20VC: Why You Don't Have To Have Operational Experience To Be A Good VC, Why There Is No Optimal Stage To Invest & Why VCs Should Focus on Reputation Ahead of Cash On Cash Returns with Lyon Wong, General Partner @ Spectrum 28

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

🗓️ 26 October 2016

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Lyon Wong is the Founding General Partner @ Spectrum 28, a $170m Silicon Valley fund that invests in companies who leverage data and computation to create and transform large industries. Prior to Spectrum 28, Lyon was Partner @ Lightspeed Venture Partners, the $3bn VC fund with investments in the likes of Snapchat, Nest and Giphy, just to name a few. Before Lightspeed Lyon spent time with leading Silicon Valley seed fund, SV Angel, where he worked with the likes of Ron Conway and David Lee.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How did Lyon come to be GP of Spectrum 28 with their recent $170m fund?

2.) Why does Lyon believe that you do not have to have operational experience to be a good investor? What are the core components to beeing a good investor and value add investor?

3.) Why does Lyon believe that there is no optimal stage to invest? How does he evaluate the efficiency curve and positioning on it? How does this affect his thesis?

4.) Why does Lyon believe that funds must focus on reputation instead of cash on cash? What is the most effective and scalable way to build a reputation in today's venture ecosystem?

5.) How does Lyon evaluate team building at Spectrum 28? What did he look for in potential partners? How does he look to implement generational transition into the fund?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Episode:

Lyon’s Fave Blog: Medium, Quora

Lyon’s Fave Book: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

Lyon’s Most Recent Investment: PatientBank

As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Lyon 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 supported by Wunder Capital, the leading online investment platform that allows individuals to invest in large scale solar projects across the U.S. Wunder’s solar investment funds allow you to earn up to 11% annually, while diversifying your portfolio, curbing pollution and combating global climate change. Do well by doing good and sign up for a free account here and join the thousands of people that are already achieving their investment targets.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello and welcome back to the 20 minute VC with your host Harry Stebbings at H Stebbings on Snapchat
0:04.9	for all those that have taken so long to add me. It'd be great to see you there. But to the show
0:08.8	stay and I have to say I'm really very excited for this one. My love for first time fund managers
0:12.8	is very known and today's guest really is one of the creme de la creme. So joining me in the hot seat
0:17.5	today I'm thrilled to welcome Leon Wong. Now, Leon is the founding
0:21.1	general partner at Spectrum 28, a $17 million dollar Silicon Valley fund that invests in
0:26.9	companies who leverage data and computation to create and transform large industries. And prior to
0:32.2	Spectrum 28, Leon was partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, the 3 billion VC fund with investments in the
0:37.8	lights of Snapchat, Nest and Giffy, previous guest on the show, just to name a few.
0:42.5	And before Lightspeed, Leon spent time with leading Silicon Valley Seed Fund SV Angel, where he
0:47.3	worked with the lights of Ron Conway and David Lee.
0:49.7	I'd also like to say a huge thank you to Eric Torrenberg and Leon's partner, Alok, for the
0:53.8	introduction to Leon today, without which the show would not have been possible.
0:57.3	However, before we meet Leon, as all investors will tell you, one of the keys to doing well in this game is communication.
1:03.1	And that's where Angel Loop come in.
1:04.6	They are the experts in facilitating communication and data sharing between companies and investors.
1:09.4	On the platform, founders track their performance
1:11.5	metrics and send out updates to their investors on the state of their business. Investors in turn
1:16.3	can then react in real time to help their founders with introductions, follow-on funding,
1:20.9	and much more. An Angel Loop is free for all investors and only costs $59 per month for companies.
1:26.1	Right now, they're offering a free two-month trial with the promo code 20-minute VC,
1:30.1	and you can check it out at angelloop.com or in the show notes.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

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.