Category: Startup

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Woe is Me

sunset, alone, dock, woe

I was talking to an emerging manager raising a $10M fund recently. He shared a comment, likely off-the-cuff, but something I’ve heard many other emerging managers echo. “This year, most of the dollars deployed into venture has concentrated in only a few big funds.”

Not this manager in particular, but I’ve heard so many other Fund I or Fund II GPs say that. Blaming their struggle with fundraising on the world. It’s not me, but the world is conspiring against me. Or frankly, woe is me. But there is no LP who ever wants to hear that. Building a firm is hard. Building a startup, likely harder. No one said it’ll be easy. So let’s not pretend it’ll be all sunshine and rainbows. If you thought so, you’re deeply misinformed. If you’re going to be an entrepreneur of any kind, you need to take matters into your own hands. You cannot change the world (at least not yet). But you can change how you approach it.

And as an LP, that’s the mentality we’re looking for. Or as Raida Daouk once said on the pod, we like “GPs who can run through walls.”

That said, the mega funds who are raising billions of dollars are raising from institutions whose minimum check size is in the tens, if not hundreds of millions. These same institutions would never invest in an emerging manager. Their team, their strategy, and their institution isn’t built for it. When they have to deploy hundreds of millions, if not billions, a year into “venture” with a team of four or less, you’re not their target audience. So as an emerging manager, those mega funds are not your competition at least when it comes to LP capital.

You’re competing against all the other funds (likely emerging managers) at your fund size. Who can take the same check size you can take. That’s who you’re competing with. So whether you like it or not, billions going to the mega funds has, from a fundraising perspective, nothing to do with you.

If you are looking for reasons to fail, you will find one.

As the great Henry Ford once said, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.”

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash

#unfiltered is a series where I share my raw thoughts and unfiltered commentary about anything and everything. It’s not designed to go down smoothly like the best cup of cappuccino you’ve ever had (although here‘s where I found mine), more like the lonely coffee bean still struggling to find its identity (which also may one day find its way into a more thesis-driven blogpost). Who knows? The possibilities are endless.

Stay up to date with the weekly cup of cognitive adventures inside venture capital and startups, as well as cataloging the history of tomorrow through the bookmarks of yesterday!

The views expressed on this blogpost are for informational purposes only. None of the views expressed herein constitute legal, investment, business, or tax advice. Any allusions or references to funds or companies are for illustrative purposes only, and should not be relied upon as investment recommendations. Consult a professional investment advisor prior to making any investment decisions.

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Underwriting Things That Don’t Change

sequoia tree, does not change

One of the most interesting lines I heard on a podcast that Mike Maples was on was: “90% of our exit profits have come from pivots.” Which I first wrote here. Then here. It’s a line that lives rent free in my mind. Ideas, startups, roadmaps, and goals change all the time. I get it. That’s life. Very, very few folks are folks who unilaterally pursue one thing their entire lives. And of those who do, they’re not all successful.

Another friend of mine whose track record speaks for itself, having invested and involved herself in multiple boards before those companies became unicorns and even after, once told me that the idea she invests in is irrelevant. As long as it has grounds and can be adjacent to a large market. The primary thing she looks for is the founding team.

Early-stage investors obsess about people. They’re not wrong. Some are misled by these “VC-isms.” Others still have their own way of underwriting them. I don’t have a crystal ball. I’m also not the smartest person to be dishing out predictions. I have a rough idea of what will change, though I may not always be right. But I don’t know how they’ll change. Or when. So I’ve lived an investing career obsessing over things that don’t change. Or as Naval Ravikant puts it: “If you lived your life 1000 times, what would be true in 999 of them?”

I’ve written about flaws, limitations and restrictions before. But to quickly surmise:

  • Flaws are things you can overcome. Limited track record. Never managed a team. Never scaled a product. Limited access to capital.
  • Limitations are imposed by others and/or the environment. Gravity dictates that objects don’t fall upward. There are only 24 hours in a day. If you’re not based in the Bay Area, it’s harder to raise capital. Certain investors prefer co-founders and partnerships. Certain investors care about warm intros. The list goes on.
  • Restrictions are rules imposed on yourself by yourself. Batman can’t kill. You only invest in solo founders. You only invest in healthcare. You don’t invest in anyone outside the Ivy League schools. But some restrictions go deeper. You’ll never hire from a job portal again. You never hire or invest outside of your network. You won’t invest or hire having never met someone in person. You need to meet their spouse before you make a hiring decision. You don’t invest in single parents. You don’t hire anyone who doesn’t read at least one book per month. You micromanage. You don’t hire anyone who cannot curse. And yes, I’ve heard all of the above and more. My curiosity is always: Why do you impose such restrictions on yourself? What is the story you’re not telling me? Is out of a fear or admiration?

All that to say:

  • Flaws will and can change if it is a priority. But won’t change if they’re not.
  • Limitations might change, but it’s outside of your and my control. And I don’t get paid to pray to the weather gods.
  • Restrictions often don’t change.

Whether you admit it or not, certain habits are hard to change and unlearn. It’s possible. But that requires you to not only be aware of it, but also actively want to change it. Other habits are second nature. How you treat others. How you start each conversation. Why you look both ways before crossing even an empty street. Why you’ve sold yourself a particular personal narrative. Why you have to invest a certain thesis.

The world seems to always be trying to stay on top of things, but there seems to be far less dialogue around how to get to the bottom of things. To me, when it’s underwriting a person and their team, it’s about underwriting what doesn’t change rather than underwriting what could.

Photo by Hc Digital on Unsplash

Stay up to date with the weekly cup of cognitive adventures inside venture capital and startups, as well as cataloging the history of tomorrow through the bookmarks of yesterday!

The views expressed on this blogpost are for informational purposes only. None of the views expressed herein constitute legal, investment, business, or tax advice. Any allusions or references to funds or companies are for illustrative purposes only, and should not be relied upon as investment recommendations. Consult a professional investment advisor prior to making any investment decisions.

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Fundraising ≠ Capital Formation

cash register

I was chatting with a GP last week about the highlights and lowlights of having a multi-stage fund or just a VC fund as an LP via their fund-of-funds. The obvious synergies of access to downstream capital and branding, especially if the individual running the fund-of-funds is known for their institutional track record as an LP. As well as access to the GPs at those funds for mentorship reasons.

But the downsides also exist. You’re one of many of other GPs who have access to the same team. More often than not, there’s no institutional diligence. And the investment happens largely for strategic purposes. Same is true for multi-stage GPs investing through their own family office. But you also have to think through the tough conversations you need to have when you take checks from more than one of these funds. Assuming all else equal, and they write the same check size, when your portfolio companies are outperforming, do you pass them to Big Fund A or Big Fund B? Equally as true for any LP who wants co-investment opportunities. Family offices. Fund-of-funds. The classic question of: Do you like Mom or Dad more?

And there’s one more. Consider a multi-stage fund who’s an LP in your fund. You share one of your stellar portfolio companies with them, and they loved the deal so much they also invested. Not only invested, but led the following round at a much, much higher valuation. For the sake of this thought experiment, let’s say the Series A valuation is a solid nine figures. As such, they take a board seat. A year later, your portfolio company has the opportunity to exit for $800M. A phenomenal exit for everyone on the cap table, including yourself, your other co-investors, the founders, and the employees. And for you in particular, this would return meaningful multiples of your fund. But not your Series A lead, who is also your LP. The math isn’t inspiring for them. $800M would only be a shy 4-8X on their initial investment.

So, the Series A lead/your LP blocks the acquisition deal and pushes the founders to go for more. You push back on the motion as everyone else’s incentive, including the founders, is the same as yours. Whether the deal happens or not at this point is irrelevant. This Series A lead, who’s also your LP, ends up telling a number of other LPs that you’re difficult to work with. To the effect that they would also no longer re-up in your next vintage. And that makes your fundraise for the next fund even harder than you expected.

You’ve not only lost a $500-2M check (on average), but worse, you’re likely to have a tarnished reputation with prospective LPs. If they like you already, they may look beneath the surface. If they haven’t gotten to know you, they’ll likely surmise on limited information that the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.

Before you dismiss this as just a hypothetical case study, note that this is a true story.

As my buddy Thor once told me, “Capital formation is a design principle. Fundraising is a sales process. Without true design around a customer base and a product, you will fail eventually.”

Capital formation is thinking through the types of conversations you want to have when you’re in Fund n+1 and n+2, 5-6 years from now. As Adam Marchick once said, “The bulk of your conversations with an LP happen negative 6 months to time of investment. The most important conversations you have with an LP are Year 2 through 6 of your investment.” These are the conversations about extending recycling periods, early distributions, fund extensions, and so on. Many of which revolve around the return incentives of your LP base (if decisions are made by majority approval) or by LPAC approval. A family office who has no immediate liquidity needs might not want early distributions and wants you to hold out. Another who’s starting a new business line or pulling completely out of venture (because they were misinformed or set the wrong expectations initially) will want early liquidity and/or someone to buy their stake. An institution with a high leadership turnover rate will likely have a new CIO who’ll want to redo the whole portfolio. So what used to be obvious re-up decisions will need to be re-underwritten altogether.

So I’m not here to say, “Don’t take LP checks from fund-of-funds whose core business is being a VC.” I just want to remind you to consider the incentives of each LP you have on your cap table. Ideally, your LP base’s incentives are homogenous. Not only to themselves, but also to yours. Realistically, for the average emerging manager, it won’t be. But if you know it won’t be, prepare guardrails for future conversations. Don’t walk in blind.

Photo by Dan Meyers on Unsplash

Stay up to date with the weekly cup of cognitive adventures inside venture capital and startups, as well as cataloging the history of tomorrow through the bookmarks of yesterday!

The views expressed on this blogpost are for informational purposes only. None of the views expressed herein constitute legal, investment, business, or tax advice. Any allusions or references to funds or companies are for illustrative purposes only, and should not be relied upon as investment recommendations. Consult a professional investment advisor prior to making any investment decisions.

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The Seneca of Investing | Jacob Miller | Superclusters | S6E4

jacob miller

“There’s this thing called alpha, which is returns driven by skill not market return. And when you start to think about what does that mean, skill means you’re doing something that other people aren’t. You have to be different from the average. What can drive that? How are you going to have that be positive expected value? You need to have unique information, unique insight, unique access, or get uniquely lucky.” — Jacob Miller

Jacob Miller is the Co-Founder and Opto’s Chief Solutions Officer, a key figure in its leadership team and central to its growth strategy. He spearheads initiatives for Opto’s fiduciary partnerships and the systemization of institutional-quality private markets investment techniques and programs.

Before co-founding Opto, Miller spent nearly five years as an investor at Bridgewater Associates. Miller has a passion for sensible long-term investing, systematizing investment processes, and distilling complex market dynamics into clear, logical linkages that help people better understand their investments. Having managed money for family and friends since he was 16, Miller is a certified market junkie. While he has a background in macroeconomics and high-yield debt, he finds the challenges and opportunities in the private markets space far more interesting and important, both for investors and society.

You can find Jacob on his socials here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacob-m-08b32967/

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also watch the episode on YouTube here.

OUTLINE:

[00:00] Intro
[01:49] Why did Jacob start investing at 8 years old?
[07:20] The fallacies of storytelling
[08:49] Inputs, framework, and outputs
[09:21] Jake’s mental framework for alpha
[12:31] Pete Soderling’s unique access
[13:49] Jacob on defense tech VCs
[14:57] How does Jacob underwrite relationships in defense?
[16:30] How do you know if someone’s been preaching a story before it became a story?
[20:16] The difference b/w an opinion and an insight
[23:07] Why does Jacob write?
[25:42] Running with Joe Lonsdale at 8:30AM
[29:12] 2 wildly different billionaires
[31:48] What does Jacob want for the world?
[36:23] What keeps Jacob humble?

SELECT LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE:

SELECT QUOTES FROM THIS EPISODE:

“A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one. — William Shakespeare

“If you didn’t have stories or branding, it would take you four hours to choose which cereal to get based on solely merit — if you did cost comparison versus ingredients, nutrition, et cetera. You need the story to make a decision in two seconds rather than six hours.” — Jacob Miller

“You need to know what are the assumptions that underpin those stories so you can know if and when they’ve been invalidated.” — Jacob Miller

“You have inputs; you have a framework; you have outputs. The story is the output. You can be wrong on your inputs. You can be wrong on your framework. Better to be wrong on your inputs than your framework. Because if you were wrong on your framework—and it’s garbage— it’s garbage in, and garbage out.” — Jacob Miller

“There’s this thing called alpha, which is returns driven by skill not market return. And when you start to think about what does that mean, skill means you’re doing something that other people aren’t. You have to be different from the average. What can drive that? How are you going to have that be positive expected value? You need to have unique information, unique insight, unique access, or get uniquely lucky.

“As investors, we probably don’t want to bet on getting uniquely lucky. And access and information counts as insider trading in public markets. And so if you’re going to a public market asset manager who claims to have alpha, you need to be defending why you have unique insight. Why can you take information that everyone else has and derive conclusions that other people won’t, which is a very high bar. […]

“But in private markets, we can look to what are unique sources of access and information. Are you in founder networks that other people are not in? How can you show me you see deals before other people do? Do you have benefits as an LP or GP that you can bring to founders that might lead to preferential pricing that would lead to them choosing you first? Do you have a reputation that will attract the right kind of talent? And then on top of that, do you have really insightful frameworks about what makes a great founder, about how to assess TAM, about how to help a company scale through product-market fit to expansion and et cetera? I always start a private market analysis with: ‘Let’s talk about access and information. What do you see that others don’t? What do you know that others don’t?” — Jacob Miller

“Too much source-citing is honestly a red flag for me. This should be stuff you’re learning in the market that’s evidence of your unique access to information.” — Jacob Miller

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” — Alvin Toffler

“That which Fortune has not given, she cannot take away.” — Seneca

Follow David Zhou for more Superclusters content:
For podcast show notes: https://cupofzhou.com/superclusters
Follow David Zhou’s blog: https://cupofzhou.com
Follow Superclusters on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SuperclustersLP
Follow Superclusters on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@super.clusters
Follow Superclusters on Instagram: https://instagram.com/super.clusters

Stay up to date with the weekly cup of cognitive adventures inside venture capital and startups, as well as cataloging the history of tomorrow through the bookmarks of yesterday!

The views expressed on this blogpost are for informational purposes only. None of the views expressed herein constitute legal, investment, business, or tax advice. Any allusions or references to funds or companies are for illustrative purposes only, and should not be relied upon as investment recommendations. Consult a professional investment advisor prior to making any investment decisions.

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Dear Emerging Manager

letter, dear

You are not all top quartile. Only 25% of you are.

You are not all top decile. Only 10% of you are.

I refuse to believe that I’m somehow seeing only the best in market. I’m not famous or lucky enough to have that fortune. Even the best known LPs I know are not so.

If your marks include companies held at last round valuation (LRV) for longer than two years, please consider proactive re-marks. This includes your angel portfolio.

SAFE rounds are not mark-ups. Do not conflate real marks with hypothetical marks.

If the founder doesn’t know who you are AND if you don’t know the company’s updates in the last two quarters, you don’t know the founder. Do not pretend you do. Your investment is not accretive to your future network. I dare say if I went to those founders right now, and asked them who their top five favorite investors are, you won’t come up. You’re forgettable. And that’s a cardinal sin of firm-building.

Let me caveat that firm-building means you plan to grow the firm. That where you are today is not where you want to stay forever as a GP. This matters far less if this is a one-and-done fund. That is okay. You don’t have to love venture forever. You don’t have to pretend you do.

Do not believe you are that special if you have a multi-stage GP as an LP. Many of the notable multi-stage GPs have invested in many. Some have invested in multiple dozens. Others hundreds. A handful we see in almost every deck. It is their job to see everything Or at least attempt to. The cardinal sin for a multi-stage GP is to not see the deal, worse than not picking or winning it.

Assume all your LPs will be passive LPs. I don’t care about their profile, how referenceable they are, how much they love you, how much they want to help. Give it a few months, a year at best, they will become passive. Human interest is fleeting. Especially since venture is the smallest bucket in our allocation (excluding funds-of-funds). And yes, they have day jobs. There are exceptions. For instance, someone who wants to start their own VC fund or someone who wants to be a VC themselves. That is not everyone.

When modeling, it is bold of you to assume that more than 10% of your portfolio will be outliers. It is bold of you to assume that more than 5% of your portfolio will be outliers. We are in a power law industry.

You will get diluted. More than you think. With how much longer companies are staying private, and how much capital is available in the later growth stages, you will get diluted. 80% is safe to assume if you have no reserves. Down to 65% depending on how much you have. There are very, very few cases you only have 50% dilution. Yet I see many GPs model their portfolio that way.

Pro rata is a legal right no successful capital will grant without a fight. If you get it without a fight down the road on a great company, ask yourself why you’re so lucky. And never forget to ask yourself that question.

In a market of exceptions, you are all more normal than you think. It sucks. In any other industry, most of you will have fairly little competition for greatness, but you chose one of the few industries where your competition is all exceptions.

How you react to a ‘no’ from an LP is a sobering fact and a great telltale sign of the strength of your relationships. I love chatting with other LPs who’ve passed on you. Not because I need to hear their why—most of our interests and mandates are different, but because I almost always ask how you react to their ‘no.’ And I am not alone here. Usually, LPs volunteer that information up quite readily. Of note, different LPs say ‘no’ differently. Most don’t. A fact I am aware of.

Many of us who do this as our primary job love you. We love venture. We love the romanticism that comes with this space. Do not play the hopeless romantic back. We need the truth.

There’s a great line that Elizabeth Gilbert credits her wife Rayya Elias. “The truth has legs. It always stands. When everything else in the room has blown up or dissolved away, the only thing left standing will always be the truth. Since that’s where you’re gonna end up anyway, you might as well just start there.”

The best time to share the truth is in person. And immediately. The second best is a 1:1 call. If it’s not urgent, save it for the AGM. If it is, call us.

We should not learn about you or your portfolio for the first time via the news. If we are, you’ve lost our trust. Shit happens. We get it. How you respond and communicate shit is what makes or breaks a relationship.

Many of my colleagues try to be helpful even if they can’t invest. Understand because they’re human they can’t be so for everyone. So when they are, don’t take it for granted.

If you conflate any of the above, you’re either lying to yourself or you’re lying to us. The former means you’re never going to make it in this industry. The latter means we’re just not going to be good partners for you.

This is not a Bible. Do not swear by it. Do not pray to it by the bedside every night.

This is just a morning wake-up call. Some of you have already woken up. Many of you may not have.

Photo by Álvaro Serrano on Unsplash

Stay up to date with the weekly cup of cognitive adventures inside venture capital and startups, as well as cataloging the history of tomorrow through the bookmarks of yesterday!

The views expressed on this blogpost are for informational purposes only. None of the views expressed herein constitute legal, investment, business, or tax advice. Any allusions or references to funds or companies are for illustrative purposes only, and should not be relied upon as investment recommendations. Consult a professional investment advisor prior to making any investment decisions.

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DGQ 25: Were you successful because or in spite of your last firm?

There’s a story that Simon Sinek shared that I’ve always really liked.

I would highly recommend watching the full video. Only two and a half minutes. But in case you choose not to, the story goes… there was a former Under Secretary of Defense giving a speech at a large conference who interrupts his own remarks while drinking out of Styrofoam cup. He smiles as he looks down and he shares an anecdote.

Last year, when he was still the Under Secretary, they flew him there business class, picked him up in a car from the airport, checked him into his hotel for him, escorted him to his room. And the next morning, there was another car waiting to pick him up from the hotel that drove him to the venue, showed him through the back entrance, then green room. In the green room, there was someone waiting for him with a hot cup of coffee in a ceramic mug.

The following year he went (the year he was giving the above speech), he was no longer the Under Secretary. He flew to the city on coach, took a taxi from the airport to the hotel, checked himself in, took another taxi to the venue the next morning, found his own way backstage after arriving at the front door. When he asked where he could get coffee, someone pointed him towards the coffee machine in the back corner and told him to serve himself in a Styrofoam cup.

The intended lesson here is that the ceramic cup was never meant for him, but the position in which he holds. He deserved the Styrofoam cups, everyone does. And that no matter how far you go in life with all the perks that come with promotions and status and power, never forget that that will last only for as long as you hold that position.

There are obviously rare exceptions. But that is also the question that us as LPs ask. Hell, I’m sure it’s what a lot of VCs ask themselves about the founders they could back. Were you successful because or in spite of your last firm/company?

For founders and founding GPs, the attribution and causation is clearer than if you were an operator or other team member at a VC firm. We begin to peel the onion with questions like: What did you do in your last job title that no one else with that job title has ever done? For operators, did you create something and meaningfully lead something that created mass societal value and/or independently change the course of the company? For non-founding GPs at VC firms, did you individually drive disproportionate returns for the overall fund at your last firm? Attribution is often harder than one would think at prior institutions since many institutions succeed as teams, as opposed to individuals. So if success came as being a core member of the team, how much of your last team are you bringing with you? If not, how can you ramp up quickly to be a top performer?

The DGQ series is a series dedicated to my process of question discovery and execution. When curiosity is the why, DGQ is the how. It’s an inside scoop of what goes on in my noggin’. My hope is that it offers some illumination to you, my readers, so you can tackle the world and build relationships with my best tools at your disposal. It also happens to stand for damn good questions, or dumb and garbled questions. I’ll let you decide which it falls under.

Stay up to date with the weekly cup of cognitive adventures inside venture capital and startups, as well as cataloging the history of tomorrow through the bookmarks of yesterday!

The views expressed on this blogpost are for informational purposes only. None of the views expressed herein constitute legal, investment, business, or tax advice. Any allusions or references to funds or companies are for illustrative purposes only, and should not be relied upon as investment recommendations. Consult a professional investment advisor prior to making any investment decisions.

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Energy, Intelligence, and Integrity

lion, integrity

Recently, I met an LP who told me an interesting framework, derived from something Warren Buffett once said. “Every pitch needs to have energy, intelligence, and integrity. And without the last, the first two can lead bad outcomes for the LP.”

  1. Energy — Why now for the world? Why now for your LPs? Why is now the time for you? Why do you have to do this and nothing else? Can your pitch get people really excited about the opportunity? About you? When they wake up the next morning, are they still thinking about your conversation, or have they moved on with their morning to focus on sending the kids to school or what their schedule looks like for the day?
  2. Intelligence — Do you know what you’re talking about? Have you done so much research and have so much lived experience here that you are the one of the world’s foremost experts here? Are you a thoughtful and intentional person around all aspects of your life?
  3. Integrity — Can I trust you? Why should I trust you? Do you have a track record of maintaining long friendships? What’s the longest friendship you’ve maintained? Do you have an strong moral compass? How is it exhibited in even the smallest actions you take? If your and my interests ever clash, what is your course of action? Where do you sit in the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs? What set of needs are you primarily motivated by?

Interestingly enough, just a few hours later, I was catching up with a good old friend who’s putting together a pitch for his new venture. And he was telling me one of the pieces of feedback that he got was that there wasn’t enough dopamine induced from his pitch. Which was an interesting piece of commentary. The person giving him that piece of feedback believed that all pitches should induce three types of hormones:

  • Dopamine — known for joy, excitement, and motivation. To draw a parallel, “energy” under Warren Buffett’s framework.
  • Oxytocin — known for building trust and empathy. Or “integrity.”
  • Serotonin — known for calmness, well-being, but in the context here: optimism. I’m not sure if this draws a strict line of correlation to Warren Buffett’s framework, but nevertheless, something useful to think about. Why will the world tomorrow be better than the one today? What can I look forward to?

In my buddy’s pitch, he included a lot of facts and research, promoting oxytocin in the reader. But the pitch lacked excitement and an urgency to take action. In other words, dopamine.

Most decks charting new territory and betting in the non-obvious carry too much oxytocin, responsible for creating trust (i.e. data, information, synthesis of market trends, why the GP is legible, testimonials, track record, etc.). So much to prove factually why this should exist. A very left brain approach.

Most decks betting on a hot topic, industry or idea index heavily on dopamine. Why this is exciting? Why we have to do this now?

The best decks have both.

Photo by Zdeněk Macháček on Unsplash

Stay up to date with the weekly cup of cognitive adventures inside venture capital and startups, as well as cataloging the history of tomorrow through the bookmarks of yesterday!

The views expressed on this blogpost are for informational purposes only. None of the views expressed herein constitute legal, investment, business, or tax advice. Any allusions or references to funds or companies are for illustrative purposes only, and should not be relied upon as investment recommendations. Consult a professional investment advisor prior to making any investment decisions.

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NO Diligence is Ever Enough | Anurag Chandra | Superclusters | S6E2

anurag chandra

“There are a thousand ways to put lipstick on the pig and there are a thousand skeletons [in the closet]. I’ve only seen five or six because I’ve only seen three startup experiences. And so you need to deputize as many people as you possibly can to essentially triangulate.” — Anurag Chandra

Anurag Chandra has spent over two decades in Silicon Valley as an investor, operator, and allocator. He has helped lead four venture capital funds, managing over $2.0B in aggregate AUM. Anurag has also been a senior executive in three enterprise technology startups, two of which were sold successfully to public companies. He is currently the CIO of a single-family office with an attached venture studio and a Trustee for the $4.5B San Jose Federated City Employees Retirement Fund, serving as Vice Chair of the Board, and Chair of its Investment and Joint Personnel Committees.

You can find Anurag on his socials here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anchandra/
X / Twitter: https://x.com/achandra41

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also watch the episode on YouTube here.

OUTLINE:

[00:00] Intro
[02:10] Why is what Anurag is wearing a walking contradiction?
[06:08] The man without a home, but comfortable in everyone’s home
[10:17] The Stanford Review
[12:55] The four assh*les of America
[20:13] How did Anurag schedule regular coffee with Mark Stevens?
[25:31] Mark Stevens’ advice to Anurag about staying top of mind
[26:42] How often should you email someone to stay in touch?
[30:33] Why should you be an asymmetric information junkie?
[34:21] Where should you find asymmetric information in VC?
[36:02] The ‘Oh Shit’ board meeting
[40:09] How San Jose Pension Plan views GPs
[43:55] Defining the ‘venture business’
[49:09] Process drives repeatability
[54:06] How San Jose Pension Plan built their investment process from scratch
[58:43] What is a risk budget?
[1:01:52] What did San Jose Pension Plan do about their risk budget?
[1:05:05] The people who changed Anurag
[1:11:10] Post-credit scene

SELECT LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE:

SELECT QUOTES FROM THIS EPISODE:

“You seem like a good guy. I’d love to find ways to work with you, but I’m going to forget you in two or three weeks. And you got to make sure that you stay in the front of my mind when I’m in a board meeting and there’s a company that could use your money. The best for you to do that is to shoot me an email from time to time and let me know what you’re working on. But do not make them long. I don’t need dissertations.” — Mark Stevens’ advice to Anurag

“There are a thousand ways to put lipstick on the pig and there are a thousand skeletons [in the closet]. I’ve only seen five or six because I’ve only seen three startup experiences. And so you need to deputize as many people as you possibly can to essentially triangulate.” — Anurag Chandra

“You can do two weeks or two years of due diligence on a company, in particular if you’re a mid-stage or later-stage investor. And it’s after the first board meeting—I have a friend who affectionately refers to it as the ‘Oh Shit!’ board meeting where you show up, and now you’re on the inside and you learn all the bad stuff about the company that was hidden from you. Now is that to suggest you should just invest after two weeks because even after two years you’re still going to end up with skeletons you were unable to uncover? No. I still think process matters.” — Anurag Chandra

“Look for GPs who are magnets, as opposed to looking for a needle in a haystack.” — Noah Lichtenstein

“Process drives repeatability.” — Andy Weissman

Follow David Zhou for more Superclusters content:
For podcast show notes: https://cupofzhou.com/superclusters
Follow David Zhou’s blog: https://cupofzhou.com
Follow Superclusters on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SuperclustersLP
Follow Superclusters on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@super.clusters
Follow Superclusters on Instagram: https://instagram.com/super.clusters

Stay up to date with the weekly cup of cognitive adventures inside venture capital and startups, as well as cataloging the history of tomorrow through the bookmarks of yesterday!

The views expressed on this blogpost are for informational purposes only. None of the views expressed herein constitute legal, investment, business, or tax advice. Any allusions or references to funds or companies are for illustrative purposes only, and should not be relied upon as investment recommendations. Consult a professional investment advisor prior to making any investment decisions.

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How to Not Get Fired When Changing Your VC Strategy | El Pack w/ Beezer Clarkson | Superclusters

beezer clarkson

Beezer Clarkson from Sapphire Partners joins David on El Pack to answer your questions on how to build a venture capital fund. We bring on four GPs at VC funds to ask four different questions.

Precursor Ventures’ Charles Hudson asks what is the one strongly held belief about emerging managers that she no longer believes is true.

NextView Ventures’ Stephanie Palmeri asks how much should an established firm evolve versus stick to their guns.

Humanrace Capital’s Suraj Mehta asks what the best way to build brand presence is.

Rackhouse Venture Capital’s Kevin Novak asks if you’ve deployed your capital faster than you expected, what’s the best path forward with the remaining capital you have left?

Beezer Clarkson leads Sapphire Partners‘ investments in venture funds domestically and internationally. Beezer began her career in financial services over 20 years ago at Morgan Stanley in its global infrastructure group. Since, she has held various direct and indirect venture investment roles, as well as operational roles in software business development at Hewlett Packard. Prior to joining Sapphire in 2012, Beezer managed the day-to-day operations of the Draper Fisher Jurvetson Global Network, which then had $7 billion under management across 16 venture funds worldwide.

In 2016, Beezer led the launch of OpenLP, an effort to help foster greater understanding in the entrepreneur-to-LP tech ecosystem. Beezer earned a bachelor’s in government from Wesleyan University, where she served on the board of trustees and currently serves as an advisor to the Wesleyan Endowment Investment Committee. She is currently serving on the board of the NVCA and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.

You can find Beezer on her socials here.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/beezer232
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabethclarkson/

Check out Sapphire’s latest breakdown on if venture is broken: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/venture-broken-what-2000-priced-early-stage-rounds-tell-clarkson-sjvjc/

And huge thanks to Charles, Suraj, Steph, and Kevin for joining us on the show!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also watch the episode on YouTube here.

OUTLINE:

[00:00] Intro
[01:22] Where does Beezer’s advice come from?
[04:03] Charles and Precursor Ventures
[04:47] What’s something Beezer used to believe about seed stage venture that she no longer believes in
[08:04] Why did Charles choose to bet on pre-seed companies?
[10:21] What did LPs push back on when Charles was starting Precursor?
[12:18] Definition of early stage investing today
[14:38] Steph and NextView Ventures
[18:13] When do you stick your knitting or move on from the past as an established firm?
[30:48] Is venture investing in AI fundamentally different than investing in other types of companies?
[32:52] Does competition for a deal mean you’ve already lost it?
[36:09] Suraj and Humanrace Capital
[36:54] How should emerging managers build their brand?
[38:38] The audience most emerging managers don’t focus on but should
[40:39] How much does visible brand presence matter?
[43:47] Useful or not: Media exposure in the data room
[45:40] Backstreet boys
[46:37] Kevin and Rackhouse Venture Capital
[47:28] What Kevin is best known for
[48:03] Updated fund modelling when you’re ahead on your proposed deployment period
[58:00] The typical questions Beezer gets on LPACs
[1:03:22] Is venture broken?
[1:06:41] David’s favorite Beezer moment from Season 1

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SELECT QUOTES FROM THIS EPISODE:

“Whatever the evolution of venture is if you’re just following someone else, the odds of you doing as well as them is just harder and that is probably a truism about life.” — Beezer Clarkson

“If you’re going to get a 2X in venture over 20 years, frankly, as an LP, there are alternatives from a pure dollars in the ground perspective. But if you’re looking at trying to capture innovation, which AI is now one of the great innovations, where are you going to capture that if not playing in venture? So is venture broken is a question of who are you.” — Beezer Clarkson

“If you’re competing for the deal, you’ve already lost it.” — Beezer Clarkson

“I think the competition is more: Did I see it with enough time to build the conviction and build the relationship relative to the other people that might be coming in?” — Stephanie Palmeri

“Recycling is incredibly important, but incredibly hard to plan for, especially as early as you’re coming in, unless you’re seeing evidence of acqui-hires today and you know you’re going to have those dollars coming in. Obviously, really hard. So I would not bank your farm on that.” — Beezer Clarkson

Follow David Zhou for more Superclusters content:
For podcast show notes: https://cupofzhou.com/superclusters
Follow David Zhou’s blog: https://cupofzhou.com
Follow Superclusters on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SuperclustersLP
Follow Superclusters on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@super.clusters
Follow Superclusters on Instagram: https://instagram.com/super.clusters

Stay up to date with the weekly cup of cognitive adventures inside venture capital and startups, as well as cataloging the history of tomorrow through the bookmarks of yesterday!

The views expressed on this blogpost are for informational purposes only. None of the views expressed herein constitute legal, investment, business, or tax advice. Any allusions or references to funds or companies are for illustrative purposes only, and should not be relied upon as investment recommendations. Consult a professional investment advisor prior to making any investment decisions.

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How to Read Investors Like a Book | Thorsten Claus | Superclusters | S6E1

thorsten claus

“You need to make space for weird types of conversations to happen on the fringes that really inform you what’s going on at the frontier.” — Thorsten Claus

Thorsten Claus is a venture investor and builder with more than 15 years of private equity and venture capital experience. He has raised nine funds, managed over $4.8B across global platforms, and led or overseen more than 120 direct investments, generating returns of 3x–7x net to investors.

His current work focuses on dual-use technologies at the intersection of defense, security, and national resilience. Guided by the discipline of Howard Marks, the systems-level thinking of the Consilience Project, and a commitment to internalizing externalities, he invests in teams and technologies that strengthen sovereign capability and long-term societal stability.

Beyond capital, Thorsten is a hands-on builder. He machines defense-critical and space components, restores historic race engines, and writes on production systems and resilience at blog.thinkstorm.com. This grounding in physical production complements his investment practice, keeping judgment tied to real-world constraints.

You can find Thor on his socials here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thorstenclaus/
X / Twitter: https://x.com/thinkstorm

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also watch the episode on YouTube here.

OUTLINE:

[00:00] Intro
[02:31] Downhill skateboarding
[05:58] How do you see behind a corner when downhill skateboarding?
[07:42] Hill hunting
[10:15] How long does it take to go down the Sierras?
[11:41] The most important part of the body for downhill skateboarding
[16:02] David’s dumb question of the day
[17:25] The accident that pivoted Thor’s life
[19:34] The first race car Thor bought
[20:51] Why Thor is a terrible race car driver?
[23:52] How did Thor come to use the race oil that Porsche Racing uses?
[24:59] The 3 things you need to welcome fringe conversations
[27:07] Just another David misattribution
[27:34] Truth is difficult these days
[29:20] How do you prioritize which advice to take?
[30:33] Thor’s weird definition of risk
[31:59] How do you know if someone is giving you authentic advice?
[34:40] How does Thor understand someone’s past without asking about it?
[39:42] Lessons from fictional storytelling in diligencing GPs
[43:22] Questions and responses that reveal a GP’s past
[46:10] Books that Thor read to ask better questions
[49:18] What is the USMC Christmas Tree?
[53:40] The Christmas Tree in an investor’s portfolio
[57:49] Can beggars be choosers?
[1:00:41] The difference between capital formation and fundraising
[1:03:00] Production vs product for a GP
[1:06:54] Thor and cardistry
[1:10:21] What are moments that reminds Thor we’re still in the good old days?
[1:13:50] The post-credit scene

https://open.spotify.com/episode/6InM0JXlg7LjWy0QViJsmk

SELECT LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE:

SELECT QUOTES FROM THIS EPISODE:

“You need to make space for weird types of conversations to happen on the fringes that really inform you what’s going on at the frontier.” — Thorsten Claus

“Risk is the probability of a fatal outcome within given resources.” — Thorsten Claus

“Is it really out of conviction that they’re acting on [the advice] or is it just a belief? You know, I believe in many things, but do I act accordingly? That’s the difference between belief and conviction.” — Thorsten Claus

“The self audit of our actions, behaviors, processes, and decisions is so important.” — Thorsten Claus

“What I find more interesting than the question about ‘what’s the one thing you don’t want me to know about you’ is what it reveals about what you think about me. So, a social interaction is always with me with others, or you with me as well, and a group with others. If I’m worried that you know something about me, that reveals something more about what you fear my attitude is or how this is seen or how you would think I would act. And that is super insightful.” — Thorsten Claus

“If you want to find out something about the why and the what, you ask open-ended questions. If you confirm bad news, you voice it for them.” — Thorsten Claus

“There are no bad teams, only bad leaders.” — Jocko Willink

“There was a whole time when I grew up here in America where everything was great. […] Everyone gets a participation prize. I hated that because it really devalues people who are truly great. And the fact is that there are only very few truly great people.” — Thorsten Claus

“Capital formation is a design principle. Fundraising is a sales process. Without true design around a customer base and a product, you will fail eventually.” — Thorsten Claus

Follow David Zhou for more Superclusters content:
For podcast show notes: https://cupofzhou.com/superclusters
Follow David Zhou’s blog: https://cupofzhou.com
Follow Superclusters on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SuperclustersLP
Follow Superclusters on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@super.clusters
Follow Superclusters on Instagram: https://instagram.com/super.clusters

Stay up to date with the weekly cup of cognitive adventures inside venture capital and startups, as well as cataloging the history of tomorrow through the bookmarks of yesterday!

The views expressed on this blogpost are for informational purposes only. None of the views expressed herein constitute legal, investment, business, or tax advice. Any allusions or references to funds or companies are for illustrative purposes only, and should not be relied upon as investment recommendations. Consult a professional investment advisor prior to making any investment decisions.

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