor mentality alter when investing in hardware vs software?

4.) Why does Avidan believe "old and boring industries are the most exciting to build software in?" How does Avidan approach the common problem of customer education and selling to a customer base that does not want to talk to you and does not believe in your product? What do founders selling in these industries need to focus on to break through?

5.) How does Avidan assess the current landscape in terms of the quality and quantity of engineer CEOs? Why does Avidan believe the MBA CEO will be replaced by engineers? How has Avidan seen a variance in the background in the entrepreneurs innovating in "old and boring" industries?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:

Avidan’s Fave Book: Drive by Daniel Pink

Avidan’s Most Recent Investment: Dusty Robotics

As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Avidan 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	You are listening to The 20 Minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings, at H. Stebbings, 1996 on Instagram.
0:05.5	Check it out, I get a huge ego boost when you follow me there.
0:08.6	However, to our episode today, and I just love featuring really exciting new managers doing
0:12.9	something maybe slightly different. And that's the case today, as I'm thrilled to welcome
0:16.7	Avedan Ross, founding partner at Root Ventures to the Hot Seat. For those that don't know, Root is one of Silicon Valley's most exciting newer generation
0:24.1	of funds dedicated to backing bold engineers at Seed.
0:27.8	To date, they've backed some incredible companies, such as Nautilus Labs, dusty robotics,
0:32.3	Tortuga Agtech, and instrumental AI, just to name a few.
0:35.8	And prior to founding Root, Avedan was CTO at the CIM group, with an aggregate of $15 billion
0:41.1	AUM.
0:42.2	Aum was responsible for establishing the company's technical vision and leading all aspects of the
0:46.8	company's technology investment.
0:48.6	And before that, he built algorithmic trading platforms as director of technology at
0:52.5	WHW Capital.
0:55.8	Plus, fun fact, both Avedan and I are probably the world's biggest espresso drinkers, which may come through in this
0:59.9	interview. And I want to say a huge thank you to both Michael Kim at Sendana and Samir Khadji
1:04.1	at First Republic for making the intro to Avedan stay. I really do appreciate that. But before we
1:09.2	dive into the show today, I want to talk a little bit about Hymns, a new
1:12.3	wellness brand for men.
1:13.7	So although I look positively young enough to be Harry Potter in disguise, doing three episodes
1:18.2	a week is stressful.
1:19.3	And did you know 66% of men lose their hair by aged 35?
	...

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