20VC: Why Valuation Is Of Critical Importance At Seed, How To Understand Innovation Cycles & Having 3 CEOs and Burning $10m a Month with Lee Hower, Co-Founder @ NextView Ventures
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 8 March 2017
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Lee Hower is a co-founder and Partner at NextView Ventures, one of the East coast's leading early stage funds with investments in the likes of Dia & Co, Sunrise, TaskRabbit and GrabCad just to name a few. As for Lee, prior to being a VC with NextView, Lee started his career as an early employee of PayPal in product and business development roles, through the company’s 2002 IPO and sale to eBay. After PayPal, Lee was a co-founder of LinkedIn (NYSE: LNKD) and served as head of corporate development.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Lee made his way from the early days of PayPal with Elon Musk to the founding team of LinkedIn with Reid Hoffman to founding NextView and being a VC?
2.) What were Lee's biggest takeaways from his time working with Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman in the early days of PayPal? How has that experience affected how he invests today?
3.) Unlike other Paypal mafia members, Lee decided not to pursue the multi-stage investing strategy. Why was this? How does Lee evaluate the current seed environment?
4.) Why does Lee believe it is fundamental to study the history of VC and innovation? How does this affect his mindset when investing?
5.) What would Lee advice to a junior VC or someone looking to move into the industry in terms of differentiation and personal branding? What is key? How should this be approached?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Lee’s Fave Book: The Globalisation Paradox
Lee's Most Recent Investment: Optimus Ride
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the 20 minute VC with our second VC episode of the week with me, Harry Stebbings, |
| 0:04.5 | and I'd love to see you on Snapchat at H. Stebbings with two bees, and it would really mean so much to me |
| 0:09.2 | to hear your thoughts on the new blog, mahitovc.com. As an amateur writer, your feedback, really would |
| 0:14.0 | mean a lot to me. However, to the show today, and you might remember we had Rob Go, co-founder at Nextview Ventures on the show a couple of months ago. |
| 0:20.9 | If you have not listened to that one, by the way, then that really is a must. |
| 0:23.9 | But I'm so delighted today to be joined by Rob's co-founder at Nextview, Lee Hauer. |
| 0:28.0 | Together with their third partner, David, they've built Nextview into one of the East Coast's |
| 0:31.7 | leading early stage funds, with investments in the likes of Deer and Co, Sunrise, our favourite calendar app, we mourn and miss so much, |
| 0:39.2 | task rabbit, and of course grab cad, just to name a few. As for Lee, prior to being a VC with Nextview, |
| 0:44.6 | Lee started his career as an early employee of PayPal in product and business development through |
| 0:49.0 | the company's 2002 IPO and the sale to eBay. After PayPal, Lee was a co-founder of LinkedIn |
| 0:54.1 | and served as head of |
| 0:55.3 | corporate development. I'd also like to say a huge thank you to Rob Go for the intro today, without |
| 0:59.2 | which the show would not have been possible. But before we dive into the show today, there are some |
| 1:02.9 | products that you simply cannot remember what life was like before them. For me, that's X.org. |
| 1:07.8 | They bring you Amy and Andrew, their AI-powered personal assistance for scheduling meetings. |
| 1:12.6 | And the beauty of Amy or Andrew is you interact with them like you would any other person. |
| 1:16.7 | And it allows you to avoid the tedious hours of email ping pong in order to schedule one meeting. |
| 1:21.6 | Even better though. There's no sign in, no password, no download. All you do is CCAmy at X.A.I. Absolutely fantastic. And you can check it out now |
| 1:29.9 | at X.comaI. It really is a must. And on the topic of streamlining, traditionally long |
| 1:34.4 | and cumbersome workflows, you must check out Workable, the all-in-one recruiting software for ambitious |
| 1:39.2 | companies. From posting a job to tracking and managing candidates, Workable provides everything |
... |
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