20VC: WTF Is Going On In Venture Capital; Seed Round Pricing Will Remain High, Series B & C Has Gone Completely, Downrounds Are Coming | Why Defensibility is BS on Day 1, Why Market is More Important Than Founder & Why Being First To Market Doesn't Matter
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 24 April 2023
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Avlok Kohli is the CEO @ AngelList. Under his leadership, Avlok has taken AngelList from an SPV provider to a company that is becoming the software platform for the entire industry. Today, AngelList supports over $15BN in assets and 40% of US unicorns have had a GP invest in them through AngelList. Prior to becoming CEO @ AngelList, Avlok founded 3 companies, all of which were acquired including by the likes of Square and eBay.
In Today's Episode with Avlok Kohli We Discuss:
1. From 3x Founder to Scaling AngelList to $15BN in AUM:
- How did Naval convince Avlok to join AngelList and be CEO?
- Does Avlok believe in startups having defensibility in the early days?
- How important does Avlok believe it is for companies to be "first to market"?
- Why does Avlok believe all the last-mile grocery delivery companies will go bust in the downturn?
2. What is Going On in Venture: New Funds, LPs, Secondaries:
- Are we seeing the amount of net new funds reduce in the downturn?
- Are we seeing the size of new funds being raised, being smaller?
- Is the time to first close increasing in time?
- Does AVlok agree that the fund segment hit hardest by the downturn is micro fund managers?
- Which LP class has pulled back from fund investing most significantly?
- Why does Avlok believe institutions have returned to fund investing more than ever right now?
- Are we seeing an increase in fund secondary positions?
3. What is Going on in Startups: Rounds, Valuations, Party Rounds
- Are we seeing the number of startups able to close their round reduce?
- Are we seeing the size of startup funding rounds reduce? How does this depend on the stage?
- What are we seeing for startup valuations? Why is seed as high as ever? What is the most hit?
- How is the composition of funding rounds changing? More or fewer party rounds?
- When does Avlok believe we will see down rounds and pay-to-play, really come into effect?
4. The Business of AngelList and its Future:
- What are the margins on AngelList products today?
- What is the best margin AngelList product? What is the worst?
- What product did AngelList do that in hindsight, Avlok wishes they had not done?
- Why did AngelList back out of Europe? Was it a mistake?
- How does Avlok think about AngelList's fierce competition with Carta today?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We're actually in the depth of the bear market, if you will, for venture right now. |
| 0:04.5 | Deal volume in Series B down more than 50%, valuations down more than 50%. |
| 0:09.2 | Series A is also down. Series C is basically gone. Net new funds is definitely down. We've |
| 0:14.2 | definitely seen the time to first close has increased. Now, I know what you are thinking. Wow, |
| 0:19.9 | this episode sounds like a ray of light, |
| 0:21.9 | a real positive energy in my day. Well, maybe not, but it is an incredible in-depth analysis |
| 0:26.4 | of both the venture and the startup ecosystem today with real data and live examples. And |
| 0:31.7 | there's no one better to join me for this than Avloc Koli, CEO at Angel List. Under his |
| 0:36.4 | leadership, Avlock has taken Angel List from an SPV provider to a company that is becoming the software platform for the entire industry. Today, AngelList supports over $15 billion in assets, and 40% of US Unicorns have had a GP invest in them through Angel List. I want to say huge thank you to Gokul Rajaram for some amazing |
| 0:55.1 | questions and suggestions today. They really did help make this so special. But before we dive into |
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