20VC: Zach Weinberg on Whether A Company is a Democracy, The Importance of Ownership, The Rise of Pre-Emptive Rounds, Multi-Stage Funds Entering Seed and How he Approaches Both Risk and Personal Capital Allocation
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 6 November 2020
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Zach Weinberg is a Co-Founder of Operator Partners, operators funding operators, with no outside LPs, just their own capital. Fun fact, 20VC Fund has actually invested with them in 3 companies from Alt, Dooly.ai and Boom Pay. Prior to founding Operator Partners, Zach was the Co-founder/COO of Flatiron Health (acq @Roche for $2b) and before Flatiron Zach co-founded Invite Media (acq @Google for $81m). If that was not enough, Zach has also been an incredibly successful angel in the past with a portfolio including RigUp, Ro, Color, BlueApron and Plaid to name a few.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Zach made his way into the world of startups, came to found Flatiron (acq for $2Bn) and how that led to Operator Partners?
2.) How does Zach analyse his own personal capital allocation? How much in funds? How much in cash, equities, direct, credit etc etc? How does Zach analyse his relationship to money? How has it changed over time? How does Zach evaluate his relationship to risk?
3.) What does Zach make of the rise of pre-empted rounds? When should founders takem them vs reject them? How does Zach feel about multi-stage funds re-entering seed aggressively? How does he advise founders? What are the pros and cons of having multi-stage money?
4.) How does Zach think about the importance of ownership? How does Zach analyse the re-investment decision? How does he approach reserve allocation? How does Zach reflect on his own price sensitivity? How has his relationship to price and ownership changed with time?
5.) How does Zach feel about Brian Armstrong's piece on employees bringing their own political and external beliefs into the workplace? Why does Zach believe that companies are not a democracy? Why does Zach believe that we do not live in a democracy any longer?
Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode
Zach's Favourite Book: Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World
Zach's Most Recent Investment: David Energy
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Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I am very excited for this 20VC episode. I have to admit, I've always very much enjoyed following |
| 0:03.6 | this guest on Twitter, and I was thrilled when we could make this episode happen. And so with that, |
| 0:06.9 | I'm delighted to welcome Zach Weinberg, co-founder of operator partners, operators funding operators, |
| 0:12.2 | with no outside LPs, just their own capital. And fun fact, 20 VC funders actually co-invested |
| 0:17.6 | with operator partners in three companies from alt, duly.a.I. and boom pay. |
| 0:22.5 | And prior to founding operator partners, Zach was the co-founder and CEO of Flatiron Health, |
| 0:27.3 | acquired by Roche for $2 billion. |
| 0:29.3 | And before Flatiron, Zach co-founded Invite Media acquired by Google for $81 million. |
| 0:34.3 | If that wasn't enough, Zach was an incredibly successful and prolific angel in the |
| 0:38.4 | past, with a portfolio including the lights of rig up, row, colour, blue apron and plaid, to name a few. |
| 0:44.4 | I'd also want to say a huge thank you to Olivia Benjamin, Josh Coppulman, James McGuinness at David |
| 0:48.7 | Energy and Nat Turner for some fantastic questions suggestions today. I really did so appreciate that. |
| 0:55.1 | But before we dive into the show today, while 2020 has been a year full of unexpected changes, one thing has remained |
| 0:59.5 | constant. The most important part of a company is people, and that's where Lattis comes in. Latis is |
| 1:04.3 | rated the number one people management platform to help companies develop engaged and high-performing |
| 1:09.2 | teams, trusted by over 2,000 companies like |
| 1:12.0 | Reddit, Slack and Postmates, and companies who leverage the Latus platform, see improvements |
| 1:16.7 | across a broad spectrum from retention, engagement, and productivity. Latus is the only |
| 1:21.4 | solution that connects performance management, employee engagement, and now with the launch of the |
| 1:25.9 | incredible brand- new lattice grow career |
| 1:28.4 | development in one unified platform to rule them all for people's strategy remote teams need more |
| 1:33.4 | support as we will navigate to find our new normals and you can learn more about how lattice can help you |
... |
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